Mark Darrah has been on a tell-all, recently, speaking with YouTuber MrMattyPlays about the failures and foibles of BioWare in the wake of Dragon Age being likely being dead and gone. Darrah, who was an executive producer, left the studio back in 2020; though has been speaking up on his own YouTube channel recently.
He echoes fellow alumni and Dragon Age creator David Gaider’s words somewhat, claiming that the fantasy series was always “having a lot of difficulty getting the resources that it needed”. Gaider had similarly claimed that Mass Effect was EA’s favourite child, though Darrah says the situation’s muddier than that.
The issue, as Darrah puts it, is the fact that BioWare tried to have several irons in the fire at once: “We try to do multiple things at the same time. Even if you look at DICE, basically they’re just doing one thing at a time, and sometimes that does really well, and sometimes it doesn’t do so well.”
Darrah says there was “a lot of cannibalisation” of developers as a result, with talent being shuffled around projects repeatedly—spreading the studio bone-thin.
When it comes to EA having a favourite child, he says: “Did EA like Mass Effect better than Dragon Age? I think they did. Was that the cause of Dragon Age not getting the people it needed? That I’m not as certain about. I think that might just be the structure of BioWare and the fiscal conservatism of EA not quite meshing together.”
This grim, unseemly mess led to a situation where one person Darrah spoke to was “amazed that I hadn’t quit earlier, because we weren’t getting the people.”
Darrah is quick to clarify, however, that he doesn’t think EA being more suited to studios like DICE or Maxis is because it’s better at supporting them—rather, it’s just a huge headache to shut a whole studio down if their big, mainline project isn’t working.
“I think within EA, you’re better off being ‘one game at a time’ … Battlefield 4 shipped, and it was really rocky at launch, and DICE spent the time and the resources necessary to fix that game up. Sims 4 launched and had a really rocky launch—same thing.”
In other words, Darrah says that “Those two studios had nothing else. If Battlefield 4 wasn’t working, EA would’ve had to shut the studio down. If Sims 4 wasn’t working, you’d basically have to shut Maxis down.”
Pan to the world serpent of BioWare, gnawing on its own tail. Darrah paints a picture of a multi-project studio desperate to snap up developers where it could: “If Andromeda isn’t working… there are two other projects desperate for those people! EA does not like failure, and is eager to move on from failure, but if there’s nothing else [to work on]? The studio is saying ‘no no, we can fix this’.” Which, Darrah implies, is why Sims 4 had years of updates and Veilguard will not.
“[That’s] highly simplified, but I do think that, given that? Within EA, BioWare is better off being one game at a time.”
We’ll just have to wait and see—while I’m sure BioWare’s next Mass Effect game could use the talent, a lot of the people who made Veilguard are gone. I wasn’t much of a fan of Veilguard either, but tossing out, say, Trick Weekes, the writer who wrote Solas, Iron Bull, and Mass Effect’s Mordin? That’s a waste of institutional talent, no matter my feelings in the present-day.
There’s also the fact that the Veilguard team did pull a semi-decent action RPG out of its flaming pile of development that included rewrites, live-service flip-flops, the works—all of it more attributable to EA’s shoddy management than the team’s lack of ability.
The fact I had a moderately enjoyable 60 hours before getting frustrated with the script and putting it down does speak to the good work that was done in Veilguard. It doesn’t matter, though: Those people are out the door. I appreciate Darrah’s optimism, but I’m not so optimistic that BioWare’s better off now—but hey, EA said Mass Effect is totally fine.
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