Former Bioware developers have opened up on EA CEO’s recent comments about Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s relative financial failure where he stated that the Action RPG needed to have “shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives” to become a success in today’s Videogame atmosphere.
“In order to break out beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category” .
“Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played. However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market”, EA boss Andrew Wilson stated.
And recently, former Bioware lead developer David Gaider who was involved with the series from it’s early days to the making of Dragon Age: Inquisition, the previous entry in the series, has spoke out on EA CEO’s comments on Dragon Age: The Veilguard while offering advice to EA on the direction that’s best suited for the future of the venerable RPG franchise.
“There are certainly all sorts of lessons a company could learn from a game like Veilguard (I still haven’t played it, so I’m going off what other people have said), but ‘maybe it should have been live service’ being the takeaway seems a bit short-sighted and self-serving”.
“Not that there’s any shortage of that, when it comes to deciding why a game doesn’t do well. For the anti-woke crowd, for instance, there are woke games that do well and woke games that do poorly and only the ones that did poorly did so because they were woke. Says more about them than the game.”
This part of Gaider’s comments are clearly directed towards some specific conversations centered around gender identities in Dragon Age: The Veilguard which didn’t just came off as incredibly cheesy and juvenile but also extremely forced in the continuity of the narrative. Memorable and deep character-focused writing is a defining feature of all Bioware games and many narrative beats in Dragon Age: The Veilguard stood out as stark and alarming contradictions to the incredible character work present in the earlier titles.
Gaider also stated that EA should learn from the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 and developer Larian’s directions regarding the massive RPG hit.
“My advice to EA (not that they care): you have an IP that a lot of people love. Deeply. At its height, it sold well enough to make you happy, right? Look at what it did best at the point where it sold the most. Follow Larian’s lead and double down on that. The audience is still there. And waiting”, he said.
Also, Mike Laidlaw who was the former Creative Director of several past Dragon Age titles, also shared his thoughts on EA’s direction regarding the series.
“Look, I’m not a fancy CEO guy, but if someone said to me ‘the key to this successful single-player IP’s success is to make it purely a multiplayer game. No, not a spin off: fundamentally change the DNA of what people loved about the core game’ to me, I’d probably, like, quit that job or something”.
Laidlaw continued by saying that “Just thinking out loud, of course. Who’d be silly enough to demand something like that?
“…twice.”
All of these statements point out the lack of understanding from EA’s part regarding the long running RPG series. Firstly, Dragon Age is not a new IP which needs massive re-invention to make itself relevant in the gaming demographic cause it already has a large and dedicated fan base who buy a new title from the series with the sole expectation that it’ll hold true to the standards which were prevalent in the earlier games.
Bioware is currently focused on the next entry in it’s Mass Effect franchise with many of the series veterans joining the development.
