A BioWare Insider Explains What Went Wrong | Mark Darrah (Dragon Age, Mass Effect)

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This is a game about gathering a bunch of other characters with personalities that you're talking to. And that's really what defines BioGames, well, honestly, forever. It's so obvious, so you don't write down buyer is about telling stories through characters. You write down our games have to be really big. The things you said now become the center of your studio. And the thing you didn't say, which was the center, gets lost forever. Looking back now, all evidence pointed to the fact that you shouldn't make a game like Baldur's Gate in the late 90s. You don't know what you're doing. None of you have made a game before. That ignorance just leading to success. So I think there is power in not knowing any better. Or knowing better and doing it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

So what you're about to hear is one of the most detailed accounts of what was going on inside the Mega Studio Bioware, from its meteoric rise of the early days of Boulders Gate, through to its kind of troubled recent years around Anthem and Dragon Age Velgarde. And this insight is coming from Mark Darrow, who worked at Bioware for more than two decades as a senior and executive producer across so many of its most iconic video games. Bioware was formed in 1995, its first game being Baldur's Gate, and what followed was a litany of hits, including Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic, and of course the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series. The company has, however, not been without its highs and lows in the case of never forgetting what your North Star is, and Mark talks in great detail about what that was for Bioware. And why staying focused on one thing at a time is one of the hardest lessons that Bioware has ever had to learn. We also talk about the future of gaming and how the coming months are really going to determine what that looks like with the release of Grand Theft Auto 6. And Mark was extremely generous with his knowledge, his background, and his experience at Bioware. Please join the Patreon, you can do it for free or as a paying member for bonus content. My name is Stephen Lake, and welcome to the examined game. It's something I just always like to ask. I'm interested in what people are playing like right now, you know, if if if you're playing anything at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Yeah, the summer is always um tricky for me. Kids are off school, um, there's just a lot of things going on. So it's been uh pretty I play Factorial with my son. Uh so that's the only thing I've been playing recently. Um I guess I'm still surprisingly playing um Tacticus, the uh the mobile free-to-play Warhammer 40k game on my phone. Um, but other than I'm just thinking, is there anything else I'm playing? I think everything else has kind of fallen away for the summer. Um I have a bunch of things in my back catalog. Uh I a shocking number when I looked, which have zero hours played on them. So um when I have a bit of time, I should probably at least put an hour into a bunch of those games just to just to get a sense of them. Because I do tend to um I do tend to browse a lot of games, like buy them when they're on sale on Steam, play them for an hour, and then set them aside. Um it's it like what I used to do on Xbox was I would play a game until I got 100 achievement points, so basically 10%, uh, and then set them down. But then I hit a couple of games where you had to play the game for an excruciating length of time to get to 100 achievement points, so set that aside.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Any any that popped to mind that on that zero hour that you're thinking I've got um Yeah, I mean, I I I was surprised.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

I thought I had played Dwarf Fortress, but I guess I haven't because it was sitting in that list. Um uh that one actually caught me by surprise. Um uh let's see. Oh, yeah. Okay, well, yeah, some of these are so like I'm just looking here, like the two Star Control, Star Control 1 and 2. Like that's obviously wrong, but I guess it's not wrong because because I guess I haven't played them on Steam. I don't actually even know why I own them on Steam, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Games just find their way into our Steam library.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Yeah, like now that I'm looking at the bottom here, I'm like, okay, like I definitely played Vermintide, so like why is it at zero? I don't I don't know. I don't know why. Like, I'm guessing I played a bunch of games through other forms, and then they just somehow ended up on my Steam library. And then I've got a few games I'm seeing that are actually from contracts I did. So games that aren't even announced that are just showing up in my library.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Um and then I guess maybe I'm just curious on the on the other end of that scale, what are your sort of top-played games, the ones on Facebook?

