[Kotaku] How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong (Jason Schreier article)

[Vanta Aurelius]

This article was incredible insightful, bewildering, and somewhat heartbreaking. Thanks jschreier for continuing to inform us not only on the woes of AAA game development, but the negative impact it has on developers and their families.

Man, it seems that the ability for a game engine to allow for rapid prototyping, and a requirement to always have a stable build of your game running, should be mandatory for AAA game development going forward. It seems like you can't put together a game this large and intricate without being able to see something in action at all times. How can you know an idea is bad, or need massive tweaking, in time if you can't see the game in action?

I wonder if the ill-conceived decision to have every game run on Frostbite has ended up costing EA more in the longer run than just allowing their devs to build their own, or license third party, engines?

 

[MP!]

I think we can all agree when I say...

OOF!

 

[AntiMacro]

I fucking hate Epic's guts but I know their support of UE3 and UE4 has been exceptional. There's a reason they are so beloved and their use widespread in the industry.

I had no idea they went as far as to make sure to have Japanese-focused support. They know what they are doing when it comes to engines at least. Thanks for informing me :).

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To be fair, Epic went through a long period where documentation on UE wasn't the best and game suffered because of it. Other people's games...not Epic's games. They've really improved their documentation and engine outreach team.

 

[Fastrun]

Frostbite
Frostbite
Frostbite

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It took me a second for some reason to get this.
"What is this even supposed to me-"

OH

 

[Sulik2]

Frostbite needs to go, if EA's teams could at least use a functional engine I think many of their major issues would clear up. If you can't make your vision work in the engine its hard to have any plan and stick to it in game development. Also, get new management.

 

[Swenhir]

• FIFA has sucked up BioWare engineers with past Frostbite experience because Frostbite is just that complex, while FIFA is as close to Battlefield as any non-DICE EA game is on the surface. Also, studio autonomy.
• BioWare wasn't sure about flying and apparently pivoted back to it in panic when failing an inspection.
• Austin being ignored on MP while maintaining an MMO because they're not housed in the original building.

Wow.

Frostbite woes with BioWare games and depression, I frankly expected if to a lesser degree, but this sounds like a complete WTF.

I wonder if Ubisoft development is anything like that.

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I doubt it. Historically, Ubi has had their shit together remarkably when it comes to listening to its artists and engineers as it seems. They made technical decisions pretty wisely - and besides, their engines and related engineers are in-house. That alone would have completely mitigated what happened with Frostbite and anthem where the two were separate with an apparently very inadequate documentation.

 

[Swenhir]

To be fair, Epic went through a long period where documentation on UE wasn't the best and game suffered because of it. Other people's games...not Epic's games. They've really improved their documentation and engine outreach team.

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Damn, you remind me. Yeah I recall that being a thing. Also, most tutorials and examples being either Gears or nothing, iirc. Correct me if I misremember.

 

[jdstorm]

Well I read that but it doesn't sound like a game EA would fund, it was just a cool prototype.

Seems that way, they need to revalue their approach to games, the days of games like dead space and the good BioWare RPGs are long gone.

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The Original vision is essentially Xenoblade Chronicles X but with TPS gameplay and western focus'd writing. We have essentially seen what a functional version of the Dylan concept looks like and aside from some polish issues XCX is a great game

 

[Duffking]

It's a story of a video game that was in development for nearly seven years but didn't enter production until the final 18 months

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Well, I was close.

 

[Deleted member 17207]

Weird how EA forces their dev teams to use Frostbite when all it's doing is bringing their profits down due to fucked up games.

The opinion that EA is shit and that they make terrible calls continues.

Fantastic article though, Jason (if you see this) - your work continues to be top drawer, top...drawer.

 

[Enduin]

You would think with a company as large as EA that they would put greater resources into a dedicated engine team that can support all of their studios if they really are pushing, explicitly or implicitly, for all their teams to use the same in-house engine. Pulling people from one team to another is mind boggling and expecting devs creating vastly different games in totally different genres to utilize the same engine that was purpose built for one specific game type seems obviously short sighted. Most especially as this isn't new news, this is like a decade now that we've heard about issues with contending with Frostbite.

 

[Armaros]

So many of those dev issues are huge red flags wow. That demo they made to please the CEO and was the basis of the E3 presentation is just down right fraud.

