Transcription
Okay, let's talk about 2017, which I consider the most impactful 12 months in BioWare's history, or at least in recent memory. Actually, I'm lying; I'm going to back up a little bit, and I'm going to start in late 2016. But I'm going to stick to 12 months; we'll just go to the later part of 2017. We won't go all the way to December.
In late 2016, we are reaching the point when Mass Effect Andromeda is trying to ship. It has been grabbing resources from around BioWare for a while, but in this last push, we reach a decision that is different than anything we have done in BioWare's history, at least in recent memory. And that is, I actually led this final team that came on to Mass Effect Andromeda. If you look in the Mass Effect Andromeda credits, you'll see the Dragon Age finishing team, Daft, and I'm on that team. My feeling at the time was the Dragon Age team was feeling jerked around; they were feeling like we were getting no support from BioWare or from EA, which was basically true. And that by me leading the group onto the project, I could then, when Andromeda finished, lead that group as well as the other resources that were supposed to come back to Dragon Age back. That's not ultimately what ended up happening, and we'll get into that in a second. But what it was, how it was different—this was the first time where we had this leadership discontinuity, where the person in charge of a project left that project to help someone else, some other project, while the project continued to run. In the case of Mass Effect Andromeda, I don't think the impact to Dragon Age was huge; it wasn't very long, but it did set this precedent as this being a thing that we could do, and it's not a good thing to do. It is incredibly dangerous to have a project run while it's missing some of its core leadership.
So we move forward, and now Mass Effect Andromeda ships, and it doesn't go well. BioWare had had a pretty good run of games that were pretty well reviewed, pretty well received, or if they, like Dragon Age 2, had some challenges, those challenges were easily rationalized away. With Mass Effect Andromeda, that got shaken. Andromeda was shipped in a state that had quality bugs because of relatively small things that subsequently got fixed, but really damaged the project at launch. In 2016, the part of EA that BioWare reported into changed. We went from strangely reporting in through part of the Sports organization to reporting into someone new. And the result of that was that now our EA leadership went from being benignly disinterested in us—I would say not really understanding what we did and being willing to let us do our best on our own—to someone that was hyper-interested in us and really wanted to be involved in the day-to-day, in the decision-making on the project. You can decide for yourself if that's a good thing or a bad thing; it definitely was a dramatic change in BioWare's interaction with the rest of the EA organization. One project they weren't particularly interested in was Mass Effect Andromeda because they had little to gain from the success of Andromeda and little to lose from its failure. So I do think one of the reasons why BioWare moved on from Andromeda as quickly as it did is because the group that we reported into had very little stake in either the success or the failure of their project, and they had a lot more incentive for BioWare to move on to the next thing that they could tie themselves to and show themselves as having influence on the development of.
Coming out of Andromeda, I was feeling like Dragon Age was still not getting adequate support. We hadn't gotten the people from Montreal that were supposed to come onto Dragon Age yet; they were still doing stuff with Andromeda. And I went to Patrick Soderlund at the time and said, "I don't feel like I'm getting the support from the organization that Dragon Age deserves; I don't feel that I'm getting the support from the organization that Dragon Age needs." And from Patrick, as well as from Andrew Wilson, I got lots of assurances that Dragon Age was incredibly important, that we were going to get what we needed, what we wanted. In addition to that, I also got a large amount of stock to try to say, "Please stay; here are some financial handcuffs to try to tie you to the organization." Around the same time that I'm getting these assurances from the greater EA, or that Dragon Age is really important, I have a conversation with the person that ran the organization that BioWare used to be a part of, and that interaction basically went like this: "I can't believe you're still at EA; Dragon Age still isn't getting people; how can you deal with this?" And I guess, in retrospect, yeah, that's a really good question.
In the middle of 2017, Casey Hudson suddenly returns. I say suddenly because I found out that Casey was returning at the same meeting that everyone else at BioWare found out because there was worry about leaks. There was a meeting held where both Aaron Flynn was announced to be leaving and Casey Hudson was announced to come back, and then the press release went out during that meeting. So there was literally zero time between when the people at BioWare knew and when the general public knew. You have to remember, I am the second most senior person at BioWare. Casey was interviewed and hired and prepared to be brought back entirely without me being consulted in any way. Would I have been involved in the process; have changed the decision? No, I don't think it would have, but there is an immense amount of disrespect involved in making a hire of this impact, in making a decision of this import without involving the second most senior person at your studio in any way. So I actually went from the meeting where it was announced that Casey Hudson was coming back to lead the studio to my desk and sent a couple of emails, and those emails said essentially, "I believe what is going to happen in very short order is that Casey is going to convince the organization that Anthem needs all hands-on deck; it's going to starve Dragon Age out even further, and this goes against what we literally just talked about a few months ago." And the email responses that I got back were, "No, no, no, no; Dragon Age is super important; that is not what's going to happen; we are committed to Dragon Age; we are committed to you leading Dragon Age." And as we all know, that's not what happened at all.
