What does it mean to make a good video game? That’s a very tricky question that many developers today struggle to answer with a straight face because of their recent failures. But at its core, a good game is made when the right team builds up a good premise that is fun to play, nice to look at with its visual design, and effort put into it from top to bottom. Sadly, over the last few years, many AAA titles haven’t taken those steps to make those kinds of games, and one of the worst examples is Bioware, with their title Anthem.
The game was one of Bioware’s “big projects” under the watchful eye of Electronics Arts. It was meant to be a game you could play with friends on an expansive world that you’d get to explore with impressive robotic suits. The trailers for the game made it seem like a robust experience, but when the game finally released, it was anything but. It was basically a looter shooter that didn’t have much going for it, and it was a far cry from all that was promised.
It was so bad that EA and Bioware promised a “revamp” of the game and later canceled it! Since then, many have wondered how Bioware could fail this badly at such a title. Now, one of the former game developers revealed the truth: it wasn’t given the time to succeed.
To be clear, the game was in development longer than 15 months as the concept was in the works for longer, but the core development was about 15 months, which is way too short for a game of this nature in the modern day. But sadly, it gets worse. Ian went and answered many questions about the game’s development, and on Reddit, they were compiled for ease and showcased some terrible practices.
For example, the reason they were “able to crank it out in 15 months” was because they were doing 90-hour work weeks throughout that period. That’s inhuman and should be a crime.
The game was honestly “too big” for Bioware to complete, so they had to bring in other devs to finish certain content for them while the core team worked on the basic elements of the title. He also noted that it was both a failure of EA and Bioware to have let Anthem become what it was.
Even with that, he said there was hope for better with a sequel, but it was canned early on.
