[Bloomberg] Inside the ‘Dragon Age’ Debacle That Gutted EA’s BioWare Studio

As much as Schreier is loath to admit it, entrusting a trans activist to direct your title, with the result being some of the most ham-fisted woke garbage ever witnessed in gaming, had just as much impact on Veilguard's final reception and failure as did retooling it from a multiplayer GAAS. Of course, he conveniently leaves out any mention about all of that business in the article.

Try harder next time, "journalist."
 
Not a single mention of the horribly written and forced identity politics they put in the game, which made it become widely ridiculed on the internet and was a major part of the bad word of mouth. It clearly wasn't the only reason the game failed, but to not even mention it seems disingenuous, but I wouldn't expect any different from Schreier.

So the best parts of the game were produced by the new ME team.

This is so funny on so many levels.

The article gave me at least a bit of hope for the next ME.
Them being critical of the tone and writing, having a more organized structure, being responsible for the few parts of the game that got praised (the final section) and seemingly being better at negotiating and dealing with EA, etc.
They just sound like the vastly more competent team all around.
 
he and bioware staff are in denial about why this game failed, and we all know why
Go check the game thread .. a lot of people were also in denial .. these people will never admit that woke shit is "a problem" they will happily die on their fucked up purple hill.
 
Jimmy Carr Oops GIF by BBC


They had one job to do. Making a game like Dragon Age: Origins. But instead they wanted to play politicians and filled their game with woke shit.

So "Go woke, go broke" is not a far fetched propoganda it seems.
 
No mention of the shoehorned socially progressive themes driving negative reception? Seems like a big miss from this author.

Surprised by Jason bias?

He is no man enough to admit that. He will in bad faith ignore most of the 'political' stuff gamers have been rejecting from all those games that flop for the same reason they fail.


I mean, as far as I know he can keep denial whatever he want. He have no integrity.
 
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Dragon Age was bad only because of the CEOs of EA and the people actually writing, and directing the game are responsible for nothing.
Sure Jan GIF
The story will be written based on what his sources say, we can clearly infer who talked to him based on the slant.


Surprised by Jason bias?

He is no man enough to admit that. He will in bad faith ignore most of the 'political' stuff gamers have been reject from all those games that flop for the same reason they fail.
I went on his BlueSky (LMAO) and of course nobody called him out on it.
 
The sad part is that there are some talented people still in Bioware.

The main problem with those huge productions is that 200-300 devs have to deal with bad decisions made by 5 people.

Like, if the game's director want Marvel dialogue, than 300 people under him have to deal with that shit for years, knowing that it will fail once released.

I blame it all on the executives that eat all the shit those terrible directors sell them. "Let's make a game full of quips! Dont you see Marvel movies? It will sell much more copies".

Not much differrent than most jobs, really. But here people invest 5 years or more of their lives for a game that ends up sucking.
 
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That's what happens when you pander to a bunch of self-entitled, broke ass, jobless, blue-haired cunt activists that drop to the floor crying and screaming when they don't get their way like a bunch of fucking 2 year old children. They want to change everything, but they will never buy a damn thing, because they also think working a real job isn't fair too.

How about target the people who actually buy games instead? I know that must be so difficult, but you can do it!
 
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I can't believe how incels forced Bioware to take 10 years to ship a mediocre compromised game. Also, if it takes ten+ years to make a game, that doesn't even stand out in a good way, then surely it makes no sense to shut down studios that haven't had a hit in 10 years. Either shut all of them down or wait at least 25 years before shutting down.
 
TLDR recap: go woke, go broke. Not even the woke gaming media reviews could stop that.

How can EA -or any other big company- can fix it:
  • Hire and promote depending on meritocracy, not on being racist, sexist and heterophobic with DEI.
  • Design and write the game focusing in game quality, not in stuffing it with woke propaganda.
  • Remove any DEI HR teams and woke/DEI 'best practices for content' (editorial censorship) they have, plus taboos regarding honest and deserved criticism of woke stuff.
  • Target the real demographics who actually buy these type of games, instead of a theorical, almost non-existant "modern audience" that in reality is a super tiny portion of the people who buys these types of games.
 
