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The head of BioWare addressed a Kotaku report on the studio's cultural issues yesterday afternoon, acknowledging that "these problems are real" and promising that it is "our top priority to continue working to solve them".
Tuesday, Kotaku posted an inquiry about what had happened behind the scenes of Anthem, a story that has also plunged into cultural issues impacting current and former BioWare employees. The piece was about indecision, mismanagement and the production practice called "BioWare magic," a belief that with enough work – and enough contraction – every project would merge at the last minute. The article also detailed the stress, depression and anxiety that have led dozens of employees to leave BioWare in the last two years.
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EA and BioWare chose not to respond to our requests for comment. Instead, they published a blog post that was considered by many to be an act of disdain and a discouraging gesture. ("We do not see the point of separating from each other or working for each other, we do not believe in articles that improve our industry and our crafts.")
The company remained silent for a day and a half, apart from asking employees not to speak to the press. Late on Wednesday, BioWare CEO Casey Hudson sent a note to the staff (obtained from Kotaku) who approached the room. You can read it in full here:
Hi BioWare,
I wanted to send you a note to share my thoughts on Kotaku's article and on the online discussion that he has raised.
The article mentions many of the problems related to the development of Anthem and some of our previous projects. And it connects these issues, the quality of our workplace and the well-being of our staff. These problems are real and our priority is to continue to solve them.
What we discovered out of bounds was the designation of specific developers as targets of public criticism. It is unfair and extremely traumatic to choose people in this way, and we can not accept this treatment for any of our employees. That's why we did not participate in the article and made a statement to that effect.
When I was offered to return to BioWare as GM, I entered the role knowing that the studio was facing significant challenges in terms of team health, creative vision and organizational focus. I was – and continues to be – enthusiastic about helping to make improvements in these areas because I love this studio and, above all, I want to create a place where you will all be happy and successful.
I'm not going to tell you that I've done a good job in this area, and one day like today, I certainly feel like I'm not doing it. However, some of the steps we have taken in this regard include a more focused mission and studio values, to clarify what we are here to do and how we set a high standard for our studio culture. We have updated the structure of our studio around a matrix so that department heads can focus fully on individual career and well-being support. We define better clarity of roles so that people can be more successful in meeting clear expectations. And we put in place production changes that will allow a clearer vision of the project, as well as a significant post-production period, which will further reduce the pressure and anxiety of the teams during development .
But I know there is still a lot of work to be done and we will talk more about the other actions we planned in response to internal and post-mortem comments at All-Hands next week. As always, continue to provide feedback on what we can do to make BioWare the best place to work.
I am determined to bring us to a place where we meet the highest expectations for BioWare games in one of the world's best work environments. With your help, we will get there.
Let me know if you would like to speak in person and I will be happy to give you time to hear your thoughts.
Casey
Since the publication of this week's article, many developers who work or have worked in beloved AAA game studios have posted messages such as "Replace BioWare by [my studio] and it's the same story. We can only hope that continuing to talk about these issues and reporting on them will lead to widespread change.
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