With fundamental issues present in the game you're looking at a FF14 like redo to fix everything.

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Problem is, there is no EA version of YoshiP to turn the ship around and lay down a definitive vision for the game and it's future.

What YoshiP pulled off was no less then miraculous, and an insane amount of hard work AND humility after FF14s failure.

The instant Bioware response shows they don't have that humility to right the ship

 

[TheZynster]

its really interesting to see that quite a few staffers wanted inquisition to fail. Most likely would not doubt these past few games with how shitty the crunch is, if many of them just said fuck this and didn't try hard to make sure the message got put out. The way that management handles there output is a shit show.

 

[Dragon's Game]

seems like a total management issue, Bioware needs to bring in

 

[Deleted member 5621]

Well I read that but it doesn't sound like a game EA would fund, it was just a cool prototype.

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The Bioware management should've stepped in early, instead of allowing a team to work on pre production of an impossible title for years.

 

[Turin Turambar]

I doubt it. Historically, Ubi has had their shit together remarkably when it comes to listening to its artists and engineers as it seems. They made technical decisions pretty wisely - and besides, their engines and related engineers are in-house. That alone would have completely mitigated what happened with Frostbite and anthem where the two were separate with an apparently very inadequate documentation.

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It always has been curious to me how they have three engines for games that on the outside they are all kind of similar, all open world action games. The Division, Far Cry, Assassins Creed. It sounds like a waste, an inefficiency.

But maybe using one engine for everything has also undesired drawbacks, and they know, that's why they aren't making EA's mistake.

 

[Wayfaerer]

Another great article from Jason.

The whole development sounds like an absolute nightmare.

 

[Doggg]

"unmemeable," lol

 

[AntiMacro]

Damn, you remind me. Yeah I recall that being a thing. Also, most tutorials and examples being either Gears or nothing, iirc. Correct me if I misremember.

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More or less, yeah. It was very much the Gears of War engine for quite a while. There were promises of milestones that were missed as well, which caused a few games issues as they needed to delay or retool to incorporate features that didn't arrive.

Those kind of growing pains seem like they're long behind them NOW, but I'm not surprised Frostbite would have the same sort of thing. What DOES surprise me is that - as an entirely internal engine - there's nowhere near the codesharing/toolsharing/documentation that there should be. If everyone just hacks together a fix, that engine is going to be stagnant forever.

 

[Rat King]

Rest In Peace Dragon Age. It was nice knowing you.

 

[Turin Turambar]

Also, Am I the only one who would like to play their first idea of game? Their online action/survival game in a harsh world full of dangers and environmental hazards? Go to an expedition to a volcano?

 

[The Silver]

The Soderland thing sounded like the kick in the ass they needed. Absolutely a failure of Bioware leadership, almost didn't have flying.

 

[ShiningBash]

Well, I was close.

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Lol, check out the comment right before yours. Completely on the money.

 

[Chronos]

Great article and sobering report. Hope EA and specifically BioWare can Right the ship. Frostbite seems like a total disaster and BioWare has wasted an entire gen fighting against their tools as opposed to refining and benefiting from them. Contrast this to CDPR who has spent a decade developing tools that are custom built to their needs and the stark difference in results is apparent.

 

[Hailinel]

The Original vision is essentially Xenoblade Chronicles X but with TPS gameplay and western focus'd writing. We have essentially seen what a functional version of the Dylan concept looks like and aside from some polish issues XCX is a great game

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It's kind of funny in retrospect, because when they first showed off Anthem, XCX was the game that immediately came to mind. I even joked that Bioware was making their own XCX. I wonder if Bioware was at all aware about the conceptual similarities.

 

[AntiMacro]

seems like a total management issue, Bioware needs to bring in

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What is Benzies doing these days besides suing Take Two...I think that suit is still ongoing?

 

[Superman2x7]

This article, wow!!! Its disheartening to read. What happend to them!? Was it the move to the next generation of consoles? They weren't like this before hand.

 

[Deleted member 47843]

Really good read. Even more troubled development than I thought. If anything, it's amazing the game is as good as it is given that development hell. For all it's flaws, my buddy and I are still having a lot of fun with it and like it more than Destiny just because we find the combat (and the flying) a lot more fun.

