Yesterday, Kotaku published an expose on Anthem’s troubled development that reveals BioWare to be a studio in crisis. Jason Schreier’s report, while damning, isn’t callous, but rather a look at the human cost involved in large scale development, especially when things don’t coalesce the way they’re intended to.
The report details how the game’s name was changed just before its reveal, how the 2017 E3 trailer that wowed fans and led to a spate of pre-order was essentially faked, and how the game – despite being in development for 7 years – only started coming together mere months before release. It also details how much EA’s internal Frostbite Engine caused headaches for the teams, and how a headless management that relied too much on the mystical “BioWare Magic” failed to steer the game’s direction.
It’s a sobering, humanising look at game development that once again shows how volatile the AAA games industry is, and how it dehumanises the people who actually make the games, while putting the names of studios on a pedestal.
“I actually cannot count the amount of ‘stress casualties’ we had on Mass Effect: Andromeda or Anthem,” a former BioWare developer told Kotaku. “A ‘stress casualty’ at BioWare means someone had such a mental breakdown from the stress they’re just gone for one to three months. Some come back, some don’t.”
That stress was largely a result of tension between the two existing BioWare studios, exacerbated by a lack of cohesive vision. Elements – like the game’s flying – were yanked out, and put back in countless times before being codified by the reception to the E3 demo, which was made to impress EA exec Patrick Soderlund, and was largely fake.
“The demo was not actually built properly—a lot of it was fake, like most E3 demos. There was a lot of stuff that was like, ‘Oh are we actually doing this? Do we have the tech for that, do we have the tools for that? To what end can you fly? How big should the world be?’” a former BioWare developer told Kotaku.
As tempting as it may be to p
You’d hope that report like this would help the developer learn from its mistakes, but a disappointing, deflective response to the article suggest otherwise.
“We chose not to comment or participate in this story because we felt there was an unfair focus on specific team members and leaders, who did their absolute best to bring this totally new idea to fans. We didn’t want to be part of something that was attempting to bring them down as individuals. We respect them all, and we built this game as a team,” the company said. “People in this industry put so much passion and energy into making something fun. We don’t see the value in tearing down one
another, or one another’s work. We don’t believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better.”
It’s worth pointing out again that Kotaku’s report didn’t bring anybody down. If anything it helped me empathise with the BioWare’s staff, caught in a whirlwind of crunch, a lack of vision and clarity and dysfunctional management.
I’ve only scratched the surface of Kotaku’s lengthy, in-depth report – which you should read if you have an hour or so to spare.
Last Updated: April 3, 2019
HairyEwok
April 3, 2019 at 11:20
Just read the full article on Kotaku. Anthem was a total development hellhole, how the game is actually not in a worse state than it is now is a miracle.
Llama In The Rift
April 3, 2019 at 11:21
Agreed..if they actually developed the game for 7 years it would have been an amazing title.
HairyEwok
April 3, 2019 at 13:05
The ideas thrown down, the fact that it was slated to be a multiplayer game where you need to try and survive as long as you can in the wild instead of just roaming regions at random sounds amazing, but like the article states, EA wanted a Destiny clone from Bioware, which is not their expertise of games.
Kervyn Cloete
April 3, 2019 at 11:38
Yeah this was my take away as well. It’s ridiculous that they managed to put anything out as well.
Admiral Chief
April 3, 2019 at 11:21
Typical, useless management not managing projects properly.
It sickens me how companies/departments/teams suffer because of useless management. Countries as well
CrAiGiSh
April 3, 2019 at 11:38
First mistake BioWare did … was sign up with EA all those years ago.
ENOUGH SAID !!!
Kromas
April 3, 2019 at 11:38
Did you read the article? EA gave them seven years … the game went into production after the E3 trailer 2017. Bioware screwed this one up all on their own.
CrAiGiSh
April 3, 2019 at 11:38
I’m not taking about Anthem.
I’m talking about since BioWare signed up with EA, its been nothing but down hill from there.
Regardless of game, time, etc.
Kromas
April 3, 2019 at 12:14
I would disagree. Under EA they made Baldurs Gate,KoToR and Mass Effect. That was height of their studios endeavors
Ooh and Neverwinter Nights.
Alessandro Barbosa
April 3, 2019 at 12:47
Baldur’s Gate was Interplay, NeverWinter was InfoGames and KOTOR was LucusArts. None of them had anything to do with EA
Kromas
April 3, 2019 at 12:47
My bad then.
Geoffrey Tim
April 3, 2019 at 12:47
EA only bought BioWare after the original Mass Effect was published by MS as an Xbox 360 exclusive.
Correction: they bought them a month before release, but the deals with MS were already inked and the game was complete already.
They did make Mass Effect 2 – arguably the best of the lot – under EA though.
Kromas
April 3, 2019 at 12:47
Roger. I thought it was much earlier. Still Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises were doing fairly well.
Alessandro Barbosa
April 3, 2019 at 12:48
The original DA and Mass Effect 2, which were the first two games out of their deal with EA, are still their best works imo. It’s been getting progressively worse since then
Kromas
April 3, 2019 at 13:04
Apart from that stupid ending ME3 was amazing and the Citadel DLC is the best DLC ever made for any game in my opinion.
But yeah I get what you are saying.
Alessandro Barbosa
April 3, 2019 at 13:05
I don’t think ME3 is bad at all, just think they haven’t reached the same highs of DA and ME2 since their release. And Andromeda and Anthem are just proof that they’re getting worse every time.
