Hello Thedosians and welcome back to my channel, sorry for the delays, I'm in a season of life where things get pretty hectic and hence, where I could not upload any videos, but I'm back, I'm okay, and there's already been some controversial things brought up in the Dragon Age community, wow what a surprise!
I usually do not do these types of videos, but this video is a little different. There is a lot of misguided people luring to boycott BioWare (not going to name, some people might know), and others who already want to follow the trend, not that it matters... It just doesn't help that people are probably misreading this article in what looks typical in a lot of games-industry environments.
If you don't know what I am talking about, that's okay.. Let's start with the article, on April 2nd, 2019, an article posted on Kotaku by Jason Schreier discusses about Anthem's work process and 'floundering' over the image of this IP, some people know already that this games not supposed to be called 'Anthem' but rather, 'Beyond' until those rules of trademark would be impossible, hence the mysterious, non-written lore to back it behind until later, so 'Beyond' got scrapped, and they were calling this game as we know as Anthem.
Schreier has accounts of at least 19 people 'who either worked on the game or adjacent to it', in which they discuss the scraps and redoing of their new IP, with no real image that stuck on due to the leadership not 'willing to listen to feedback'. As we know a lot of these BioWare veterans have moved on during these last 2 years mostly from BioWare's Edmonton Studio, in which they discuss the work-stress environments which I will bring up later on...
Jumping through the article most of us who are watching are really concerned about the the future of BioWare and mostly, Dragon Age, "does this mean no more Dragon Age" or "Is Dragon Age even going to be Dragon Age 4", in which, is to be expected coming from an article that provides some clear proof of a studio with a lot of dysfunction to work properly as of date.
In early 2015, David Gaider jumped onto Anthem to work with his team on writing the background story for Anthem:
"and his version of the story looked a lot different than the ideas with which they’d been experimenting for the past few years. Gaider’s style was traditional BioWare—big, complicated villains; ancient alien artifacts; and so on—which rankled some of the developers who were hoping for something more subtle. “There was a lot of resistance from the team who just didn’t want to see a sci-fi Dragon Age, I guess,” -Schreier
Essentially, bringing on ideas to the team really didn't help for the team already working on Anthem, we know what David Gaider brings to the table, so to see this team disregard and create snide comments of 'very Dragon Age' like into the reponse towards his team. Must of made him feel like there was already a negativity towards the Dragon Age and that Anthem wanted no part in it, at least for pre-development, or maybe not...
As we know Gaider left due to moving on and felt like he didn't really want to invest in the games he created, Mike Laidlaw left to another term:
Frostbite Engine:
The article goes on about how developers describe this current engine that most of us know as Frostbite, is an engine with many 'razor blades'. Whereas many of Dragon Age's former engines or what BioWare mostly used was easy on the engines of Unreal. Things that would seem to take an hour in another engine would take a whole day to complete.
BioWare employees began to be afraid for making certain things that were hacked together felt discouraged to fix up the bugs due to the long and draining process it took to make something in the first place. Leading to more layers and layers of bugs in which most people who play their games on the Frostbite engine, know, that bugs are everywhere.
Not only that, the added downside to working on this engine was those who are responsible and knowledgeable of this engine would never get back to BioWare since their games didn't make as much revenue as a FIFA or a Battlefront game. Hence, those types of studios who used Frostbite too, would get priority, and BioWare was left to figure it out themselves, in which, they obviously haven't.
The other problem, not that there isn't enough already, was the disengaging management for need in improvement. From these interviewers, it almost seems like they were denied before walking into the boss' office. Some developers would actually see the same problems happening over other games within Frostbite for Anthem, and when they asked what can change or the ability to not make that mistake wasn't really a bother to the management, and so they got denied a lot...
Clash of Studios:
When the drama of Anthem going to a shipwreck, EA decided to primarily move all of the teams into pushing in a finished game of Anthem. The Joplin project in which was the former project name for 'Dragon Age 4' was turned down, Mike Laidlaw left shortly afterward. Team that were progressing Joplin had to move in to finish Mass Effect Andromeda, and then, Anthem. Leaving BioWare's deserved spot of Joplin closed and killed their baby for creating the next Dragon Age title. Although it was quickly continued and reestablished as code project named 'Morrison'.