I hope they get time to improve it to the extend Bungie with did Destiny 1 and 2, Ubisoft did with The Division and Blizzard did with Diablo 3. The core gameplay is damn fun IMO, they just need to make the loot better, add variety to end game content and have expansions with better stories. All doable IMO, if given the time and resources.

 

[Dragon's Game]

What is Benzies doing these days besides suing Take Two...I think that suit is still ongoing?

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October 1, 2018, it was announced that Leslie Benzies' new company was called Build a Rocket Boy Games


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everywhere_(video_game)

 

[Cpt.Underpants]

"unmemeable," lol

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BioWare Magic

 

[Swenhir]

More or less, yeah. It was very much the Gears of War engine for quite a while. There were promises of milestones that were missed as well, which caused a few games issues as they needed to delay or retool to incorporate features that didn't arrive.

Those kind of growing pains seem like they're long behind them NOW, but I'm not surprised Frostbite would have the same sort of thing. What DOES surprise me is that - as an entirely internal engine - there's nowhere near the codesharing/toolsharing/documentation that there should be. If everyone just hacks together a fix, that engine is going to be stagnant forever.

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Indeed, it seems like the devs are doing things as best they can but the wider process is completely FUBAR. For example, I wonder if the fixes and internal developments even get integrated properly into a branch or mainline engine by the people at DICE. If I had to venture a guess, it's that when people refer to hacks, it's this kind of stuff they refer to.

By the way, thanks for the small history lesson on UE3.

It always has been curious to me how they have three engines for games that on the outside they are all kind of similar, all open world action games. The Division, Far Cry, Assassins Creed. It sounds like a waste, an inefficiency.

But maybe using one engine for everything has also undesired drawbacks, and they know, that's why they aren't making EA's mistake.

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Nooblet's post a few pages back actually goes into that if you want. In a nutshell, modular frameworks and great communication instead of whatever the hell kind of resource allocation and process they had on anthem.

 

[StrangeRoboMemory]

Great artice, what a massive disaster.

 

[Hyun Sai]

By "choice", I assume Bioware leadership wants to move up the corporate ladder which encourages them to use Frostbite.

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My take on this as well.

It's certainly in better shape than Destiny was upon its debut despite suffering the exact same issues in development.

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Having played both at launch, this couldn't be more wrong. Destiny was light on content, never technically broken.

 

[Randdalf]

Building DA4 on the Anthem codebase gives me pause, if there's 6 years of accumulated hacks around Frostbite in there.

To be fair, Epic went through a long period where documentation on UE wasn't the best and game suffered because of it. Other people's games...not Epic's games. They've really improved their documentation and engine outreach team.

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I've only recently started working with Unreal, and the support is excellent. You can ask a question on UDN (the private developer network) and Epic will always respond quickly, and with someone who knows what you're asking about. Sometimes even the developer who wrote the feature.

 

[MYeager]

Also, Am I the only one who would like to play their first idea of game? Their online action/survival game in a harsh world full of dangers and environmental hazards? Go to an expedition to a volcano?

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I also would like this game

 

[Hailinel]

This article, wow!!! Its disheartening to read. What happend to them!? Was it the move to the next generation of consoles? They weren't like this before hand.

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Seems like a combination of:

1. Engine tech not being what the team needed for their design.
2. Massive incompetence and indecision in Bioware leadership.
3. Too many departures of key personnel with poor transition of responsibilities.
4. Ego in the belief that "everything would just work out" because they're Bioware.

 

[Nano-Nandy]

Wasn't Garden Warfare 2 made with Frostbite? At least something great came out of that outside Dice's own games.

 

[Deleted member 4541]

RIP Destiny.

 

[Arklite]

Indecision, mismanagement, and Frostbite. This is an almost mirror image of what happened to Andromeda.

Amazing to read that even within Bioware they saw their teams as A tier, B, and C tier (Montreal being C) of quality that led to dismissive leadership.

 

[Kthulhu]

I really hope this sent a signal to management not to let people burn out like that. The industry needs unionization badly.

 

[Mr. X]

EA/Bioware should read the article and patch the statement.

 

[Armaros]

Seems like a combination of:

1. Engine tech not being what the team needed for their design.
2. Massive incompetence and indecision in Bioware leadership.
3. Too many departures of key personnel with poor transition of responsibilities.
4. Ego in the belief that "everything would just work out" because they're Bioware.

