The Disastrous Development Of EA Anthem Revealed

*SNIP*
This account of Anthem’s development, based on interviews with 19 people who either worked on the game or adjacent to it (all of whom were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about Anthem’s development), is a story of indecision and mismanagement. It’s a story of technical failings, as EA’s Frostbite engine continued to make life miserable for many of BioWare’s developers, and understaffed departments struggled to serve their team’s needs. It’s a story of two studios, one in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and another in Austin, Texas, that grew resentful toward one another thanks to a tense, lopsided relationship. It’s a story of a video game that was in development for nearly seven years but didn’t enter production until the final 18 months, thanks to big narrative reboots, major design overhauls, and a leadership team said to be unable to provide a consistent vision and unwilling to listen to feedback.

I've spoken to several current and former BioWare employees since my article went live today, including some I hadn't interviewed earlier. General consensus has been sadness and disappointment at BioWare's statement, which read as disheartening to those who hoped for change.

*SNIP*
The story behind this reboot isn’t just a story of a game going through multiple iterations, as many games do. The Dragon Age 4 overhaul was a sign of BioWare’s troubles, and how the company has struggled in recent years to work on multiple projects at the same time. It was indicative of the tension between EA’s financial goals and what BioWare fans love about the studio’s games. It led to the departure of several key staff including veteran Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw, and it led to today’s Dragon Age 4, whose developers hope to carefully straddle the line between storytelling and the “live service” that EA has pushed so hard over the past few years. (EA did not return a request for comment.)

Perhaps the saddest thing about Dragon Age 4’s cancellation in 2017 for members of the Dragon Age team was that this time, they thought they were getting it right. This time, they had a set of established tools. They had a feasible scope. They had ideas that excited the whole team. And they had leaders who said they were committed to avoiding the mistakes they’d made on Dragon Age: Inquisition.

But Anthem was on fire, and BioWare needed everyone to grab a hose.

*SNIP*

While reporting on Anthem, I kept hearing one interesting sentiment from current and former BioWare staff: They felt like the weirdos in EA’s portfolio, the guys and gals who made nerdy role-playing games as opposed to explosive shooters and big sports franchises. BioWare games never sold quite as well as the FIFAs and Battlefields of the world, so it never felt like they could get quite as many resources as their colleagues at other studios. High-ranking BioWare staff openly wondered: Did EA’s executives really care about narrative? Did they really care about RPGs? Those questions have always lingered, and still do today.

By the latter half of 2017, Anthem was in real trouble, and there was concern that it might never be finished unless the studio did something drastic. In October of 2017, not long after veteran Mass Effect director Casey Hudson returned to the studio to take over as general manager, EA and BioWare took that drastic action, canceling Joplin and moving the bulk of its staff, including executive producer Mark Darrah, onto Anthem.

A tiny team stuck around to work on a brand new Dragon Age 4, code-named Morrison, that would be built on Anthem’s tools and codebase. It’s the game being made now. Unlike Joplin, this new version of the fourth Dragon Age is planned with a live service component, built for long-term gameplay and revenue. One promise from management, according to a developer, was that in EA’s balance sheet, they’d be starting from scratch and not burdened with the two years of money that Joplin had already spent. Question was, how many of those ideas and prototypes would they use?

It’s not clear how much of Joplin’s vision will shape Morrison (at least some of it will, says one person on the game), but shortly after the reboot, creative director Mike Laidlaw left, as did some other veteran Dragon Age staff. Matt Goldman, art director on Dragon Age: Inquisition and then Joplin, took over as creative director for Morrison, while Darrah remained executive producer on both that project and Anthem.

Reference. Don’t bash me pls. I’m hoping the insider leak gets investigated.
Key Points to digest:
1) EA frontline employees taking 50% hit to annual bonuses
2) EA Executives taking only a 25% hit to annual bonuses
3) EA continues to lay-off people and cut bonuses to prevent layoffs at critical studios such as BIOWARE.
4) If EA can’t stave off its losses, critical studios like BIOWARE could lose people. This delays contents and fixes. Created another ME: Andromeda

*SNIP*
The problem is that Anthem does not have five years to learn all this. BioWare has never developed a live service loot shooter before, so they’ve effectively just been thrown in the deep end and forced to learn how to swim.
It may not be fair to compare Anthem’s erased roadmap and Destiny’s perfectly followed one, but these games are competing for the same types of players at the exact same time. And Bungie is using five years of development experience and lessons learned to churn out timely new content on schedule, while BioWare simply can’t match it.