Former BioWare developers have offered their thoughts on Dragon Age: The Veilguard and recent comments from the CEO of EA about its relative failure.
During a financial call, EA boss Andrew Wilson said Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to “resonate with a broad enough audience.”
Last week, EA restructured Dragon Age developer BioWare to focus on Mass Effect 5 only, meaning some who worked on The Veilguard were moved to projects at other EA studios, while other staff were laid off.
The decision followed EA’s announcement that Dragon Age: The Veilguard had underperformed on its expectations for the long-awaited action RPG. EA said Dragon Age “engaged” 1.5 million players during its recent financial quarter, which was down nearly 50% from the company’s projections.
IGN has chronicled some of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s development challenges, including layoffs and the departure of several project leads at different stages. According to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, BioWare staff believe it was a miracle Dragon Age: The Veilguard released a complete game “after EA forced live-service into it, then reversed course.”
Wilson, however, suggested BioWare’s role-playing games need to have “shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives” to reach the success EA demands.
“In order to break out beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category,” Wilson said.
“Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played. However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.”
Most took Wilson’s comments to mean that if Dragon Age: The Veilguard had “shared-world features” and “deeper engagement,” it might have sold more copies. But, as IGN has reported, a development reboot, backed by EA, saw Dragon Age shift from the skeleton of a multiplayer game with repeatable quests, a tech base, and the outline of a story, to a full-blown single-player RPG.
Now, former prominent BioWare staff are having their say on social media. David Gaider, who created the setting for Dragon Age and was its narrative lead before leaving BioWare in 2016, said EA isn’t learning the right lessons from The Veilguard.
“There are certainly all sorts of lessons a company could learn from a game like Veilguard (I still haven’t played it, so I’m going off what other people have said), but ‘maybe it should have been live service’ being the takeaway seems a bit short-sighted and self-serving,” Gaider, now creative director at Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical developer Summerfall Studios, said.
“Not that there’s any shortage of that, when it comes to deciding why a game doesn’t do well. For the anti-woke crowd, for instance, there are woke games that do well and woke games that do poorly and only the ones that did poorly did so *because* they were woke. Says more about them than the game.”
Gaider then said EA should follow the lead of Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian and double-down on what Dragon Age did best. Baldur’s Gate 3 is of course a massive hit, and while it has multiplayer co-op, it is a predominantly single-player RPG experience.
“My advice to EA (not that they care): you have an IP that a lot of people love. Deeply. At its height, it sold well enough to make you happy, right? Look at what it did best at the point where it sold the most. Follow Larian’s lead and double down on that. The audience is still there. And waiting,” Gaider continued.
Gaider wasn’t the only former prominent Dragon Age developer to respond to Wilson’s comments. Mike Laidlaw, chief creative officer at Eternal Strands developer Yellow Brick Games and former creative director on Dragon Age, went further and said that he’d quit if forced to turn a much-loved single-player game into a purely multiplayer game.
“Look, I’m not a fancy CEO guy, but if someone said to me ‘the key to this successful single-player IP’s success is to make it purely a multiplayer game. No, not a spin off: fundamentally change the DNA of what people loved about the core game’ to me, I’d probably, like, quit that job or something,” he said.
Laidlaw continued: “Just thinking out loud, of course. Who’d be silly enough to demand something like that?
“…twice.”
The upshot of recent events is that Dragon Age now appears dead, and BioWare is fully focused on Mass Effect 5, which is led by series veterans including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, and Parrish Ley.
EA CFO Stuart Canfield touched on EA’s decision to restructure BioWare to focus on the next Mass Effect, which has reportedly involved cutting the 200-person studio down to less than 100 people.
“Historically, blockbuster storytelling has been the primary way our industry bought beloved IP to players,” Canfield said. “The game’s financial performance highlights the evolving industry landscape and reinforces the importance of our actions to reallocate resources towards our most significant and highest potential opportunities.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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