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- [Jason] What went wrong with Anthem?

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Ever since the launch of
BioWare's new online loot shooter,

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fans have been asking just how

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it turned out to be so mediocre.

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The game felt buggy, repetitive,

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and never quite rewarding enough

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to justify its grindy missions.

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It seemed like BioWare
hadn't paid much attention

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to the mistakes made in the past by games

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like Destiny and The Division.

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Today, it seems like
there's a new complaint

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every day about the loot system,

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the overall design, and the glitches.

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I'm Jason Schreier, News Editor at Kotaku,

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and for the past couple of months,

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I've been investigating the story

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behind Anthem's development.

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I've interviewed 19 people
who worked on the game,

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all of whom spoke
anonymously because they were

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not authorized to talk about their work,

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and a clear picture has emerged
from those conversations.

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Here's the sort of short version:

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Anthem was a game plagued by indecision,

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mismanagement, and technical issues thanks

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to the Frostbite engine that EA's studios

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used to make games.

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There was tension between
BioWare's two studios

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in Edmonton and Austin,

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resentment toward leadership,
and lots of departures,

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as dozens of veteran developers

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have left BioWare over the past two years.

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Technically, Anthem was in development

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for more than six years.

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In reality, the game
that came out was built

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in the last 18 months.

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Let's go back in time.

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It's 2012.

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Mass Effect 3 has just come out,

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marking an end to the
popular sci-fi trilogy.

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BioWare announces that Mass
Effect director Casey Hudson

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and his leadership team are now going

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to work on a brand new world,

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a new intellectual property built

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from the bottom up with
all new gaming technology.

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It was envisioned as
an online action game,

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one in which you'd
explore a hazardous planet

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that they called the Bermuda
Triangle of the universe,

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because alien spaceships
would keep crashing there.

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You'd team up with your friends to go out

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on missions in the wilderness,

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and you'd be able to salvage resources

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to bring home and upgrade your gear.

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The developers built all
sorts of wild prototypes,

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like procedurally generated
creatures and dynamic weather,

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some of which you can see

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in the teaser trailer from E3 2014.

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Then, in late 2014,

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Casey Hudson announced that
he was leaving BioWare,

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which left a massive void
in Anthem's leadership

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that proved difficult to fill.

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Those who have worked for
BioWare have described

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the Mass Effect team as
the Star Trek Enterprise,

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laser-focused and following

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the orders of a single commander.

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With Casey Hudson gone,

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they no longer had their Jean-Luc Picard.

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A few months later, the
problems started to emerge.

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The writing staff kept changing,

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which led to big story reboots.

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Some of the ideas that worked
really well as prototypes

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didn't seem to scale up as
well as the developers hoped.

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People who worked on Anthem say there

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was no clear vision from
the new leadership team.

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Imagine, for a second,

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being one Anthem's
developers in that scenario.

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You have to make something completely new,

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a new series, new technology,
new tools, new ideas.

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You have to create something from scratch.

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That's a difficult task for anyone,

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let alone a team of people who just

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lost their creative visionary.

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Sometimes, the developers
would be in a meeting arguing

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over some key decision,

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like how flying would work or what

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the alien Scar race would look like.

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They'd disagree about the fundamentals,

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and then the meeting would just end.

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Nobody stepped up to
tell the team what to do.

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Here's what one BioWare developer who

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was there at the time told me:

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"The root cause of all this
was the lack of vision.

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"What are we making?

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"Please tell us.

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"The recurring theme
was there was no vision,

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"there was no clarity,

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"there was no single director saying,

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"'This is how it all works together.'"

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And then there was Frostbite.

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Frostbite is a video game engine,

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or a collection of software
that can be used to make games.

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A whole lot of people who
have worked with Frostbite

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have a whole lot of complaints about it.

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In an interview with me,

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one developer called it "Frostshite."

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Another told me, "Frostbite
is full of razor blades."

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So why do so many people
at BioWare hate Frostbite?

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Well, Frostbite was made by DICE,

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the EA-owned studio behind
the Battlefield series.

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The Battlefield games, of course,

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are first-person shooters.

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That means all of the
engine's features and tools

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are built to make first-person shooters,

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which doesn't exactly play
well with a third-person RPG

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or an online action game like BioWare

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wanted to make with Anthem.

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BioWare has been using Frostbite

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since Dragon Age: Inquisition,

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and it's caused their developers
all sorts of headaches.

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When talking to me about Anthem,

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BioWare developers would
sigh or sadly laugh

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at the number of problems
that Frostbite caused them,

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simply because it made
everything take longer

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than it needed to take.

