What the hell is going on at BioWare? No sooner do we get the news that Casey Hudson and Mark Darrah–BioWare’s general manager and executive producer for Dragon Age, respectively–are both leaving the company that we find out that Anthem is once again leaderless as Christian Dailey takes up the reigns of Dragon Age 4’s development.
Christian Dailey is the studio director for BioWare’s Austin Texas satellite. He’s gone from being in charge of Anthem’s live updates to being in charge of remaking the whole game, and now he’s in charge of making Dragon Age 4. We’re not saying he’s not qualified, but this does leave BioWare with a pretty big leadership vacuum and Anthem without anyone in charge at the moment.
We don’t know much about Dragon Age 4, but we do know that BioWare is sort of counting on that game to be a hit following Anthem’s dismal failure. We’ve seen some promising signs that Anthem 2.0 might be worth playing, but it’s really hard to get over a failure as spectacular as Anthem’s and still come out profitable on the other side.
There’s a very real sense that if Dragon Age 4 fails too, then BioWare will be done. It may already be done, considering all the turnover that BioWare has faced over the past year and a half.
So is Anthem dead again? Christian tweeted to say that Anthem is in the hands of “talented leadership,” but we have no idea who that might be. Previous updates from Christian on Anthem 2.0’s development seemed promising, but all these leadership shuffles can’t be good for productivity.
On the plus side for BioWare, it’s hard to screw up a remaster of Mass Effect, which will get its Legendary Edition next spring. As for Mass Effect Andromeda 2, well, things are so up in the air at BioWare right now that we’re definitely not holding our breath.
Source: Twitter