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The fact that they didn't get direct support from the studios that directly run Frostbite development is crazy.

A game of that scale cannot be make smoothly without constant work on an engine like that.

 

[Demacabre]

EA/Bioware should read the article and patch the statement.

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The Day 8 Press Release will solve everything.

 

[sinny]

I still don't understand how Inquisition got so many GOTY awards, it deserved the kind of reviews and press Anthem and ME:A got.

 

[machinaea]

But maybe using one engine for everything has also undesired drawbacks, and they know, that's why they aren't making EA's mistake.

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It absolutely has*, which is why there isn't one single strategy to rule them all**, and ultimately these questions are quite difficult (and you may never really end up knowing whether you as a company made the right one, because you don't have an alternative outcome to compare it to) - efficiency in the name of effiency is bad, it should always be results-oriented and "optimizing" production with decisions like unifying engines can easily end up being a net negative if made on the wrong assumptions and without a meaningful goal (anyone caring about pure efficiency needs to move from 1980's and get with the times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)).

*including, but not limited:
- game engine being too broad-purpose to achieve different visions leads to the tool ultimately not being the best at building a specific kind of vision
- core limitations
- the team being uncomfortable with the workflows designed and set by the engine team (teams in game development have massively different ways of actually creating in-game content, and friction there is extremely costly) and that is very difficult to change with a common engine
- it almost certainly adds layer(s) of management to request and/or make changes to the engine in support of the project, reducing iteration and decision-making time
- it leads to a lot of hard prioritization work for engine team and it's leadership, and that work requires immense amount of time (the triage process needs time to be done well, and it must not thought as something that easy/quick to decide and manage on the spot)

** however there are also considerable upsides to having a shared engine, which I won't have time to delve in now, but certainly enough that the suitable strategy for any company/game isn't obvious, but rather a lot of planning, risk management and simply taking risks, sticking with them and learning from the inevitable failures.

 

[steejee]

Hell of an article.

I stopped buying Bioware games after Mass Effect 2 (though that was because I didn't care to play ME3 given how cornered the story was) due to the EA buyout and don't regret it at all based on what's come out since. While there's a lot of internal Bioware issues going on in that article, there's definitely a fair number of interjections by EA that appear to been the core problem.

Based on what's said about Frostbite there, the engine woes alone would cascade into countless other problems - imagine working on a major defining feature for the game, only to have it cut because the engine wouldn't support it and couldn't be improved to do so. That'd be a morale killer. Combine with crunch and you're looking at piles of burnout for no output.

 

[Maneil99]

I'm glad they got it done and came out the other side with a fun game. Can't wait to see how the game improves. It's certainly in better shape than Destiny was upon its debut despite suffering the exact same issues in development. They can absolutely make it something outstanding. Hopefully voices highlighted here get more consideration after this for the sake of everyone who works there.

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I don't see how anyone can think it's in better shape then Destiny 1 was lmao.

 

[Chronos]

The game was still in pre-production when they showed off the E3 reveal trailer? Fuck!

 

[johancruijff]

I mean did you miss the part where he's the reason they put flying back in

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He's the reason they put flying back in tho...

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Well, yeah. That's how anything in a big company works, you need to impress X executive enough that they'll give you resources and not kill off the product.

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just found it funny that he's the reason Frostbite has been adopted by everyone at EA and that that during christmas holidays just said "this is crap, gimme something pretty&shiny"

and then he bailed

 

[ArmadilloGame]

I wonder if the ill-conceived decision to have every game run on Frostbite has ended up costing EA more in the longer run than just allowing their devs to build their own, or license third party, engines?

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I have no doubt that is the case. But to an exec on the highest level, it makes perfect sense, even if there will be "growing pains." It blow my mind that, 3 bioware games later, Frostbite hasn't been updated to have the tools to be a more universal engine. If EA wants all their games to run on one thing, make that thing good at everything generally and easily updatable to work in new tools as they are needed. It's been 10 years since Frostbite first got made and almost a full gen since Frostbite became mandatory. If devs are still having problems making the game they want, that's criminal negligence on the part of the engine team.

Frostbite + EA business priorities + Bioware's leadership vacuum = papa EA is not far from killing another studio. We all "jokingly" said that Anthem would be Bioware's last game if it failed. I think DA:4 seriously is that case. If the ship isn't righted in a serious way, the studio is done.