Jason Schreier presents: "How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong"

Article at Kotaku. Accounts are based on 19 people who worked on the game or were "adjacent to it."

Damn good read. Lots of stuff about Anthem's troubled production. Interesting tidbits:

• There was a last-minute name change. Like, less than a week before E3 2017. The game was going to be called "Beyond," until EA found it was too hard to secure the trademark rights. "Anthem" was one of the backup names. The devs thought "Anthem" didn't make any sense.
• BioWare is a studio in crisis. There's an internal term called "BioWare Magic;" the belief that no matter how bad things are, it will all come together in the final months. This had led to major crunch and burnout. “Depression and anxiety are an epidemic within Bioware.”
• Early ideas was to be more grounded, less fantasy-y. The early iterations were compared to Dark Souls, Darkest Dungeon, Shadow of the Colossus. It was always envisioned as a multiplayer game - but not a looter shooter. More of a survival game.
• Casey Hudson's departure (he returned in 2017) made the Mass Effect team lose direction, becoming similar to the Dragon Age team, which was described as "a pirate ship." There was a lot of resentment towards the new leadership, who were accused of "indecision and mismanagement." There would be group meetings where they debated creative decisions, only to end with no verdicts.
• David Gaider's vision for the story was derided as "sci-fi Dragon Age" in the studio, and there was a lot of resistance to it. The story was rebooted when he left in 2016, creating more chaos. In fact, the developers had no idea what kind of game they were making as late as 2015-2016.

• Frostbite engine was once again a major problem. "Frostbite is full of razor blades," as one former dev puts it. Poorly documented, lots of parts hacked together, lots of stuff that were opaque or arcane. Using Frostbite basically made everything slower and harder. Bugfixes took weeks of back-and-forth conversations. Many ideas they had for the game had to be cut back because it just wasn't possible on Frostbite.
• Mention of "Destiny" was taboo. BioWare leadership internally preferred to be compared to Diablo III. Devs felt this limited their ability to learn looter shooter design points from Destiny.
• The game was demoed to Patrick Soderlund, then VP of EA, in 2017. He hated it, particularly the graphics. This led to a major art overhaul.
• The game's main distinguishing feature, the flying mechanic, was added, removed, and re-added into the game many times over the development. There was a lot of worries about designing a game world around it. The flying was re-added for Patrick Soderlund's second demo to impress him. It did. This demo became the basis of the E3 2017 trailer.
• The game was STILL in pre-production during E3 2017. Much of the E3 demo was fake. After E3, it was just finally "Okay, this is the game we're making." By early 2018, they've only implemented a single mission.

• There was indeed an "A-team" and a "B-team," and this caused a lot of conflict in the studio. The Edmonton team saw themselves as the "original BioWare," and everyone else was lesser. Edmonton would come up with ideas, while Austin were told to do the work. Indecision in Edmonton led to confusion in Austin. When Austin devs raised concerns about a decision, it fell on deaf ears in Edmonton.
• Dragon Age 4, codenamed "Joplin," was in development in 2017. In October 2017, Joplin was cancelled and rebooted, and Mark Darrah, who was producing it at the time, was moved to Anthem. On the plus side, Mark Darrah finally brought focus to Anthem's development.
• The core gameplay, missions and story only came together in the last 12 or 16 months of the development. There was a major crunch in 2018; in particular, the devs felt pressured by competition from Destiny 2, The Division 2 and Warframe. It was about getting the game out the door as quickly as possible - missing content, bugs and loading screens be damned.
• One mandate from the game's directors was that Anthem must be "unmemeable." This was in response to the Mass Effect: Andromeda jokes. Hah.
• By the end of 2018, the devs wished they could have a few more months. A lot of content that were planned were left on the cutting room floor. The infamous Tombs of the Legionnaires quest was specifically added to slow players down. It was even at one point supposed to time-gated, completed over several days.

• Internal mock reviews predicted the game would be in the high 70s on Metacritic. It currently sits around 55-65. The devs said reading many of the reviews felt like reading many of the concerns they expressed to BioWare's leadership during development, which were ignored.
• The responsibility for updating and fixing the game now rests entirely with the Austin team. Edmonton has now moved on to other projects, presumably Dragon Age 4. Many of the devs are still optimistic; they believe they can still eventually redeem the game.

