The head of BioWare addressed a Kotaku report on the studio’s cultural issues yesterday afternoon, acknowledging that “these problems are real” and promising that it is “our top priority to continue working to solve them.”
On Tuesday, Kotaku posted an investigation into what had happened behind the scenes on Anthem, a story that also dived into cultural problems impacting BioWare’s current and former employees. The piece discussed indecision, mismanagement, and the production practice referred to as “BioWare magic,” a belief that with enough hard work—and enough crunch—every project will coalesce at the last minute. The article also detailed the stress, depression, and anxiety that has led dozens of employees to leave BioWare over the past two years.
EA and BioWare chose not to respond to our requests for comment, instead publishing a blog post that read to many as dismissive and disheartening. (“We don’t see the value in tearing down one another, or one another’s work. We don’t believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better.”)
The company stayed silent for the next day and a half, other than asking employees not to speak to press. Then, late Wednesday, BioWare general manager Casey Hudson sent a note to staff (obtained by Kotaku) that addressed the piece. You can read it in full here:
I wanted to get a note out to you to share my thoughts on the Kotaku article and the online discussion it has raised.
The article mentions many of the problems in the development of Anthem and some of our previous projects. And it draws a link between those issues and the quality of our workplace and the well-being of our staff. These problems are real and it’s our top priority to continue working to solve them.
What we found out-of-bounds was the naming of specific developers as targets for public criticism. It’s unfair and extremely traumatizing to single out people in this way, and we can’t accept that treatment towards any of our staff. That’s why we did not participate in the article and made a statement to that effect.
When I was offered the opportunity to return to BioWare as GM, I came into the role knowing the studio was experiencing significant challenges in team health, creative vision, and organizational focus. I was - and continue to be - excited to help drive improvements in those areas because I love this studio, and above all I want to create a place where all of you are happy and successful.
I’m not going to tell you I’ve done a good job at that, and on a day like today I certainly feel like I haven’t. But some of the steps we’ve taken towards this include a more focused studio mission and values, so that we have clarity on what we are here to do and how we define a high standard for our studio culture. We updated our studio structure around a matrix so that department directors can be fully focused on individual career support and well-being. We are defining better role clarity so that people can succeed better against clear expectations. And we are putting in place production changes that will provide for clearer project vision as well as a significant post-production period that will further relieve pressure and anxiety on teams during development.
But I know there’s much more to do, and we will talk in more detail about other actions we have been planning in response to internal feedback and postmortems at next week’s All-Hands. As always please continue to provide feedback on further steps we can take to make BioWare the best possible place to work.
I’m committed to getting us to a place where we are delivering on the highest expectations for BioWare games, through a work environment that’s among the very best in the world. With your help, we will get there.
Please let me know if you’d like to talk in person and I will be happy to set up time to hear your thoughts.
Casey
Since the publication of this week’s article, I’ve heard from a number of developers who work or have worked at beloved AAA game studios with messages like, “Replace BioWare with [my studio] and it’s the same story.” We can only hope that continuing to talk about and report on these issues will lead to widespread change.
Since the publication of this week’s article, I’ve heard from a number of developers who work or have worked at beloved AAA game studios with messages like, “Replace BioWare with [my studio] and it’s the same story.” We can only hope that continuing to talk about and report on these issues will lead to widespread change.
This part. This part right here is a giveaway that this message is not as much honesty and planned change towards employees, but just PR bullshit, because they know that this message will get leaked.
We will see if it leads to changes. These bosses have bosses that cannot be happy. And there is no stopping employees from talking to the press these days, because video game development isn't seen as this magical dream job any more.
Since the publication of this week’s article, I’ve heard from a number of developers who work or have worked at beloved AAA game studios with messages like, “Replace BioWare with [my studio] and it’s the same story.” We can only hope that continuing to talk about and report on these issues will lead to widespread change.
This part. This part right here is a giveaway that this message is not as much honesty and planned change towards employees, but just PR bullshit, because they know that this message will get leaked.
That's written by Kotaku (well, Jason ) not by BioWare.
This is what people from the outside hope hope to achieve by writing about the problem.
On April 04 2019 15:44 deacon.frost wrote: Because BioWare no longer owns the company and can decide about things. BioWare doesn't exist anymore. The sooner people understand this the better. EA decided it's the Frostbite engine because they have the knowledge of creators and they can save monies. BW has to listen. End of story. If the leadership isn't completely useless they told EA it's no bueno and got a middle finger with deal with it.
