My impression is that Bioware has had a leadership problems for years. Hearing about the development of Anthem and Veilguard, leadership refuses to make decisions or make them and then reverse them repeatedly. It's only when EA stepped on, for both games, that they crunched and got something playable put together. With Veilguard there was EA meddling as well.
Bioware had great writers, but they never grew past the "Bioware magic" culture, and it sank them.
Also had the issue of BioWare leadership grew to resent their writers and wound up chasing a lot of them off because they felt the reliance on good writing was "holding the studio back".
the reliance on good writing was "holding the studio back".
I still can't believe this sentiment can exist in a studio that wants to make role playing games. Like, I'm sorry, what kind of game did you want to make, exactly, where the writing doesn't make or break the game? Pacman?
Yeah. That’s the thing though, they DIDN’T want to make roleplaying games. They were trying to “branch out” and wanted to make the next CoD. Mass Effect to a degree was their experimental first steps in that genre, which is why each entry in the trilogy utilized less and less rpg mechanics. Anthem would have been their magnum opus in that regard (and we saw how that turned out).
People can blame EA all they want (sometimes rightfully so, absolutely), but at the end of the day, modern day Bioware has been nothing but a dysfunctional studio that has long relied on old merits – merits which were allegedly also born mostly out of heavy crunch and bad planning. The term "Bioware magic" is honestly a spit in the face on everyone who worked their asses off, missing sleep and family time, just to stick the landing.
Add to that a completely broken organizational management structure where there's no real leadership at work, and no one who wants to take decisions or stick to a firm vision. Voilá, you get hell for both development and it's developers.
The fallout is alao plain to see: three commercially mediocre games that cost unproportionate amounts of time and resoruces. Honestly, with that in mind, who can blame EA for shutting them down? The alternative would be to do a formal restructuring and then hoping for miracles yet again.
As much as it pains me as an avid Bioware fan, this is the logical decision.
Dragon Age 2 was way more impressive. The fact that they can make a game with that scale with actually decent story in 18 months was nothing short of phenomenal.
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u/superindianslug 7h ago
My impression is that Bioware has had a leadership problems for years. Hearing about the development of Anthem and Veilguard, leadership refuses to make decisions or make them and then reverse them repeatedly. It's only when EA stepped on, for both games, that they crunched and got something playable put together. With Veilguard there was EA meddling as well.
Bioware had great writers, but they never grew past the "Bioware magic" culture, and it sank them.