Wow. TL;DR: indecisiveness, lack of leadership, troubles with the Frostbite engine again, conflicts between the Edmonton team, who saw themselves as the "original BioWare," and the Austin team, and 12-16 months of soul-destroying crunch produced the mess of a game we have today. And now we also know that not only did Mass Effect die for this, "Joplin" Dragon Age 4 also died for this as well. What a cluster****.

Edit: BioWare have published a response. They didn't really dispute the article - the closest they got was that they felt it was "unfair" to focus on specific team leaders and members. They just mostly addressed the allegation of "crunch time."

Hate to say it, but Anthem is going to have a worse impact than Fallout 76.

Seems to me they should focus on fixing game because there's still potential, unfortunately it seems everyone is focused on loot drops and shit, I want to see better mission design and story I can follow or care to follow, which it doesn't have.

sounds about right. what a mess, and what a shame Bioware has come to this

As a long time Bioware fan, it's really depressing to see the studio in this state... it has EA's fingerprints all over it now.

If EA were smart, they'd let Bioware operate independently (with Casey Hudson leading) and let them make what they want (like they used to). But that's not going to happen :(

I gave up on it.

The combat is fun but there’s too much wrong with it to overlook just to continuously play for combat.

It’s a dam shame too.

I like the core gameplay but the rest is such a disappointing game overall. Even Division 2 does a hell of a job better. Glad I play this game through EA Origin cause I sure wasn't gonna pay full price for this game. This clearly shows Bioware needs to leave EA for good. Just like Bungie did with Activision.

To be honest, after playing Anthem, it clearly shows Bioware is and will never be ready for MP prime time and if this is the best they could do, I have no reasons to believe they'll do the nest Dragon Age game justice. (Unless they leave EA)

It’s a fine game.. way better than DA:I!

I had my fun with it on release and will go back to it from time to time to check out the updates, unfortunate what happened but it is what it is. I still think the game has potential because I Love the core gameplay, but the issue is I dont know how long it will take and how committed they are.

I dont really care either because of the Division 2, which blows it out of the water and easily outclasses it....but to be fair, it is also a sequel and Anthem is a new IP.

You'd think they would have learned for Old Republic.

@davillain-: That's because MP isn't what they're good at... they make SP story-driven role paying games. But EA are forcing them to put out drivel like Anthem, when they should be making stuff of the quality of Mass Effect and KOTOR.

That was one of the specific issues mentioned in the article, actually:

“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.”

It's all under the part where I mentioned that devs (especially Austin devs) kept bringing up design concerns to the leadership (especially Edmonton leadership), and they kept getting ignored.

Management and directors fault.

No plan or clear vision of what they wanted to make.

Rushed a trash game out as fast as they could.

@lamprey263: I never even finished the first mission. If they can't come up with something more compelling for the very first mission other than "pick up this orb and put it in that circle over there," I have zero hope for the rest of the game.

EA is trash. Don't care about their customers or the devs just only money.

There was a last-minute name change. Like, less than a week before E3 2017. The game was going to be called "Beyond," until EA found it was too hard to secure the trademark rights. "Anthem" was one of the backup names. The devs thought "Anthem" didn't make any sense.

Something tells me the name change was the least of their problems. The whole production story behind Anthem sounds like a horrible mess. A lot of arrogance too from Edmonton Studios (the "A team"), and the fact the low reviews mentioned numerous flaws they themselves noticed while making it says everything about their management.

If they wanted to fix their image after Mass Effect Andromeda and still failed again, I don't hold out much hope for Bioware anymore. I'll still check out Dragon Age 4 when it drops, only because it's rare to get a pause-and-play RPG with AAA production these days. But it's clear Bioware ain't the same anymore

Not sure if related, but trending on Twitter are calls to unionize game developers, which include support from VA's like Yuri Lowenthal (too many notable ones), Karen Strassman (Kitana), Courtenay Taylor (Jack/Subject Zero and Nora/FemSS), Steve Blum (again too many to mention), etc

None of that is surprising at all.

When management build a game instead of developers

Only corporate slaves and low IQs get excited from trailers and demos these days

Well, firstly, it was a perfect encapsulation of many of the things wrong with Anthem's development; many years of indecisive nebulousness, followed by last-minute mad rush to the finish.

But secondly, there was this part of the article:

But whereas Beyond had been indicative of what BioWare hoped the game would be—you’d go out beyond the walls of your fort and into the dangerous wilds around you—Anthem didn’t really mean much.