Contrary to popular opinion EA has given Bioware way too leeway post-2010 to pursue projects without sufficient oversight or accountability. No one twisted Hudson's arm when he promised the developer could deliver ME3 in 16 months; EA neither nudged the Montreal team into tackling Andromeda by itself or chasing pipe dreams of procedurally generated worlds instead of developing a semblance of a game skeleton. Management decided to utilize Frostbite back in 2012-2013, although it is EA' fault for neglecting to teach engineers how to use it and spreading that knowledge throughout all divisions. Bioware imploded under its own incompetence, brain drain and arrogance rather than EA's interference.
On April 04 2019 21:56 Plansix wrote: We will see if it leads to changes. These bosses have bosses that cannot be happy. And there is no stopping employees from talking to the press these days, because video game development isn't seen as this magical dream job any more.
With how muddled the chain of command is within these companies, an internal audit -> a top-down restructuring of Bioware is probably the only surefire way to counteract the mismanagement and toxic work culture. Upper management will most likely begin circling the wagons if it is left up to them.
I don’t disagree that there was to little oversight over the decisions being made at Bioware, but I don’t believe EA is blameless. In fact, my bet is that they have an upper management structure that rewards over promising and poor practices. Like encouraging studios to use Frostbite to the point where it was pretty much the only option unless you are Respawn and still had the founders.
From my understanding of Bioware post the Doctors, EA beholden management decisions slowly creeped their way through the studio and as established talent left the studio, that management kept making poor decisions with less and less pushback. And the thing about EA is that when they blow up studios, they move the people who are not fired around. Lot of former Bioware folks said that a good chunk of the middle managers that worked on ME:A were from shuttered studios that shipped bad games.
On April 05 2019 03:56 Plansix wrote: I don’t disagree that there was to little oversight over the decisions being made at Bioware, but I don’t believe EA is blameless. In fact, my bet is that they have an upper management structure that rewards over promising and poor practices. Like encouraging studios to use Frostbite to the point where it was pretty much the only option unless you are Respawn and still had the founders.
Oh, EA undoubtedly has a terrible incentive structure alongside the practice of overtly intruding into established companies and forcing them away from developing games that play to their strengths. That Rolodex of shuttered studios always follows the same script to a T: commercial and critical success leads to being bought, which leads to meddling from above (we need to implement this popular feature now!) and too many projects being developed simultaneously, which leads to rats scurrying from a sinking ship and closure.
The Frostbite issue for ME:A and Anthem is a unique case:
Frostbite has, for the most part, worked smoothly for their sports games and other titles like Plants vs Zombies. Even Mirror's Edge: Catalyst was widely praised for the open world gameplay and visuals. This probably exceeded corporate expectations as DICE didn't create it for those genres. Bioware's difficulty in implementing role-playing aspects + proper intuitive UI + scaling environments is an isolated phenomenon among EA-owned studios. I imagine the latter have had different, less intractable problems.
Both Bioware titles began pre-planning near the end of UE3's lifespan. UE3 was a hokey contraption at that point, and it would be about 1.5-2 years before UE4 was finished and released. At that point Bioware were transitioning out of Eclipse (DA:O and DAII) and their software engineers were mostly acquainted with UE3. There were very few options they could turn to. They couldn't rely on UE4 as no one knew when it would be released or the planned licensing model; Source 2 wasn't finished and Source was already considered outdated; the new version of CryEngine released in 2013 has close to no similarity to CryEngine 3, leaving them in the same spot as Frostbite; the FOX engine was never licensed out to my knowledge and the graphics would've turned off Western developers; most RPG-specific kits don't have the FPS assets or rendering engine to flesh out a Mass Effect game. At that point in time Frostbite seemed like the best choice.
Upon confirmation that Bioware's main and ancillary studios were switching to Frostbite of their own volition, EA should've immediately sent a team from DICE to Edmonton for in-depth tutoring. If upper management was so keen on a coordinated tech switch across all companies, every separate studio needed an in-house team familiar with the engine. This should've especially been a priority for Bioware as all the non-FPS games EA has published (excluding Mirror's Edge) don't approach the complexity that goes into a ME or DA entry. Instead, we have DICE advisers bouncing from game to game depending on which one is the bigger money maker. Meanwhile, programmers at Montreal were smashing their keyboards trying to figure out how to prevent wild animals from spawning inside boulders.