In very short order, in basically exactly the way that I predicted, Anthem was seen as needing greater support, needing greater leadership support, and myself and some other very senior people, as a—as well as a large percentage of the Dragon Age team—was moved on to Anthem. Between Casey returning and everyone on Anthem, we lose everyone in Montreal. This happens really shortly after Casey returns. Casey's return was announced on July 18th, and the—the loss of the Montreal staff was August 1st, so it's only two weeks between the two different events. The people in Montreal have been told some stories; they've basically been lied to and told that Dragon Age didn't want them and that they were going onto other parts of the EA organization because BioWare couldn't keep them anymore. And from my perspective, that is a complete fabrication. When this started to happen, I spent 100% of my time trying to force Dragon Age through one of its gates. And the reason for this is that going through that gate theoretically would have allowed Dragon Age to get much larger, would have allowed Dragon Age to keep those people. I don't think there was any way that that was going to happen. There were very senior people on the ground in Montreal who wanted those people, and proximity is a powerful tool, and I don't think there was any way I could make the argument to keep those people, but I tried. So if you are someone who's been mad at me since 2017 because you feel like I abandoned you in Montreal, know that that's not what happened; know that I fought with every tool that I knew how to wield to try to keep you, but the organization had no interest in that occurring.
Were there back-room deals happening between BioWare and the rest of EA at that time? If there were, I was not involved in them. I was definitely fighting tooth and nail to keep everyone in Montreal on Dragon Age because we were ready to start getting bigger. I certainly hope there were no back-room deals. Given the timing, given how early Casey was in his role, it seems unlikely that he was brokering such a deal, and it seems unlikely that Aaron would have brokered such a deal in his last days. I suppose it's possible for either of them to have done so, but I think what's more likely is that leaders on the ground in Montreal were taking advantage of the relative leadership vacuum at BioWare to take those people away. But like I predicted, that's not what EA was interested in. What they wanted to see is they wanted to see Anthem. That perfectly crafted story that was told back in 2012, 2013, continued to hold immense sway within the organization, and now that Casey was back, it was stronger than ever.
You can see in this time, my trust in the EA organization is being constantly hammered, constantly challenged. Additionally, in this time period, Mike Laidlaw leaves because he sees the same things that I see. And while I end up going on Anthem, he sees a lot of frustration in the future for Dragon Age, and he decides that it is better for him to look for opportunities elsewhere, which is certainly understandable. So part of the excuse for moving people off of Dragon Age was this pivot from a single-player game into a multiplayer live service. I believe that a large part of that pivot was done entirely as rationalization, as a reason to make it make sense that we were taking everyone away from Dragon Age. There's no reason to have all of these people on the project because they are going back to the drawing board because we are making a live service game now, right? So we can start over again. I wish that had never happened; I wish that pivot had never occurred, but that's what happened. EA said, "Make this a live service." We said, "We don't know how to do that; we should basically start the project over." And thus, Joplin became Morrison, and myself as well as other very senior members of the team moved on to Anthem. And we enter into a second, much longer leadership discontinuity. Dragon Age project runs until Anthem ships without its EP, without its senior development director. This ends up causing massive amounts of changes to the project, to the team structure, to the culture. In this time, Dragon Age is pursuing a goal that ultimately it doesn't want to be pursuing, but it does its best, and in doing its best, it changes the nature of the project in fundamental ways.
So as we come to the end of 2017, we are in a state where almost everyone is on Anthem, but Dragon Age—now Dragon Age Morrison—is running without most of its core leadership. And in the process of this change, EA and BioWare have dramatically damaged their relationship with myself, but also with a lot of other more senior members of BioWare because they've said things are going to happen that didn't happen; they've made assurances that did not come true. As we come out of 2017, BioWare is a different thing; it is focused on making a live service in Anthem; it has lost one of its studios in Montreal, being taken away, and now it moves into the future in this new state. I talked a fairly long time ago about how EA buys studios and then consumes them, and they start to lose their culture into the overall EA culture. To me, it feels like 2017 is when EA finished digesting BioWare, which they had bought nine years earlier in 2008.
You may be looking to this and saying, "I don't know if I buy your story; I don't know if I believe that this 12 months is as impactful as you are making it out to be; it sounds more like these things are things that affected you personally." And I think there is truth to that; I think that a lot of these things are things that hurt me, are things that damaged my trust with the organization. I guess the argument I would make against that is simply that, given my position within the organization, damaging the trust, damaging the relationship between the second most senior person at a studio and that studio is going to have consequences.
Special thanks to my members; they provide the resources this channel needs to keep running. If you're interested in becoming a member, there's a link to that down in the description. We also have a Patreon if you are more comfortable supporting the channel in that way. Both patrons and channel members get access to our Discord, so if you are looking for a way to interact with me and the community to a deeper level, that's a great way to do it. This may end up being a little bit more personal than I meant it to be, but I do think that when you step back from BioWare's history, really far back, there are some major pivot points in BioWare's history: there's when BioWare got sold to Elevation Partners; then there's when BioWare got sold to EA; there's when Ray and Greg left; and then there's this period in 2017. Do you buy that? Let me know down in the comments. I will see you again soon. Thank you. [Music]