Anthem has been in development for technically 7-years, from the game's inception to its release. However, the Anthem gamers got was only in production for about 18 months before releasing. In a report from Kotaku's Jason Schreier exposing the heated and demoralizing development after interviewing 19 anonymous sources from BioWare. Anthem was a poorly managed project that had staff members crying and suffering from mental breakdowns. We will be paraphrasing much of the article has it has a lot of information and we recommend that everyone read it.
The article is over 11 thousand words long but explains how painful development for Anthem was for BioWare. With one developer stating:
"You couldn't play it. There was nothing there. it was just this crazy final rush. The hard part is, how do you make a decision when there's no game? There's nothing to play. So yea, you're going to keep questioning yourself"
Schreier's article details the many troubles Anthem faced during development from lack of direction from management in BioWare to struggles with the Frostbite engine. The high-stress work environment, constant shift of employees, and low-morale were described by an employee as an "epidemic". A former developer at BioWare even stated that staff members would shut themselves in a private room just to cry!
Trouble was due to a multitude of factors, one of the biggest being the lack of direction. According to BioWare veterans, Casey Hudson's Mass Effect were the vanguards on the project. The team was "laser-focused" on a specific design but this fell apart as more of BioWare's most acclaimed members left. What followed was a lack of direction. One of the biggest nails in the coffin was the success of Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Dragon Age: Inquisition was a massive hit but only made possible because of huge crunch periods. While morale rose because of the game's success many at BioWare hoped it would flop to send a message that games cannot be made this way.
What is truly shocking is the reveal at E3 2017, the demo was largely faked and more shocking it gave the developers an idea of what the game was about. Remember, Anthem was in production since 2012.
“The demo was not actually built properly—a lot of it was fake, like most E3 demos. There was a lot of stuff that was like, ‘Oh are we actually doing this? Do we have the tech for that, do we have the tools for that? To what end can you fly? How big should the world be?'”
Despite this Schreier's report indicated that an almost civil war was fostered in BioWare. With teams competing with one another. With meetings between high-level executives going nowhere due to lack of direction or agreement of how to move forward. And like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda much of the game we got was developed during 2018.
BioWare and EA did respond quickly to the article with a strange series of remarks. Stating that they put the "health and well-being" of the team members as a top priority. However, the statement doesn't address many of the reports made by the anonymous people interviewed by Schreier.
I want to add -- to those of you who think this EA/BioWare sentiment is fucking bullshit, that telling these stories and talking about these issues is essential toward making the video game industry a healthier place, I'm with you. And you can contact me any time. pic.twitter.com/m4ApPuYu0R
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) April 3, 2019
Judging from Schreier's incredible work and the people at BioWare brave enough to come forward with this information that Anthem's development was plagued with mismanagement. There was no direction following top executives leaving and decisions of what the game should be wasn't settled on for years. Leading to emotional trauma, mental breakdowns, and low morale. Considering that Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and now Anthem has gone through a similar hellish production period it's time for BioWare to reevaluate their production process.
Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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| Platform(s): | Xbox One, PS4, PC |
| Publisher(s): | Electronic Arts |
| Developer(s): | BioWare |
| Genres: | Sci-fi |
| Themes: | Post-Apocalypse |
| Release Date: | 2019-02-15 |
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