“Everybody was like, ‘Well, that doesn’t make any sense—what does this have to do with anything?’” said one person who worked on the game. Just days before their game’s announcement, the team at BioWare had a brand new name that nobody really understood.

(snip)

Later, they came up with an explanation for the name: The game’s planet was enveloped by something called the Anthem of Creation, a powerful, mysterious force that left environmental cataclysms across the world.

Basically, "Anthem" meant absolutely zero to BioWare devs before E3 2017. So when the name was suddenly changed just days before E3, they had to re-write parts of the narrative and world-building to incorporate it. I think it showed.

To be fair, there is a very legitimate criticism to be had about that E3 demo; it promised a lot of things that weren't in the final game. There was even a big post on Reddit about it, which drew little but a cryptic "game development changes over time" response from one of the devs.

Now we know the truth; it was quickly slapped together ad hoc for E3. They didn't even have a clue what kind of game they were making until that point. Again, as one of the devs said; "Okay, this is the game we're making."

You knew this was coming.

One word describes that article:

Unmemeable

It's a shame as I enjoy the game.

Lack of content and the amount of bugs, basic functions missing is quite annoying.

On the plus side, they seem to be making progress at rectifying some of these faults, but it seems like they have quite an uphill battle on their hands.

This is a damn shame because I am sure there are a lot of passionate people at Bioware that work for the studio solely because of what it used to represent, but it just sounds like everything is being completely mismanaged with them.

When did ME: Andromeda come out? I wonder if ME: A suffered as a result of Anthem's bullshit.

@madrocketeer: thank you for sharing, I really enjoy hearing about the production side of game development, especially the non-technical aspects.

*also, and I am sorry, but developers sound like a fairly insufferable bunch. Half don't know what direction they want to go in, and the other have don't seem to want to step up despite thinking they can do it better.

I also work in an "artist's" field of work and I have to deal with "creative types" and it get's frustrating, but at least we are not that bad.

At the end of the day, you need a functional product. End of story. I read things like this and I think "Maybe EA isn't the bogeyman we make it out to be. Maybe they actually give studios too much slack." Sometimes I think developers could use a swift kick in the ass from their benefactor's.

**"Bioware Magic" lol give me a break.

Well when you make games for greed , this is what happens. EA and activision has destroyed AAA gaming and now gamers want this game as a service BS.

Such a trash game; such a shame. The game looked cool and even though I messed around for a day; flying around and enjoying the visuals the game was as basic as they can come.

EA + modern Bioware + loot boxes/MTX

Anyone who thought this game wouldn't suck hasn't been paying attention to the industry for the past decade.

Yup. This is sadly typical for game development today. Devs don't make games they believe in anymore. They don't have a real plan on how to do a game other than "this is what collects the most money right now". Very expected this game would turn out shit. A rushed project from EA and BioWare, two terrible studios.

Here's a quick vid from E3 2017 gameplay (fake demo) vs retail comparisons:

Overall, Bioware clearly was full of themselves and this doesn't surprise me when I watch this awhile back.

This is what happens when you make a game because you need a product, rather than because it's a game you think needs to be made. History is littered with these tales I'm sure.

But when you don't have a clear vision of what you want to make, it can change and/or fall apart on a dime

Mass Effect: Andromeda was released in 2017. Basically, they were still messing around when it was released. The article did mention that Austin devs who helped on ME:A did try to tell the leadership about their problems with ME:A and how to avoid them, but once again, they all fell on deaf ears.

Yeah, I see a lot of people, even in this thread, still blaming EA for this. Anyone who reads my sig knows I am no fan of EA, but what this article reveals is that the fullest extent of EA's involvement boils down to three things:

1. The Frostbite Engine mandate. The engine's glaring flaws screwed up a lot of the development process, and because EA's Frostbite support team provided help to studios on the basis of which franchise make them the most money, BioWare didn't get the help they needed. Still, BioWare did publicly say that it was "their choice" to use Frostbite, and it should be remembered that this is their third game to use the engine. BioWare should have learned lessons from Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda.
2. EA VP Patrick Soderlund trashing the first demo and forcing the flying mechanic back into the game, which was at the time in flux, leading to the demo that became the basis for the E3 2017 trailer - the same demo that made BioWare devs go "Okay, this is the game we're making." He probably finally brought some kind of direction to the meandering development process, and was also probably responsible for the game's main saving grace. So in actual fact, EA did good here.
3. EA's February 2019 hard deadline. For me, though, this was understandable. EA gave BioWare six years, pretty much hands off, to make this game. They even gave them a delay to that February 2019 deadline. When you've been doing nothing but messing around for five of those years, something's got to give, and EA has to draw the line, put their foot down and say; "You promised me a game, where the Hell is it?"

