BioWare's response to criticism of the national anthem is thoughtless and needlessly defensive

Note: This article is an opinion piece that reflects the point of view of our editor and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the entire editorial staff. It does not claim a universally valid truth and may not agree with your own ideas.

What the Reddit and Anthem community already suspected was Tuesday night a bombshell in an investigative article about Kotaku: Editor-in-chief and professional insider Jason Schreier covered 19 interviews with former developers of BioWare a sad truth behind the booty Shooter on: A trailer that was fake, missing visions, studio disagreements and difficult overtime – I've summarized everything for you later in this article.

The reaction of BioWare to the many critics has not only been thought out, but also unnecessarily defensive. A blog post was posted 15 minutes after the publication of the review, although one thing is already clear: BioWare could read in those 15 minutes only a fraction of the criticism of a page, if it was not already a prescribed answer.

This is an open question. However, the badertions in BioWare's response that explicitly address the part of the critique that addresses critical periods, overtime, and extreme stress situations are much more difficult. A day of work that led employees to take weeks of vacation stress-stricken. Bioware says:

"We are very focused on planning everything to better avoid "times of crisis" – and this has not been a big problem in the comments of previous employees. The development of games, especially new IP addresses, will always be one of the biggest challenges of the entertainment industry. We do everything in our power to make it the healthiest and least stressful possible, but we know that there is always room for improvement.

As a studio and team, we accept all critics of our games that come to us, especially from our players. The creative process is often difficult. The efforts and challenges in video game development are real. But the reward is wonderful when we are allowed to put something we have created into the hands of our players. The people of the industry are devoting so much pbadion and energy to something fun. We do not see any benefit in belittling ourselves or the work of others. We do not think that these items improve the industry or the craft."

As detailed in the article, employees left BioWare in Group at times of extreme crisis. Take a vacation or never come back. It is not a productive answer to point to past comments from employees who apparently would not have solved these problems. The problem of overtime must have been known up to the level of management – and in Schreier's article, former employees are talking about one "BioWare magic", What has been communicated by the management – and that always ends with great games when working hard enough.

No matter how difficult it is to develop video games, overtime should never be the solution, if it causes anxiety, depression and disease among developers.

Articles and articles that discover such conditions and sometimes explain why a game has been incomplete can improve the industry and the craft industry. Because Anthem could have been a good match – and it can still be if something had to change behind the scenes. Unfortunately, this often happens only when it is obvious that the current working conditions are no longer working.

And maybe that happens now. As Schreier explains in a tweet, BioWare has probably sent a message to all employees – in order to hold a meeting on Kotaku's article and change some of the working conditions:

UPDATE: Yesterday afternoon, Bioware CEO Casey Hudson will be back next week. Here is an exerpt: pic.twitter.com/CxFQpkDzsa

– Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) April 4, 2019

A little earlier, an email had crossed the studio, inviting everyone to do not talk to the press, I sincerely hope that despite criticism from the press and the players, BioWare will have the courage to be honest about it – and talk openly about it. After all, it's in the interest of the players, but also in the studio, if the employees are well and like to work on a job that could improve over time.

The original article from 043 April to 18:29:

19 interviews with former BioWare developers. 19 stories about a game announced and publicly published without idea or exact vision. 19 truths about lies – and extreme overtime, summed up in a fantastic Kotaku report. Why is the anthem such as it is? Because large parts of the video game industry are breaking rather than creating.

One of the most important discussions in the video game industry is currently underway – and probably without you. Jason Schreier, Editor-in-Chief and Business Specialist, has published a detailed article on the evolution of Anthem last night; a book that tells 19 interviews with former BioWare developers. You remain anonymous, the reasons you can imagine. Jason Schreier is a trusted source for insider reports on the video game industry for years.

Why should it interest you? You may be playing an anthem and you want to know why it's so. I can tell you that Anthem was developed for seven years, but only 18 months before its release, it went into production. 18 months before its release, the team knew about Anthem aboutWhat anthem should be. A few days before the presentation of the first gameplay trailer at Anthem, the loot game was still calling beyondThe word anthem did not exist until EA and BioWare realized that Trademark Beyond was too difficult to buy.

The history of the hymn of creation ("the hymn") did not exist at the time of the public announcement of the release date. How could this be? This was made possible by a real hell of developers, through which Anthem has walked for years, accompanied by many new beginnings, team changes, idea to create something fundamentally new and ultimately pressure: Anthem did not exist, but Anthem was to appear. The story of BioWare's game with the weakest reviews up here is very sad.

"What are we doing here? Please tell us."

As Jason Schreier describes in his article, it has not been clear for years what the anthem is – or should be. The project with code name Dylan (derived from Bob Dylan) should enter the history of video games; it should create something completely new. No Mbad Effect 2.0, no fantasy RPG, as was Dragon Age. Anthem was supposed to be a multiplayer game – it was clear, but nothing more.

