Former Bioware Developer Talks The Rise and Fall of Anthem

It almost seems like a lifetime ago that BioWare was one of the top developers in the entire gaming industry. At first, they were making small games, and then, they got the license to make a role-playing game set in a galaxy far, far away, and showed everyone how grand RPGs could be with the new technology that was coming out. With momentum on their side, BioWare went on to make an incredible trilogy that…had a disappointing ending, but it was still great overall! Then, there was Anthem, and many see that as the true “beginning of the end” for the company.

While BioWare is still alive today, it doesn’t have many of the people who made it legendary once upon a time, and many of them aren’t afraid to talk about why the live-service game was such a failure.

The reveal came from former executive producer Mark Darrah, who went onto YouTube to talk at length about the pitfalls and failures the game had, including the initial pitch by director Casey Hudson:

“What Casey is pitching to EA is BioWare as a new thing. It’s BioWare as a new thing. It’s BioWare doing storytelling but doing it in a live service, always online, brand-new business model, brand-new way of thinking about the way we tell storytelling.”

Or, to put it more simply:

“What if it’s a BioWare game but it could do FIFA numbers?”

Do you already see the problem with that? Others did, too, and the irony, according to Darrah, is that a lot of what Hudson thought should be in the game…didn’t make it in. The irony continued, though, as Hudson made a video talking about how BioWare “needed to change” with the times:

“In this video, however, it talks about how a lot of what BioWare has done in the past is old-fashioned and its time has come and gone and that BioWare needs to change and BioWare needs to be something different for what I believe to be the originally intended audience.”

Well…that’s insulting, especially when you consider that the “old way” had gotten BioWare all manner of acclaim, awards, and sales! Adding to the irony was that Casey Hudson didn’t even stick around to see Anthem completed. Furthermore, Darrah wanted the game to be delayed and other games to be put out in front of it so that the quality could be maintained…but that didn’t happen.

Fast forward to now, and BioWare is barely hanging on, and this game still looms largely over them in the worst way.