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Article:
In early November, on the eve of the crucial holiday shopping season, staffers at the video-game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video-game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. had been under intense pressure. The studio's previous two games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, had flopped, and there were rumors that if Dragon Age underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA's many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new Dragon Age had only reached 1.5 million players, missing the company's expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, EA Sports FC 2025, was also subpar, compounding the problem. As a result of the struggling titles, EA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson explained, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA's share price promptly plunged 18%. "Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played," Wilson later said on an earnings call. "However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market." Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare's staff at the studio's headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire — and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one — and then back again — a switcheroo that muddled development and inflated the title's budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA's potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment. The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth $860 million. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, like Madden NFL, and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title went on to win the much-coveted Game of the Year Award and sell 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah — a major validation of EA's diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next Dragon Age installment — code name: Joplin — aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio's focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda, the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft Inc.'s Casey Hudson, an alumni of BioWare's early, formative years. Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamored of so-called live-service games, such as Destiny and Overwatch, in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into Anthem, a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. "I wish that pivot had never occurred," Darrah would later recount on YouTube. "EA said, 'Make this a live service.' We said, 'We don't know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.'" Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of Dragon Age — code name: Morrison — while everyone else helped to finish Anthem, which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a "pulpy," more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series. In February 2019, BioWare released Anthem. Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare's second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of Dragon Age continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would only experience once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn't die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of Anthem hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building "Anthem with dragons." Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game's already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare's new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next Dragon Age would no longer be multiplayer. "We were thinking, 'Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?'" McKay later told Bloomberg News. "No, we need to get back to what we're really great at." In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age's tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game's fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they'd be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an "alpha" build of Dragon Age to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game's biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative — historically, a big draw for many BioWare games. But Dragon Age's multiplayer roots limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game's release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish Dragon Age, BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next Mass Effect game. For decades there'd been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the Dragon Age crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes traveling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the Mass Effect group was called the USS Enterprise, after the Star Trek ship, because commands were issued straight down from the top and executed zealously. As the Mass Effect directors took control, they scoffed that the Dragon Age squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the Mass Effect team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating Dragon Age leaders who had been told they didn't have the budget for such big, ambitious swings. "It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way," said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the Dragon Age franchise who left before development of the new game started. "But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds." __Placeholder Value__ Get the Q&AI newsletter. You've got questions about AI, we've got answers. Delivered weekly. Early testers and Mass Effect leads complained about the game's snarky tone — a style of video-game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman's vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that Dragon Age could face the same outcome as Forspoken — a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter — BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game's dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game's poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors strike limited the writers' ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next Dragon Age seem more like Fortnite than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn't know how to market the game. When Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally premiered on Halloween 2024 after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game's new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered. "The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently," said Caitie, a popular Dragon Age YouTuber. "Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices." Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is now working on the next Mass Effect. After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA's commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than $7 billion in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA's annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3. In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. "That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn't be totally surprised," Creutz added. "It has been over a decade since they produced a hit."


Aside from the well documented clusterfuck of development (started as a single player game which was scrapped, rebooted as a live service game like Anthem, then reworked back into a single player game) some choice bits:

Wall of text crited you for +200% damage...YOU DIED
 
That's what happens when you pander to a bunch of self-entitled, broke ass, jobless, blue-haired cunt activists that drop to the floor crying and screaming when they don't get their way like a bunch of fucking 2 year old children. They want to change everything, but they will never buy a damn thing, because they also think working a real job isn't fair too.

How about target the people who actually buy games instead? I know that must be so difficult, but you can do it!
Ah you see.. but a game is not! a product is ART.. and so the artist must do what he wants

Thats until their game fails and he loses his job.. than is FUCK YOU CHUD! why oh why nobody bought my PRODUCT ?
 
Should've included in the thread title that it's Schreier and you'd save me a click. Dude already made a complete clown of himself with the charts comment and it was back when any sane person knew that the game would be a flop.
 
Game's mediocre and one of the worst written piece of media I've ever came across, of course it flopped.

Also, what did you expect? Releasing a subpar game one year after Baldurs Gate 3 wiped the floor? Jeez.
 
Should've included in the thread title that it's Schreier and you'd save me a click. Dude already made a complete clown of himself with the charts comment and it was back when any sane person knew that the game would be a flop.
Pro Tip: Anything Bloomberg 'gaming general/dev studios are sweat shops' is Schreier. Anything Bloomberg 'sewing Sony/PlayStation FUD' is Takashi.

You're welcome.
 
Lol, that fucking cunt actually went ahead and wrote a 2000+ word thesis about the downfall of Veilguard while tiptoeing, like a retarded ballerina, around the elephant in the room.


Insufferable, shallow, lecturing, woke slop with somewhat fun action combat wearing the DA name like a skinsuit.
 
>have 18 months to retool the game
>you can't rewrite and redesign everything in 18 months so you focus on polishing the turd
>Mass Effect team is airdropped on your project
>they ask to rewrite and redesign the game
>18 months turns into 36 months
>your decisions based on the previous deadline are criticised by everyone

Office work - it's like highschool with a salary...
 