Barring that, Bioware should've refrained from using Frostbite on large titles until they built the sufficient code base for it. It's very rare for developers to use a AAA title to debut an engine without major technical hiccups. Electing to tackle Frostbite on multiple $100+ million games simultaneously without prior experience is some ??? shit. Capcom is the only one I can think of that has pulled it off across multiple titles, and I suspect the RE engine uses a lot of material from the defunct Panta Rhei.
On April 05 2019 03:56 Plansix wrote: From my understanding of Bioware post the Doctors, EA-beholden management decisions slowly creeped their way through the studio and as established talent left the studio, that management kept making poor decisions with less and less pushback. And the thing about EA is that when they blow up studios, they move the people who are not fired around. Lot of former Bioware folks said that a good chunk of the middle managers that worked on ME:A were from shuttered studios that shipped bad games.
It's a departure from form for Bioware to languish in indecision. Usually EA accelerates a studio's demise by forcing them into impossible crunch-time scenarios to account for quarterly reviews. I agree that EA is responsible. I just don't know how much of it comes from their side since the pressure is indirect.
In fairness, those games probably owed their poor quality to EA's influence. I don't know if that quality reflects on middle management's capacity as much as unspoken corporate policy.
You think EA would have formed an entirely separate team who's sole focus was the Frostbite engine. Not only to fix bugs, but also do QA and support to studios. Also those that are hoping for redemption with the release of Dragon Age; it will still be using the Frostbite engine.
Since the publication of this week’s article, I’ve heard from a number of developers who work or have worked at beloved AAA game studios with messages like, “Replace BioWare with [my studio] and it’s the same story.” We can only hope that continuing to talk about and report on these issues will lead to widespread change.
This part. This part right here is a giveaway that this message is not as much honesty and planned change towards employees, but just PR bullshit, because they know that this message will get leaked.
That's written by Kotaku (well, Jason ) not by BioWare.
This is what people from the outside hope hope to achieve by writing about the problem.
On April 05 2019 08:37 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: You think EA would have formed an entirely separate team who's sole focus was the Frostbite engine. Not only to fix bugs, but also do QA and support to studios. Also those that are hoping for redemption with the release of Dragon Age; it will still be using the Frostbite engine.
On April 04 2019 15:44 deacon.frost wrote: Because BioWare no longer owns the company and can decide about things. BioWare doesn't exist anymore. The sooner people understand this the better. EA decided it's the Frostbite engine because they have the knowledge of creators and they can save monies. BW has to listen. End of story. If the leadership isn't completely useless they told EA it's no bueno and got a middle finger with deal with it.
Contrary to popular opinion EA has given Bioware way too leeway post-2010 to pursue projects without sufficient oversight or accountability. No one twisted Hudson's arm when he promised the developer could deliver ME3 in 16 months; EA neither nudged the Montreal team into tackling Andromeda by itself or chasing pipe dreams of procedurally generated worlds instead of developing a semblance of a game skeleton. Management decided to utilize Frostbite back in 2012-2013, although it is EA' fault for neglecting to teach engineers how to use it and spreading that knowledge throughout all divisions. Bioware imploded under its own incompetence, brain drain and arrogance rather than EA's interference.
On April 04 2019 21:56 Plansix wrote: We will see if it leads to changes. These bosses have bosses that cannot be happy. And there is no stopping employees from talking to the press these days, because video game development isn't seen as this magical dream job any more.
With how muddled the chain of command is within these companies, an internal audit -> a top-down restructuring of Bioware is probably the only surefire way to counteract the mismanagement and toxic work culture. Upper management will most likely begin circling the wagons if it is left up to them.
maybe, depends on the view. I mean if EA tries to push Frostbite through the company and the leadership either cannot or will not resist this, it's just widening the fault of BW itself.
CosmicSpiral's post kinda reminds me of Square flaunting their CrystalTools, only for that to end up being a huge waste of a decade and they ended up going back to Unreal in the last few years.
Granted, its not exactly the same because as he's said it probably does fine for the sports games + FPS, but still. What a frustrating reason to see a studio's last 2 titles flop.
On April 14 2019 07:10 seemsgood wrote: they a selling the game with a dirt cheap price(around 20$) right now.i think this is the right time to buy this game
On April 14 2019 07:10 seemsgood wrote: they a selling the game with a dirt cheap price(around 20$) right now.i think this is the right time to buy this game
Interesting, here in Brazil it's also on sale for 25 dollars, but this (pretty deep) discount is only for the PS4 version. I can't find the same for PC or XBox.
EPT
) not by BioWare.