SPEAKER_02 4:29

So Factorius by far, and then uh and then I've got a bunch of uh uh virtual tabletops, so so um um games that you know like that aren't even really games, they're like ways to play DD remotely. Um Civilization is uh Civilization 6, I think, is the one I've played the most on Steam. Um and then yeah, I guess the Dragon Ages because they've they've um because I played them on stream, uh, even though I like I basically hadn't I hadn't played them since they'd come out, and then I played them on stream a couple of uh like all the way through with Origins. Um but then I think I ended up having to buy some of the others on other platforms. Like I think I needed to buy I've got only a few hours of Dragon Age 2, but I think I was playing it on the EA app because it was through Steam. So it's kind of messy. I s my when I looked at my Steam library after you mentioned it, um, it is uh it's it's a lot more chaotic than I expected. Like there aren't games there that I expected to be because I'm I I guess I'm I guess I'm playing them on other platforms and not even realizing it. Um but yeah, my my um the amount I play games is very variable. Uh and I do go through times where I don't play very much that I that I browse and just kind of graze on on things that are coming out and consume media in other ways. Uh and then I'll dig in on something for quite a bit. But I've never um even Factorio, which I've been playing for a really long time, I I have just over just around a thousand hours in it. I think it might actually be under a thousand, uh, which I sh which was shocking to me. So I guess that I don't get the um uh I don't go as deep as um some people do.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Factorio is also my top played uh game of all time. Uh to I was actually talking about this um very recently to the point now that I actually I would always dip back into it, but it got to a point, especially after the DLC, that I almost like took it too far.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Like because it's so brutal, that one, and I I felt it starting to almost like mess with my head, just how like it's very complicated now since the GLC since the DLC came out, and um I like it still, like I like the expansion, but um um like I think partly the thing that keeps it under control for me is that uh my son's only allowed to play uh be on the computer a few hours a day, so so or not even a few hours a day, like less than that, like an hour a day. Um and um and so it puts a puts a boundary. It's his server, so uh so it um it puts a boundary on how much I can play it. I think otherwise that number would be quite a bit higher. So probably healthy for both of us.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah, everywhere. Can I just I just want to check actually because I didn't check before in terms of your microphone if you're coming through. Um I should be coming through here. That's on the Yeti, yeah. Yeah, on the Yeti. Okay, yeah, yeah. That's what I I just because I saw you have the headpiece. I read Yeti, so I assumed it was that's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Um I should I I only use this under it's not the best microphone, so I only use this.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Just a it's the nice little prop, gamer prop.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Yeah, yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Well, I was sort of uh, you know, well actually I I want to go back back, but actually something I wanted to ask you about, which is not on any particular timeline, but I started a new game recently called Esoteric Eb. It's like an RPG, you know, um it's it's sort of following a little in the footsteps of uh Disco Elysium, you know, where you're getting you know the different voices like in interacting with each other. But it was the first time in a little while where I'd been on a character builder screen, right? And I'm just so immersed in like every stat that I'm putting in. And uh there's no, you know, you're not dressing them or changing the face or anything, but you're picking a backstory. And I just wanted to ask you about that because like firstly, like for a lot of you know the games that you've worked on, that's the person's the first point of engagement of a game, right? But it seems to me what I caught myself doing was like so much of what was happening was going on in my imagination. And I was just curious on your take on just like the beauty of the character builder, and it's probably not necessarily going to come down to the definition or how much choice of noses you have, but there's something else going on there that is just sparking the player's imagination.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah, I mean, there is an immense amount of the the most powerful tool you have as a game maker is the player's imagination. And if you as we've moved deeper and deeper into Fidelity, especially triple A, you are um you are sticking away some of that imagination. So if I if my face is only gonna be, you know, 12 pixels tall, and uh, and you let me pick my skin skin tone, and I have like a million different skin tones. Like, okay, I can imagine that to be whatever I want it to be. I can be, I can be any race, I can be, but I could also be like, oh, actually, no, it turns out my entire face is covered by this huge face tattoo. If now my face is this big and I can see the actual pores in my skin, then it's like, okay, well, I guess you didn't give me tattoos, so I guess I can't have a face tattoo. Or it turns out you couldn't render certain kinds of skin tones, so I actually can't even imagine myself to be this particular ethnicity. Certainly, like earlier Dragon Ages had problems with darker skins, and so it's like, oh, actually, I can't make a character that looks like me, or a character like I want to imagine. So I think that um something that and then if you're gett letting me pick my backstory or or bits of my personality, you know, that lets me anchor so much of what then happens in the game off this little tiny seed you planted in the character creator. Um, you see this actually as well in um so older games or like games that are not in AAA that don't have a voice protagonist, it lets me apply a lot more of myself to my responses. Because if the response says, sure, I'll do that, uh if if if it's a voice protagonist and they say, sure, I'll do that, and you're like, oh wait, oh, I didn't realize I was being sarcastic. Um, but if it's if it's just a if it's just a line, then I can I can to a large degree apply a lot more of myself into what then occurs. Now sometimes it's gonna result in some dissonance because I'm gonna say, sure, I'll do that. And it turns out, oh, actually the line was written was assuming you were sarcastic and it's like what just happened. But um so I I do believe that that we need to embrace these opportunities to give the player places to put themselves into the character, especially in RPGs. And you you do need to the game needs to acknowledge that. Like if I said if if I in my backstory said I was a beat farmer, and then the entire game it never comes up even once, that isn't great. But if it comes up three times, it's like, oh right, the game cared about the fact that I was a beat farmer, and uh and it it fed it back to me, and then it I'm able to now take that seed which has sprouted a little bit and and anchor more and more and more off of that.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

