There’s a common thread amongst former BioWare developers: They are proud of what they worked on, have a lot of love for their former studio, and they have few good things to say about publisher EA. For understandable reasons.
David Gaider was with BioWare for a long time, joining the studio after the success of Baldur’s Gate. He started as a writer on Baldur’s Gate 2 and worked his way up to lead writer for Hordes of the Underdark, Neverwinter Nights’ best expansion. But he’s best known for Dragon Age.
Thedas is Gaider’s creation, and he served as lead writer on Origins, Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, before leaving BioWare in 2016. He also wrote several novels and comics based on Dragon Age. “It was my baby,” he tells us.
This is one of the reasons that the chances of him playing The Veilguard were always going to be slim—”no matter what”.
“Whether it was successful or not, it was always going to make different choices than I would have made for it. The team took it, and they did their own version of it, and I don’t really want to see what’s changed. It’s totally selfish—I just don’t want to see what they’ve done with my baby, good or bad.”
Regardless, it was not successful. At least not in the way, say, Inquisition was. It sold well and had plenty of positive reviews, but it’s never been able to escape its Mixed user review rating on Steam, and it didn’t meet EA’s expectations.
EA’s expectations, of course, are part of the problem.
One of the other reasons Gaider hasn’t played it is that he knows “too much about what went on behind the scenes,” characterising development as an “ordeal” where EA “handicapped” the team right from the beginning.
“Electronic Arts really did a number on them in terms of setting them up to fail, honestly. From everything I’ve been told about the game, it seems like that’s exactly what happened. It didn’t deliver on a creative level. It didn’t deliver the sales. That’s part of what EA likes to do too. They require a certain level of sales, and if you don’t match that, it doesn’t matter how good the game is. If it underperforms, you’re essentially dead.”
The Veilguard was not a great Dragon Age game—or at least it failed to capture what I found special and exciting about the series. And a great deal of the blame must be placed on EA’s shoulders, as a company that is almost pathologically incapable of understanding what players want.
Take, for example, CEO Andrew Wilson’s assessment of The Veilguard’s failings. Was it because the quality of the writing took a dip? The shift to action-RPG? The companions who showcased a complete lack of agency? No, says Wilson, it’s because it wasn’t a live service game.
EA didn’t just set up The Veilguard to fail, it also threw BioWare under the bus when the predictable happened, while completely misunderstanding what went wrong in the first place.
Unfortunately, Gaider hasn’t had a smooth ride since leaving BioWare. He joined Beamdog and pitched a Planescape: Torment sequel to Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, which they liked but refused to fund. He’s now creative director at Summerfall Studios. Its first game, Stray Gods, unfortunately launched around the same time as Baldur’s Gate 3.
“Not to suggest that Stray Gods was in any way competition, but Baldur’s Gate 3 came out and was such a huge hit that it was all anybody could talk about,” he says. “So whatever chance there was of Stray Gods getting noticed disappeared.”
Gaider is now working on a heist RPG, and while publishers have been enthusiastic about the pitch, nobody is funding it yet. Gaider says it’s “make or break” for the studio.
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