Kotaku Exposes the Mess Behind Anthem, and Bioware/EA Responds

Yesterday, Kotaku flexed its journalism muscles and published a huge multi-page report on Bioware, Anthem, and exactly what happened behind the scenes that made one of the most storied and successful RPG makers in the world decide to produce and publish a weird and half-finished Destiny clone, as reported by a number of anonymous employees who were working there.

The TL;DR – although you can (and should) read the full story – was that Dragon Age Inquisition is mostly to blame. That game went through a messy development period that a few last-minute months of crunch were able to fix, and in turn, produced what many considered the game of the year when it was finally published. This “Bioware Magic” meant that many of the higher-ups within the company assumed that eventually, everything would just work out if they continued to work hard. Combined with a lot of mismanagement (people who were afraid to make definitive decisions, high-profile people leaving the company, inter-studio power struggles, and an inconsistent vision of the game all throughout development), the final product was ultimately created over a period of months, despite the fact the game was, on paper, in development for seven years.

Oh, and also, the bosses really, really didn’t like it when people pointed out it was a Destiny clone.

Anyway, you can read the report yourself – and as I said, you really should – but what we’re really reporting on is the fact that while Bioware and EA refused to comment on the article itself, at around the same time that it was published, they released a statement that, while not naming names, is clearly an attempt to rebuke the claims that were reported on by Kotaku.

“We’d like to take a moment to address an article published this morning about BioWare, and Anthem’s development. First and foremost, we wholeheartedly stand behind every current and former member of our team that worked on the game, including leadership. It takes a massive amount of effort, energy and dedication to make any game, and making Anthem would not have been possible without every single one of their efforts. We chose not to comment or participate in this story because we felt there was an unfair focus on specific team members and leaders, who did their absolute best to bring this totally new idea to fans. We didn’t want to be part of something that was attempting to bring them down as individuals. We respect them all, and we built this game as a team.”

One of the things pronounced throughout the article Kotaku posted was crunch and developer burnout. Apparently all throughout the process of making Anthem, developers were forced to take “stress vacations”, which could last up to three months, as the process of making the game was taking a toll on their mental health. Bioware and EA basically dedicated a whole paragraph to that issue specifically.

“We put a great emphasis on our workplace culture in our studios. The health and well-being of our team members is something we take very seriously… We hear the criticisms that were raised by the people in the piece today, and we’re looking at that alongside feedback that we receive in our internal team surveys. We put a lot of focus on better planning to avoid “crunch time,” and it was not a major topic of feedback in our internal postmortems… We do everything we can to try and make it healthy and stress-free, but we also know there is always room to improve.”

They wrap things up by saying they’re open to all criticism but also say that the article in question is dedicated to “tearing down one another, or another’s work”, and thus they don’t believe it’s useful. That last point is obviously up for debate: Kotaku is famously responsible for the Riot Games report that eventually lead to the (moderate) improvement of internal policies in the League of Legend developer. They were also the ones who broke the news about the employees who were fired by Activision-Blizzard and followed that up with inner-studio reporting that revealed some startling information about their new work culture. I’m not saying Kotaku can’t do wrong, I’m just saying they tend to do a pretty good job with these things and I’d sooner trust them over whatever EA has to say.

Here’s hoping this report, too, will eventually lead to change.