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Plus, BioWare's owner, EA,

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prioritized the studios that
would make the most money.

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Sometimes, Bioware programmers
would work on FIFA.

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Other times, the central
Frostbite team wouldn't

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have enough time to help out Bioware

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because they were working
on more lucrative projects,

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like FIFA and Madden.

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Not a lot got done on Anthem
throughout 2015 and 2016,

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but the game was slowly gravitating

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towards a looter shooter
like Destiny or the Division

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or even a loot game like Diablo 3.

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It started to become less about survival

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and more about hunting for
loot with your friends.

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By the beginning of 2017,
the team had built a demo

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that few people were
really thrilled about.

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People I talked to said EA Executive,

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Patrick Soderlund, told
them he was disappointed

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with the graphics and lack of innovation,

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and he asked them to build something new.

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For this new demo, in the Spring of 2017,

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the Anthem team redid
their art and added flying,

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which had been removed from the game

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several times over the years.

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It was enough to impress Soderlund,

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and this demo eventually transformed

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into that demo we saw at E3 2017,

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when BioWare announced the game.

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Toward the end of 2017, some
drastic things happened.

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BioWare boss Aaryn Flynn left the studio.

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He was replaced by Casey Hudson,

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the original director of Anthem,

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who came back to become general
manager of the whole studio.

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One of the first things Hudson did

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in the fall of 2017 was
reboot Dragon Age 4.

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That version of the game
had been in development

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for a little while under
creative director Mike Laidlaw,

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who left the company around then.

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This new version of Dragon Age 4,

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which was teased last
year at The Game Awards,

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will be very different than that one.

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Anyway, during this reboot, Mark Darrah,

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who's the executive producer
of the Dragon Age franchise,

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moved over to Anthem.

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Executive producer at BioWare

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is the person who runs the team,

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who ultimately makes
all the final decisions

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and ensures that the
game gets out the door.

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So this was a big change for Anthem.

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Wanna see something fascinating?

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Check out the credits for Anthem.

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See the name on top?

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Mark Darrah, who started
on Anthem just a year

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and a half before it actually came out,

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gets top billing on the game,

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which says a lot about
Anthem's development.

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Anyway, after all these changes,

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there was suddenly momentum
to finish the game,

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and throughout 2018,

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the Anthem team started pushing

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and crunching to get
something out the door.

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They finally had a vision of
what the game could look like,

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although there were
still lots of problems.

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The story kept changing,

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the mission design took
forever to finalize,

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and Frostbite continued
to be a serious issue.

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That period was when most
of Anthem was developed.

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Here's a quote from one developer:

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"They talk a lot about the
six-year development time,

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"but really the core
gameplay loop, the story,

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"and all the missions
in the game were made

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"in the last 12 to 16
months because of that lack

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"of vision and total lack of
leadership across the board."

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Morale got pretty low for some developers

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who spoke to me during those final months,

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and some of them still have
scars from the process.

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They've talked about
going on stress leave,

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taking weeks or months off
for their mental health.

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A whole lot of people left BioWare

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during Mass Effect: Andromeda
and Anthem's development,

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including a lot of veterans.

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When Anthem finally came
out, in February of 2019,

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the developers expected a
Metacritic score in the 70s.

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After all, that was
what the mock reviewers

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they'd hired had predicted.

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Instead, when all was said and done,

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the Metacritic wound up at around a 55.

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Some BioWare developers
say they were aware

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of the game's problems before it shipped,

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they just found that senior leadership

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wouldn't listen to them.

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Or they didn't have time to fix things.

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Or the servers were so unstable,

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they couldn't test the game.

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Or so much of the game was unfinished,

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they couldn't actually
play the whole thing.

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Within BioWare, there's a
term called BioWare magic,

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generally used to refer
to those final months

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of production where everything coalesces

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and transforms into a great game.

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For games like the Mass Effect trilogy

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and Dragon Age: Inquisition,
this process worked.

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In those final months,
those games had turned

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from disastrous to fantastic.

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On Anthem, it didn't work.

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They didn't have enough
time to truly make it great,

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and what BioWare shipped
was a disappointment,

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a buggy, broken game that
couldn't hold a candle

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to competition like
Destiny and The Division 2.

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BioWare had codenamed the game Dylan,

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hoping they would make the
Bob Dylan of video games,

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something that would be discussed

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and referenced for years to come.

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On that end, they may have succeeded.

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Just not quite in the way they hoped.

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For more on Anthem's development,

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head to Kotaku.com for the full article.

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(lively music)