Anthem Shows That It’s Not Always the Publisher’s Fault
On Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier posted an article detailing just how much of a trainwreck EA and Bioware’s newest AAA live service Anthem actually was behind the scenes. In the past couple of years, it’s been the norm to usually blame the publisher for when most things in AAA development go awry (as seen with both Star Wars Battlefront debacles and Destiny.) Usually, the higher-ups in the publishing company will try and shift the core focus of the game to match modern gaming trends or even try and disrupt it via additional monetization or cutting out integral story content to use it later on down the line as additional content. With Anthem though, it’s not so black and white.
It turns out that Bioware had much more freedom to do what they wanted to do with the project. Due to upper leadership problems, and not having a clear direction, the project ended up suffering. I’ll be covering some key points, but not everything mentioned by Kotaku. The article itself goes into incredible depth, so check it out here. It’s definitely worth a read. With that being said, let’s take a look at this mess.
1. Pre-Production
Remember that beautiful and dynamic demo that EA showed of Anthem back at Microsoft’s E3 2017 conference? It turns out the version we saw wasn’t real. It didn’t really exist. Anthem started pre-production back in 2012 and only entered full-on production in October of 2017. around October 2017. This means the game only started full-time development 5 ½ into its 7-year development cycle!
This comes down to the project leaders constantly changing what the game would be. Everything from a more bitter survival game to its current state as a mech-based looter shooter. The fact that these leads constantly kept poor communication with their team is stressing as all hell for the team. Imagine you’re creature or character designer for this game and are constantly afraid that everything you’ve been designing for a couple of months can be thrown away at any moment because it no longer matches what the leads want for the game. The kind of un-needed stress that this caused many employees during the 7-year dev cycle of Anthem is frankly disgusting and makes those in charge of it look incredibly unprofessional and inept to the mental damage they’re causing their employees.
By this point, EA had become upset with Bioware’s failure to get any part of Anthem off the ground that they forced the release date of February 22nd, 2019. This resulted in bringing on Dragon Age Producer Mark Darrah, who along with EA, was responsible for getting the Anthem team in gear.
EA’s frustration is pretty justified. They had put a tremendous amount of time, money, and faith into Bioware, only to find out that 5 ½ years into development that they still have barely anything to show for it. Usually taking a year or 2 to plan a big project isn’t too unheard of, but once that time is more than half of its cycle, I think it might be time to switch gears to a different project.
2. Gameplay
Can you Imagine Anthem without its trademark flying mechanic? One of the sole things most reviews could agree on was the thrill of choosing the Javelin of your choice and flying wherever you wanted to. Well, turns out Bioware could, and they almost completely abandoned it! This wasn’t a one-time thing either, as Bioware constantly struggled internally to keep and drop the much-loved mechanic due to control concerns. It also didn’t help that every time they’d drop or bring back flying that the design team would have to constantly re-design the world so that it could feel more seamless to have it in the game.
The result of this ends up being a game where it’s fun to fly around, but disappointing due to there not being much that takes advantage of the mechanic. The fact that the leads of the project could never fully come to an agreement on a very integral part of the game is incredibly alarming. It shouldn’t take 5 ½ years to decide on something like this, especially if they want it as one of the foundation pillars of their game.
On the other hand, it’s no secret that the tomb trials are one of the most heavily criticized aspects of Anthem. They’re said to be nothing more than monotonous and unnecessary padding for a game that already felt light on content. Was this intended by Bioware or perhaps one of their many oversights during the project’s hell induced cycle?
To no surprise, they weren’t a mistake. Knowing about the lack of content and short length of the game and the release approaching, the team chose to add the trials, but not without an internal fight. It’s absolutely ridiculous that because they wasted so much time into what they wanted this game to be, that they fundamentally failed at really putting anything substantial into it. Even worse, there was infrastructure in place to also have time gates in which the player would have to wait days to get past. Here’s a question: If they realized that players would grow tired of the tombs repetition, why anger them further with a time gate? At that point, you’re just asking for your player base to hard quit.
Repetition isn’t always a bad thing. Rare’s Sea of Thieves is a personal favorite of mine, and the game released light on content as well. Where Rare was able to succeed, however, was that even though the voyage missions were relatively the same, the fun and excitement came from what happened on the trip to our destinations. Whether it was getting attacked by an enemy ship, finding shipwrecks underwater, or even fighting a Kraken, there was always something new. The area where Sea of Thieves draws the line though is that nothing is ever forced on you. Anthem, on the other hand, constantly has you doing busy work to distract you from a game and world that is mostly barren.
3. Destiny
Destiny is a game similar to Anthem. Both are incredibly ambitious projects that each company has spent several years developing. They’ve each had incredibly rocky starts and mismanagement, but they do diverge. Bungie has been steadily learning from all of their mistakes with Destiny to help shape it into a better game. You’d think that after its release that Bioware would be closely paying attention to what was going on and constantly tweak and learn how to craft a better Anthem from Destiny’s faults. If only it were that easy.
Turns out that Destiny was the biggest no-no word for the project leads as they would constantly become angered anytime the live service was brought up. The leads were so convinced that what they were doing was so far removed from Bungie’s looter shooter they wouldn’t hear a thing about it.
There’s so much in Anthem that could easily have been improved if they’d been able to learn from Destiny. These things may not have been solved overnight, but seeing as the game was in production long enough to see 2 Destiny titles released, I’d say there was plenty of chance to right Anthem’s wrongs. Some things include but are not limited to; gun variety, mission structure, general online stability, engaging NPCs, and of course, loot drops.
Imagine you’re a gameplay designer and not satisfied with the loot drops in Anthem or how the guns feel. Trying to bring these problems up to the higher-ups and trying to build off of Destiny would get you the cold shoulder and sent off back to your cubicle. Now with no real leads on where to take these elements, it all comes down to crossed fingers and hoping for the best.
At the end of the day, Schrier’s article is eye-opening in many ways. So often these days when a game doesn’t turn out as planned, it’s easy for everyone to point fingers at the publisher and scream foul. Rarely do we realize that a lot of times it can also result from a directionless leader within the developer instead. All that was asked was for Bioware to admit responsibility and promise to learn from their mistakes. I guess it’s sad that they didn’t then.
Only a couple of hours post-Kotaku article, Bioware posted their own response to the tale of tragedy with deflection. Instead of taking responsibility for their actions, they tried to take the article’s call for change within the company as a toxic attack on the company as a whole. This is incredibly discouraging as the 19 employees re-telling their tale of terror and anxiety were attempted to be made light of or dismissed.
It’s never fun to watch a respected developer lose their way, but that is sadly what is happening with Bioware. I never want to say that something is damaged beyond repair, but for now, the “Bioware Magic” that the company insists carries them, is no more. I don’t think Anthem is completely lost though. Just like Sea of Thieves, No Man’s Sky and more, If Bioware really listens to fan feedback then they can improve the game in future updates. Hopefully, someone high within the company finds a way to address the problems plaguing them. Only then can they rekindle that magic.