I didn't even get to the binary part and stopped cause it was so boring and condescending on the player by literally telling me wtf to do all the time, even the "puzzles" any idiot could figure out in 10secs.
 
Here you have a better article:

Flopped hard because it was a steaming pile of woke garbage that nobody could stomach

Your welcome
 
Post 9 has the bits I found interesting. Biggest revelation was that the Mass Effect team was brought in to fix the game in 2023, and there seems to be some perception that the ME team got a lot more power and favorable treatment within the company.
It probably was perceived that way if the previous between the teams is true, but in reality if people are brought in to save the game in a year they're given control to do what they want as it's pointless to bring them in otherwise.
 
Scheirer is not only failure as a journalist but as a person.
He wins absolutelly nothing by not mentioning the woke political aspect of the game. I can only think he is still keeping his immature behaviour of "not let the internet win", as if he have some kind of personnal vendetta/feud against people online when in reality people don't give a fuck about it. His wife and her boyfriend must be proud of him doing the good fight against whatever he thinks he is fighting.
 
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Scheirer is not only failure as a journalist but as a person.
He wins absolutelly nothing by not mentioning the woke political aspect of the game. I can only think he is still keeping his immature behaviour of "not let the internet win", as if he have some kind of personnal vendetta against people online when in reality people don't give a fuck about it. His wife and her boyfriend must be proud of him doing the good fight against whatever he thinks he is fighting.
It's not so much that. They're true believers in their dogma/cause.
 
Current Bioware is not capable of making a good game. It should have been incredibly obvious to the team that this game was mediocre at best.
 
Stop chasing trends and just make a medieval fantasy game. Not that hard. Already had a built in fanbase. But noooooo. Had to chase the casual gamer, which was their downfall. Those people dont want this game anyways. Play with fire, you are gonna get burned.
Yeah. I mean look at shit like Elden Ring, Witcher, etc. No bullshit. Just fucking good fantasy that doesn't contain any modern real world nonsense. Huge hits. Did just fine not pandering to anyone in particular. It's not difficult.
 
The two previous games being garbage didn't help.
This is one thing that has never added up to me.

A large majority of Dragon Age fans claim that they like the I.P., but all everyone speaks about in high regard is only the first game.

I'm trying to think of what other fanbase is similar to this, with a series that continues to exist somehow.
 
The primary audience for videogames are heterosexual males. Always has been. Deviate from that if you want to. Don't be shocked if you get undesirable results.
 
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It's not so much that. They're true believers in their dogma/cause.
yep. unlike the academic grifters that created this bullshit ideology without ever actually believing it themselves, these yokels actually drank the kool-aid. so, yeah, it had to be all that now-out-of-fashion clever banter, it couldn't just be the 'woke' schmaltz:
Early testers and Mass Effect leads complained about the game's snarky tone — a style of video-game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman's vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that Dragon Age could face the same outcome as Forspoken — a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter — BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game's dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game's poor reception with fans.)
 
No mention of the shoehorned socially progressive themes driving negative reception? Seems like a big miss from this author.
That's just the MO of the woke. Find anything to blame except the fact they tried to cram their politics in somewhere that it wasn't wanted. That's why you'll see the same people talk about how good a game is and how people are enjoying it when it launches, mainly to "own the chuds," to saying it just wasn't that good of a game to begin with when it underperforms/flops. Anything to avoid addressing the real reason. They aren't as big a group as they think and most disagree with them, or at the very least, don't want modern politics in their escapism.
 
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That's just the MO of the woke. Find anything to blame except the fact they tried to cram their politics in somewhere that it wasn't wanted. That's why you'll see the same people talk about how good a game is and how people are enjoying it when it launches, mainly to "own the chuds," to saying it just wasn't that good of a game to begin with when it underperforms/flops. Anything to avoid addressing the real reason. They aren't as big a group as they think and most disagree with them, or at the very least, don't want modern politics in their escapism.
Funny that ain't it. That if I'm playing a medieval fantasy game, the only politics I want in it are the in-universe medieval fantasy politics.
 
Pretty much every company went through this phase of equating volume of danger hairs to growth opportunities. They alienated their core consumers and were left high and dry. Got what they deserved.

As for Jason, I'd be interested in the overlap of 'devs' that contact him about being overworked, crunch, and not enough tampons in the male toilets and their alignment with identity and gender politics.

Funny how he is such an advocate for developers yet fails to call out these toxic shitbags that ruin potential careers with toxic positivity and nepotism.

We complain about remasters yet most of his articles are just remakes anyway
 
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