They juggled ideas. In a much older version of Anthem, the weather should play a special role. A team of friendly players would fight for their own survival in sci-fi costumes on a foreign planet, still threatened by monsters and storms that would change the entire map. We were not talking about a loot shooter here.

The ideas were rejected. Picked up again – and thrown again. That you can fly in the anthem, was again and again and again implemented in the game and released:

"The reason for all this was the lack of vision. What are we doing here? Please tell us. The recurrent theme was that there was no vision, no clarity, no boss who said: "So, it will work together"."

In addition, over the years, many changes have occurred in the management, as well as in the team itself, and no one has made a decision, no one has defined general what exactly should be the hymn.

"It was as if the game had been set up over the last six to nine months."

There were several problems in the pre-production of Anthem. If you want to read the long story, I recommend again the Kotaku article on which this text is based. But for short: in 2017, Patrick Söderlund, leader of EA, played a first demonstration of Hymn. In the short demo, the most famous feature of Anthem, flying, is not yet a game element. Soderlund decided that this demo was "unacceptable"- ergo: Everything had to be reworked.

"What started then was a six weeks of very difficult crisisdevelop a demo only for Patrick Söderlund."

The first extra hours were pushed to allow the pilot to drive – but now the final demo has convinced Söderlund. Why was this the base of the gameplay demo that you saw in June 2017?

The problem? Much of the demo was wrong; it was a video rendered, visually appealing of a game that did not exist. As Schreier makes clear, this is normal for a first trailer. But with Anthem, the problem went further, because even the developers did not understand how they had to implement what was shown here:

"We thought of a lot of things: "Oh, do we really do that? Do we have the technical means to do it? Until where can you fly? What should be the size of the world?"

With the gameplay trailer, EA has set the release date: autumn 2018. And the developer's hell has begun, because in a year and a half, the game should be released to the market – with a slightly released delayed in early 2019.

"A former bioware developer told me that he and others were always going into a private room of the office – and were crying."

How do you develop a Triple A game in 18 months? By putting the most important things into practice and throwing everything else overboard. After the E3 2017, Mark Darrah took over the Anthem team bar and finally made decisions with the goal: the match must come, no matter what it looks like. Some of Anthem's problems were not resolved in time, but the time was still too tight: overtime had to be postponed, weekends worked. The crisis was difficult and, as EA BioWare sent help from other departments, more and more developers were getting sick or were leaving production altogether:

"At Anthem, a developer told me that this practice (the tightening) was even worse: "I've never heard of people who were content with freedom because they were so stressed. But it's like that a forest fire has gone through the team."

The developers left the team in groups, some returned a few weeks later, others never returned. Jason Schreier does not say in his article how much overtime was done exactly in extreme moments – but it must have been bad. In the interview, a developer even said that several members of the team would be "visit again and again a private room of the office – and just cry."

Finally, in 2019, the development time at Anthem was coming to an end. Want to know why Anthem was born with so many problems? And why are some lines of dialogue meaningless so far? Why did this game initially look so different from what it can now play on your screen? This question can not be resolved with one answer except as follows: Because BioWare is developing EA games in a problematic way; in terms of profit that the game should pay and much less play itself – or players, and what they actually want.

However, the aspect of working conditions in which developers are experiencing difficult times at BioWare is and remains particularly difficult:

"People (in the anthem team) were angry and sad all the time. (…) Depression and anxiety disorders are an epidemic within BioWare."

"Anthem is the necessary kick for BioWare's leadership to recognize that it has changed dramatically with game development."

I asked you at the beginning of this report why you should be interested. And you might wonder why I'm writing this text, if you could just as well read Jason Schreier's article in Kotaku. You should, I ask you. But I also know that you may not want to read an English text on a game that you may not even play for an hour and a half. I know that when Destiny 3 or Dragon Age 4 appears to interest you more than to know how these games are created.

This should interest you because all I have just told you are why you do not often get the game you expect. That you want. And what is fun

The video game industry is down. Not everywhere, because I absolutely can not judge. But in many, many places; in large companies that need to bring games to the market at times to achieve their financial goals. In companies where people work, who love their work – and create games for a profit-only market.

This problem is not unique to the United States, Canada or other countries. Difficulties, overtime and unfair conditions for developers affect the video game industry around the world. BioWare can be an extreme example, just like Anthem. But as long as the community of players is not interested; as long as you and I do not pay attention until the game appears and if it's fun, nothing will change.

That's why I write this – so that you can see and read this and maybe start to interest yourself, you should not have done it so long ago. We will all be able to play these games of love and time only if there is an industry that allows it. And yes, we can change something: talk about it, criticize it and show that it bothers us.