LogInDavid Gaider opened up to talk about the situation between two teams at BioWare and EA's unfair treatment.
BioWare
David Gaider, the creator of the Dragon Age series and a former lead writer at BioWare, had worked at BioWare for 17 years before leaving in 2016. Recently, he took to social media to share some behind-the-scene situations between the studio's two major franchises: Dragon Age and Mass Effect, as well as EA's attitude towards them.
In a string of posts on Bluesky, he pointed out that the two major teams, each working on a major IP under the studio, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, were quite divided due to their different cultures and couldn't get along well.
"The thing you need to know about BioWare is that for a long time it was basically two teams under one roof: the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team. Run differently, very different cultures, may as well have been two separate studios. And they didn't get along."
The division was quite obvious, and the company's solution to fix it was to"shuffle staff" between them, which didn't work out after years of attempts. This affected Gaider as well, as he was moved to the Dylan team, which was the new project of the former Mass Effect team in Edmonton, which later became Anthem. "The team didn't want me there. At all," he recalled.
BioWare was bought by Electronic Arts in 2007. How were both franchises treated by EA? Apparently, it faced a problem that multi-child families always need to deal with. According to Gaider, "EA *always* preferred Mass Effect, straight up."
"Their Marketing team liked it more. It was modern. It had action. They never quite knew what to do with DA, and whenever DA outperformed ME, ME got the excuses. If you ask me, it was always just shy of the axe since DA Origins."
This is not the first time he opened up to bring those behind-the-curtain happenings onto the stage. Back in 2023, he revealed that the experience before his departure wasn't that pleasant because writers at the company were "quietly resented" and viewed as a burden or obstacle.
After leaving BioWare, Gaider co-founded Australia-based indie game company Summerfall Studios in 2019.
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