Bloombergrecently released a comprehensive report on the troubled development cycle ofDragon Age: The Veilguard. The report was extensive, confirming that publisherElectronic Artsforced BioWare to pivot to a live-service title mid-development, and then back to a single-player game at the final hour.
The constantly changing leadership structure of Dragon Age: The Veilguard resulted in a haphazard end product, tonally inconsistent and bearing the scars of the failed live-service iteration of the project.
EA reportedly gave BioWare just 18 months to change their live-service multiplayer game into a single-player story, ultimately forcing BioWare to delay the release twice as the studio scrambled to add a level of reactivity that wasn’t present in the live-service iteration.
Development Nightmare
Dragon Age: The Veilguard debuted to strong reviews, but the fandom was more critical, and the game ultimately undersold EA’s predictions by over 50 per cent. This underperformance resulted in a large swathe of BioWare developers either being laid off or permanently relocated to other EA-owned studios.
In response to the report, several developers who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard have released social media posts reflecting on the development cycle, now that behind-the-scenes details are public.
“The worst part is that those issues were called out almost immediately, and the choice was made to push on,” writes Blair Thornburn, game design director on The Veilguard. “This strategy backed the team into an impossible situation from the start, and it was a miracle we shipped at all, never mind shipping at the quality we did. Our narrative team were heroes.”
Jo Berry, a writer at Motive who previously worked at BioWare, responded to Thornburn’s post, adding, “Having seen the circumstances under which they were trying to create… I mean, I only came in right at the end, and it was still… holy shit.”
It remains to be seen whether BioWare can bounce back after consecutive underperforming releases. The studio is currently working on Mass Effect 5 with a smaller team, around two dozen developers.
