It is always fascinating to see what goes on behind the scenes at a studio we love. Traditionally, these glimpses feature cultures of brutality and sexual misconduct, but sometimes you also get to see a good story or two.
We already knew about the incredible crisis that prevailed at BioWare and now David Gaider has given us additional information about the turbulent internal culture of this legendary studio. Gaider the lead writer of Dragon Age: Origins Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age Inquisition says that the Mass Effect and Dragon Age teams at BioWare were very hostile towards each other. Apparently EA also sided with the Mass Effect team.
Two Teams Two Cultures: The Divide Between BioWare’s Dragon Age and Mass Effect
See what you need to know about BioWare is that for a long time it was basically two teams under the same roof the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team. They worked in different ways, had very different cultures, were maybe even two different studios. And they did not get along. Gaider shared his thoughts about his career in a BlueSky post.
The company was aware of this conflict and efforts to fix it were underway for years. he wrote. [This] was done primarily by frequent staffing changes between the teams. Even then that did not really solve the problem.
Gaider wanted a new challenge after shipping Inquisition. but he was not willing to move to Montreal to work on Mass Effect: Andromeda. Instead he chose to join the Anthem production team which was mostly made up of developers who had worked on the Mass Effect trilogy.
Gaider was tasked with transforming Anthem from a beer and cigarettes science fiction into a fantasy science fiction along the lines of Star Wars but the team was unhappy with the direction and continually told Gaider that his narrative work was too much like Dragon Age. Gaider suspected that Anthem was destined to fail and when he was told that he would not be promoted to the role of creative director on any future projects he decided to leave BioWare.
Gaider explained and I won't go into detail about the problems except to say that it became clear that this was a team that did not want to make an RPG. In fact they were very anti-RPG. Yet they wanted me to wave my magic writing wand and make a BioWare quality story, while giving me absolutely no tools to do so.
Anthem was a big failure, and Guider later co-founded Summerfall Studios. which released it is first game Stray Gods, in 2023.
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