HvR
April 3, 2019 at 13:23
But that is sort of the EA effect.
You usually get one maybe 2 good games out of the existing IP after an EA buy out then all things seem to go to hell. Then we only hear about the true impact EA had years down the line when all contracts, non-competes and NDA’s have expired.
konfab
April 3, 2019 at 12:14
Mass Effect 2, 3 and DA:I were fantastic.
I think the problem was that they lost the leadership of the company.
As the article put it, the moment they got someone in to take control of the team and make decisions, things actually got done.
In a deeply ironic twist, one of the main themes of Mass Effect was Shepard taking control of a dysfunctional team and getting it to pull off the impossible.
Come to think of it, it goes for most of their games.
Captain JJ
April 3, 2019 at 12:14
Yea, leadership seems to have been a very big problem there for a long while now.
Captain JJ
April 3, 2019 at 12:14
But EA also moved the best Frostbite programmers off the Anthem team to work on Fifa instead. So both are equally at fault here.
If you read that article it becomes very clear just how neither party knew what the hell they wanted and what it would take to get this game to where it needs to be.
Kromas
April 3, 2019 at 11:38
I am so glad Mass Effect is dead. I don’t think I could handle my faveroute game series being messed up like Anthem.
Yahtzee
April 3, 2019 at 11:38
Anthem was fun.
Minus the whole not having an end game thing.
Admiral Chief
April 3, 2019 at 11:55
End game….you mean fashion?
(And yes, I got back into WF….bastard)
Yahtzee
April 3, 2019 at 11:56
Dex Caliber time
Yahtzee
April 3, 2019 at 11:38
“only started coming together mere months before release”
That’s some impressive rush work, i’d have a little break down as well.
RinceThis
April 3, 2019 at 11:55
What, hell with EA about, I don’t believe you.
Captain JJ
April 3, 2019 at 12:13
That Kotaku article was a damn interesting read. Both Bioware and EA are highly at fault here, but EA really pushed that Frostbite engine on them and expected so many things that they just couldn’t produce.
Geoffrey Tim
April 3, 2019 at 12:13
According to former bioware heads, they’ve said Bioware chose to use Frostbite for DA:I onwards. EA didn’t force them.
“It was our decision. We had been wrapping up Mass Effect 3 and we just shipped Dragon Age II and we knew that our Eclipse engine, that we shipped DAII on, wasn’t going to cut it for the future iterations of Dragon Age,” Flynn clarified. “It couldn’t do open world, the renderer wasn’t strong enough, those were the two big ones. We thought about multiplayer as well, as Eclipse was single-player only.
“We talked internally about three options. We could have burned down Eclipse and started something new internally, we could have gone with Unreal Engine, or we could have picked Frostbite which had shown some really promising results on the rendering side of things and it was multiplayer enabled.”
Captain JJ
April 3, 2019 at 12:14
In that article they mention how EA pushed it on them, how it was a move of EA to get all their games onto it to avoid costs in licensing fees to third party engines like Unreal. Kotaku needs to get their info right then before publishing something like this.
Either way. Both parties are at fault here, equally so. It’s just less of a surprise when EA does this.
Pariah
April 3, 2019 at 12:14
One thing that I definitely felt in the game was the change in writers part-way through. Like, some of the early and main-quest story in Anthem was exceptional. And some of it was pointless and hollow. It felt totally disconnected.
Captain JJ
April 3, 2019 at 12:14
Yea. They didn’t have everything figured out at all it seems. Complete lack of direction. And it’s clear that they built a game that EA wanted to see, just to please the execs, regardless of how bare bones it was underneath.
Pariah
April 3, 2019 at 12:31
The real tragedy for me is that there’s so much good there. The gameplay mechanically is fantastic. Flying feels great, combat is satisfying, it’s a treat to play. But story is hit or miss. The world is, well… Yeah, no arguments on the criticism there. It’s got so much good, but the bad really drags it down to something far less than it aught to be.
Captain JJ
April 3, 2019 at 12:31
Look, I haven’t shat on Anthem once myself. It looks like a fun game, and I would definitely have bought it were it on a respectable client. It looks like it could be fun even though it’s very bare with little loot to hunt for.
I personally love these open world, loot shooter games and there are so few of them. So in no way do I wish for it for fail, as much as I despise shoddy business practices that EA is so great at.
Bad decisions were made…or a lack of decisions. Bad leadership or lack thereof.
Pariah
April 3, 2019 at 12:31
Yeah, and the game is worse off for it. But I enjoyed my 35 hours with it. I would’ve spent a lot more if I didn’t have my hard drive issues. No need to knock a game though to acknowledge its shortcomings. And the Kotaku article highlights why those shortcomings exist in the first place. AAA gaming at its worst, and yet the talent and quality of the staff made sure that the game still had something going for it. They did the best they could, and that shows.
Captain JJ
April 3, 2019 at 12:32
“AAA” holds absolutely no weight to me. Especially these days. We’re seeing amazing quality across the board regardless of whom is behind it.
It’s also clear here that they were so focused on trying to fix and put out the fires on Andromeda that no one looked at what’s going on with Anthem. Servicing their Mass Effect legacy came first, as you would expect, but they had no one checking up on the new IP. It’s like it just snowballed.
Pariah
April 3, 2019 at 12:32
AAA is mostly relevant due to the nature of its existence. The investor-first approach and anti-consumer capitalism that epitomises what AAA has become.
And that all sounds like a buzz-word fueled press release by one of said companies. Fuckers. I hate buzz-words.