Final month, EA introduced it could shut down BioWare’s Anthem on January 12, 2026. And now, after a rocky six years for the sport, its govt producer Mark Darrah has come ahead to share particulars on precisely how Anthem got here to be, and what went improper within the course of.
In part one of a planned multi-part video series, Darrah spends an hour strolling viewers by Anthem’s growth as he understands it from 2011 by the second he took over as govt producer in 2017. Admittedly, his perspective is not 100% full, as Darrah was not working instantly on the sport all through a lot of this time. However as a higher-up at BioWare and eventual govt producer, he was nonetheless positioned to see much more than most.
Darrah was solely govt producer for the ultimate 16 months of the sport’s growth. Even so, he opens the video by taking possession of Anthem’s failings and struggles:
“A few of this video goes to appear like I am making an attempt to shift blame round, however in the end the accountability for this sport does largely relaxation on me,” he says. “I’ve an inventory of those who I will not share that I additionally really feel share blame on this venture. Virtually everybody on that listing is extra senior than me. The staff labored actually arduous on this sport, the staff put numerous wonderful work on this sport, and there are issues which can be superb on this sport even now.”
Darrah goes on to stroll by the primary six years of growth, outlining plenty of pitfalls Anthem bumped into alongside the way in which. He talks about Anthem’s authentic conception at a time inside EA the place its executives believed single-player video games have been now not fascinating, leaving BioWare in a difficult place as an traditionally single-player-focused studio. BioWare lead Casey Hudson’s early imaginative and prescient of Anthem, he says, was to do BioWare storytelling in a reside service, at all times on-line format, and he proposed they provide you with a brand new, never-before-seen enterprise mannequin to do it. That is how Anthem initially bought momentum internally amongst EA’s govt management. As Darrah places it, “What if BioWare sport, but it surely may do FIFA numbers?”
Nevertheless, early on, Anthem bumped into hassle as a result of it struggled to get personnel to really work on it. At one level, BioWare employees have been proven a presentation meant for executives that outlined the sport’s extra reside service-y imaginative and prescient, and this put many builders off the thought. Moreover, as BioWare shipped Dragon Age: Inquisition, employees saved being moved to Mass Impact: Andromeda, leaving Anthem with out the employees Hudson wished.
One other hassle with Anthem highlighted by Darrah was the repeated shifting of what the sport really was. Whereas the unique pitch was to make one thing wholly distinctive, Darrah talks about how troublesome that really is when you’ll be able to’t provide reference factors to builders or clarify it to executives by way of acquainted touchstones. So over time, Anthem did really turn out to be extra like acquainted video games resembling Future and Borderlands.
And yet one more situation, says Darrah, was the extent of secrecy concerned. Whereas he acknowledges it is essential to maintain issues locked up to keep away from leaks, there is a sure degree to which he believes it is good to share particulars extra broadly. Within the early days, he recollects Hudson would strategically share sure components of Anthem throughout the wider group, which allowed him to create pleasure and collect suggestions. However when Hudson left, nobody stepped into that function, and Anthem grew to become aggressively secretive. Consequently, Darrah says, it was simpler to hand-wave points, tailor messaging to a really small group of people that have been extra prone to groupthink.
Darrah additionally tells a reasonably pointed story about how being too particular about expectations too early on can lead to catastrophe. This is his full recounting of why Anthem did not have six javelins when it launched:
In a reasonably early design doc, Anthem said that it was going to have six javelins. The place did this quantity come from? It principally bought pulled out of somebody’s ass. I suppose to be extra honest, it was successfully damaged down like this: We’re going to have mild, medium, and heavy javelins, so we’re going to have two of every form…and sadly this quantity, six, bought offered in early 2017 to EA executives, that Anthem was going to have six javelins.
Fairly shut to that presentation, the staff realized that it could not do six javelins, for 2 main causes. One, as a result of it could not fully determine how to differentiate six completely different sorts of javelins, but additionally as a result of it realized that it did not have time to make six fully completely different archetypes of gameplay. So now, the staff is compelled to current that no, in actual fact they are going to have 4 javelins at launch, and although that six was primarily based on nothing, was primarily based on a quantity we stated as a result of it form of appeared fairly logical on the time, however there’s nothing behind that, grew to become a supply of immense stress and anxiousness from the executives.
I would not be stunned to discover out that one of many causes that all the pieces got here to a head in 2017, with the huge adjustments that occurred on the venture in 2017, culminating in me taking up the venture, I would not be stunned to be taught that this was triggered by this variation from six javelins to 4. Once more, that quantity six was primarily based on nothing, but it surely was seen because the staff falling aside.
Darrah goes on to say that he remembers one of many reduce javelins was a tanky paladin javelin that was extra of a assist class, whereas the opposite was a medium-class that he can not keep in mind in any respect — highlighting how nebulous the thought was to start with.
Towards the top of his video, Darrah talks a couple of push at EA in 2016 for all its AAA franchises to be “billion-dollar franchises”, which might have concerned Dragon Age releasing a sport each two years. This push can also be what sealed Anthem’s destiny as a reside service sport.
Darrah additionally cites three completely different events the place he instructed management he thought they need to push Anthem’s launch date out additional, let Anthem outline itself extra, ship Andromeda first, after which deliver Andromeda folks over to end Anthem. All thrice, he says, he was turned down.
You can watch Darrah’s full video here. He says he has at the very least an element two, and maybe additionally an element three deliberate.
Anthem finally launched in February of 2019 to middling opinions, with our personal reviewer giving it a 6.5/10 and criticizing the grindiness, lack of polish and selection, and mismatched story. It fell wanting EA’s gross sales expectations, and EA ceased energetic growth in 2021. EA will shut the sport down fully on January 12, 2026.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You could find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Acquired a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.