I would say that this mess is about 15-20% EA, and the rest is BioWare.

Angry joe has a lengthy video on this on YouTube. Bioware had 7 years to develop this game and fucked around for about 6 of it. This is clearly Bioware’s fault and not EA. I know it’s popular to blame everything on EA but the article clearly shows it’s bioware’s fault.

Really good read. Thanks for the share :)

Again, developpers taking the penalty from the leadership mismanagement and poor decisions..... disgusting.

@Yams1980: looks like you didn’t read the article at all. They were “rushed” because they floundered for 4.5 years with not much to show. All of the developers did care, they just weren’t given a chance or directed in a any fashion. EA didn’t give a hard deadline until it was shown BioWare was in no way going to get anything done without a little pressure. Teams work together all the time, this is software development, it’s rare for one team to do everything on big AAA games (not AAA in quality but in hype, expectation, marketing).

If you had read the article it points the blame primarily at BioWare and it’s crazy development mentality and garbage management.

Update 2: Casey Hudson has sent a note to staff addressing the article, which Kotaku has obtained:

Hey BioWare,

I wanted to get a note out to you to share my thoughts on the Kotaku article and the online discussion it has raised.

The article mentions many of the problems in the development of Anthem and some of our previous projects. And it draws a link between those issues and the quality of our workplace and the well-being of our staff. These problems are real and it’s our top priority to continue working to solve them.

What we found out-of-bounds was the naming of specific developers as targets for public criticism. It’s unfair and extremely traumatizing to single out people in this way, and we can’t accept that treatment towards any of our staff. That’s why we did not participate in the article and made a statement to that effect.

When I was offered the opportunity to return to BioWare as GM, I came into the role knowing the studio was experiencing significant challenges in team health, creative vision, and organizational focus. I was - and continue to be - excited to help drive improvements in those areas because I love this studio, and above all I want to create a place where all of you are happy and successful.

I’m not going to tell you I’ve done a good job at that, and on a day like today I certainly feel like I haven’t. But some of the steps we’ve taken towards this include a more focused studio mission and values, so that we have clarity on what we are here to do and how we define a high standard for our studio culture. We updated our studio structure around a matrix so that department directors can be fully focused on individual career support and well-being. We are defining better role clarity so that people can succeed better against clear expectations. And we are putting in place production changes that will provide for clearer project vision as well as a significant post-production period that will further relieve pressure and anxiety on teams during development.

But I know there’s much more to do, and we will talk in more detail about other actions we have been planning in response to internal feedback and postmortems at next week’s All-Hands. As always please continue to provide feedback on further steps we can take to make BioWare the best possible place to work.

I’m committed to getting us to a place where we are delivering on the highest expectations for BioWare games, through a work environment that’s among the very best in the world. With your help, we will get there.

Please let me know if you’d like to talk in person and I will be happy to set up time to hear your thoughts.

Casey

Yeah. When I read BioWare's public response between the lines, I noticed they didn't directly refute the accounts in Jason Schreier's article, just that they didn't believe in singling out people and "tearing down one another." I felt that they didn't do this because the accounts in the article had at least some level to truth to them. Casey Hudson's note here seems to mirror this, and a little more explicitly confirm that Anthem's development was indeed very troubled and there are indeed problems with employee health, vision and leadership within BioWare.

Sad, really. I've said many times that factually-based, honest criticism should be seen as an opportunity to improve. I hope BioWare take this opportunity.

@davillain-: Scary difference. The 2017 demo is completely different from the final product. This borders on illegal marketing.

Are people still expecting something good from EA and Bioware??

i knew game would be huge flop the day it was announced and have been saying its going to be like fallout 76.

Exactly. The Bioware name lost it's association with quality long a go. Part of that making a deal with the devil, everyone knew well, well ahead this would be their eventual destination.

The fact E3 2017 demo clearly says in-capture gameplay totally warrants an illegal marketing cause this game was too ambitious for the likes of Bioware. Good thing I use EA Origin to play this and not paying full price.