How quickly can you go from the heights of glory to the lowest depths of ignominy? Just ask BioWare. This is something they would have never imagined. However, the stories of their employees came upon them like the fury of a thousand storms. The company, which was formed in 1995 and is headquartered at Edmonton in Canada, has been known for churning out some of the best known games ever, which have achieved cult status among hard-core gamers, such as Baldur’s Gate,the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age series. They were awarded the “Top Employer” award in Alberta, which sounds ironical now. Things moved along smoothly until the release of their much awaited game ‘Anthem’, an online action multiplayer game.

By no means was Anthem supposed to be such a poorly received game. The game had first been teased in 2012, however, it never really found the surety and continuity it needed to develop into the ambitious game that the studio had envisioned. Seven years of development is a lot, as coming out of it with an average product is going to raise eyebrows for certain. Sample this: a week before its reveal, the studio had to get rid of the original title that was ‘Beyond’, which thematically suited the game, and instead forced to use the backup title ‘Anthem’, which, to the development team, did not make sense. All this has been the result of a studio term ‘BioWare Magic’, which means the belief that everything will eventually come together, however tight the situation is. Based on the Kotaku expose with 19 members of the development team, they felt that the massive success of ‘Dragon Age: Inquisition’, which itself experienced ‘BioWare Magic’, was the worst thing that could happen to them, as failure of the game would have brought such obscene practices at the studio to light.

Compounding their problems was the poor relationship between the development teams at Edmonton and Austin, Texas, as well as the Frostbite engine, on which the game is based, as it proved to be a mountain too insurmountable for the team. The most glaring mistake: beginning production in the final one and a half years, owing to constant script changes, massive rejigs in design, and the inability of the top leadership to listen to constructive criticism. Game development is not an easy thing to do, just like any other media form. Where the team erred was not having a clear vision of how the production will move forward. The success of Dragon Age in 2014 must only have emboldened the leadership that they could pull off a similar situation. The studio has witnessed a mass exodus of long-standing employees over the past two years, with them citing pathetic and stressful working conditions, something that the management at the top did not pay heed to. The last straw: the studio’s response to this allegation brushing off all accusations. Unfortunate.

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