During this whole shifting onto one game to another, when it came to Anthem, not only were the teams in Edmonton overworked for pushing Anthem to finish, but they actually had the Austin team join in. Those who were known for the Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR), which they knew a lot about the problems regarding online service and multiplayer games in general, but even then, they were mistreated by the higher-ups in BioWare Edmonton and constantly denied even for their own feedback:
“We’d tell them, ‘This is not going to work. Look, these [story] things you’re doing, it’s gonna split up the player experience,’” said an Austin developer. “We’d already been through all of it with The Old Republic. We knew what it was like when players felt like they were getting rushed through story missions, because other players were on their headsets going, ‘C’mon cmon, let’s go.’ So we knew all these things, and we’d bring it up repeatedly, and we were ignored.” - Schreier
Project Joplin:
In the recent Schreier article it explains all about the project regarding BioWare's Dragon Age 4. Basically the title states 'The Past and Present', which is entirely true due to changing the project completely to the effect of the weight of other projects that fell short for the need of bulking employees to finish one project.
Regarding all behind of this, Dragon Age Inquisition had a lot of struggles due to lack of management being indecisive and basically ended in the difficult engine of Frostbite and creating a game compatible to previous generations to play on. Ultimately the whole quote regarding 'fail' is necessary for those workers to confess that because they believe (and probably some left) due to the unhealthy amount of work pressure under a certain amount of time. Time crunch and rushing don't really end well for game designing, and for types of management to not even decide on things really makes anyone who would be working on any part of that department 'want' it to fail just to prove how neglect-ant their company is in general...
Jumping to Joplin, Schreier basically notifies that this game was going to be what most fans probably would have loved (note: this was only an idea generating for prototypes and innovation).
"We were working towards something very cool, a hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth,” they said. “I’m sad that game will never get made.”
You’d play as a group of spies in Tevinter Imperium... [and] the goal was to focus as much as possible on choice and consequence, with smaller areas and fewer fetch quests than Dragon Age: Inquisition. (In other words, they wanted Joplin to be the opposite of the Hinterlands.) There was an emphasis on “repeat play,” one developer said, noting that they wanted to make areas that changed over time and missions that branched in interesting ways based on your decisions, to the point where you could even get “non-standard game overs” if you followed certain paths." -Schreier
Joplin in it's prototype was looking pretty ambitious, they knew their mistakes in Inquisition and were completely willing to change from that difference and not repeat it once again. But the unfortunate event to a single-player sounding game like Dragon Age is that in 2017 EA made it very clear that they are into games that are live-service based, and heavily monetized experience. While we know EA is all about money, BioWare is essentially the outcast of a studio that made employees feel that their resources were left out and completely negated from the whole success process, so ha, not surprising that EA has once again cause such problems...
As we know that this project was turned down due to the push of MEA, and Anthem's creation,
"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." -Schreier
Obviously, that's a huge downfall, but now we have the new project with a smaller team working with scraps known as Morrison:
Morrison is leaning towards the aim of live-service,
"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..." -Schreier
We also know from the same sources that they will be using the same codes from Anthem to create Dragon Age 4 in order to really stretch out healthier tactics instead of starting from scratch like a crazy mad-scientist would do. Although noted, many developers say that this type of code can necessarily be 'offline', but probably not the goal BioWare truly is making for Morrison, but we will just have to wait and see...
Verdict:
After all of this information, lets bring in some input from what I think about the whole scenario of BioWare and it's studio dysfunction of not properly able to multitask departments on certain projects. Listen, if you have a disagreement with this article that's completely fine and I'll leave you to it, but you have to admit that these workers who confessed and told Schreier the lack of understanding and time-crunching within their studios is quite unheathy and really unreasonable for any company. Any company like this would ultimately fail. It's like cramming a study-sesh the night before a test, it might be effective, but not as effective compared to studying a longer amount of time before an exam. Same thing exists here.
I wouldn't deny any of these working employees at all, this isn't about the failure of a game, it's about the process of their own production for projects really reaps the bad outcome of bugs and potential neglects due to no communication and management ignoring the cause for any fixes while all this process is happening. We are talking about a studio that's really struggling with their tools and their higher-ups, and that's why we are seeing people leave.
Talented people are leaving and yet there are tons of talented people just hiding amongst this studio sucking it up and taking things probably daily. We know fans of BioWare don't want to see a company and studio we love go into flames due to their own employees and management. But I'll be cautious for the next Dragon Age, and hope for the best, because that's what BioWare needs, support instead of boycott.
Thank for watching if you have any questions about the article or want to read it for yourself, check the links below. If you're new to my channel I try to make videos weekly, I'm trying to get back into the grind as you can tell, subscribe and click the bell icon to get notified of my newest video. If you want to check out my blog, follow me on any other social media all of those links are down below as well. Again, thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next video!
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