I think that's a really good point, and I think and again, I don't want to seem or veer too quick into sort of cynicism, but again, that the promise of the character builder, right? And I feel like maybe I'm oversimplifying, but once you start the game, like one of three things is gonna happen. You're either gonna get your mind blown, you're gonna have a pretty good time, or you're gonna have a bad time, and then you're gonna drop the game. But all the promise is is there, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Yeah, like I find that I engage with character builders. So I either engage with character builders and I'm like spending, I'm gonna spend two hours in here and I'm and I'm fiddling with everything, I'm picking my backstory. I guess there's three instances. It's like I'm pit I'm I'm deciding what my nose looks like, and I'm deciding what my backstory is going to be, and I'm deciding everything. Um, or this the second is oh, I it and I and I can't really explain why I do one of these three things, but it but all three have happened to me. It's like the second is is okay, I'm just gonna min-max this. I've decided I'm gonna engage with this game as a as a numerical exercise. So I don't care what I look like. I'll be default, I'll be default shepherd or whatever. And I'm but now I'm like fiddling with the bars to try to make the math work out the best. Um and the third is that that I think it's usually the th the third is I'm not engaging you at all. I'm like, get me into the game. Um, I'm just gonna basically skip this. And I think the third is if I don't have enough context to understand at all what I'm getting myself into, um, which is the danger of trying to surprise the player too much, I guess, is if you it's like, oh, okay, make a character. It's like, well, wait a minute, what are we? Is it are we in space? Like, I don't know anything, like, what's the setting? What's the um, you know, which can be really interesting from the perspective of playing the game, because it's like like like having the player and the character both know nothing can be really interesting. Like if a game like Planescape or that, where you wake up and it's like, I'm I don't even know who I am. I'm just I don't remember anything. I don't know who the character is, the character doesn't know who the character is. We're fit we're figuring it out together. That can be really interesting, but if you then ask me to make a bunch of character creation choices before that, I don't n necessarily understand enough to make any of those choices. Like I'm deciding between being a beat farmer or a marksman or a uh ex or an Olympic level fencer. It's like, okay, those are very different things. I do not have enough context to make this decision. So in that case, it's like, oh, I I don't know. And you might be able to, with some players, get them to engage with the character creation on a second playthrough. But that's always a really dangerous thing to do with a feature where it's it's a feature that exists for people who play the game again.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Um, yeah, that's such an interesting reflection. I think on that esoteric air by and it's something I don't usually do. I'm just I'm the traditional stealth archer through and through. But I was like, I'm gonna be really strong, really charming, very observant, and really dumb. And it's been a really nice uh way of engaging. And again, because of that internal monologue, every time I fail an intelligence check, I say something really stupid, um, which is quite rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Yeah, I do like that, you know. Um I like games that allow you to be that, to be to have the charisma of a of a rotten potato, or to be as dumb as a brick, and have the game actually reflect that back at you is really interesting because um it like some players don't like it because they're they feel like, well, you're taking agency away from me. But I like that it's like, okay, yeah, you're you've decided to build a character in this way, so you've limited your choice palette, or you've expanded your choice palette because you've made yourself super charming, and even though you're dumb as a brick, people find you so charming that they're willing to let you get away with stuff that otherwise you wouldn't be able to.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Um well, it's been really fun so far. Um but anyway, so that was just sort of kind of my present tense. But I was it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently, and you know, I watched your video, you know, where you talked about Larry and sort of hitting their, I think you said like final form, you know, like I mean it's a couple of years old now, but like moving into AAA, right? And I'm uh maybe ask you to like go back to sort of like early Bioware days, and I'm just interested in how folks that were a part of these what was going on can articulate whatever the sort of magic sources that was going on that allowed a studio like that to start creating these these sort of early days. I mean, I don't even know if you call them they were hits in a way, but I'm you know, I'm not talking about the the down the line, I'm talking about like Baldur's Gate and Yeah, you know, it's hard to look back at a game like Baldur's Gate 1.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Because it was um there's a there's a couple of things. Games at that time didn't really sell. Like a million uh a game that sold a million copies was a massive runaway success. So these are so Baldur's games like Baldur's Gate 1 are but uh are successes, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

I mean, we would not have And that's sort of why I corrected myself to say not a hit, because that doesn't sound right in the context of what comes in.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Yeah, and like certainly they sold way worse than the games that came later, but also the market was way smaller. But also there were games at the time like Doom and things like that that sold um many, many, many times as much as a game like Brothersgate. But I suppose that's still true today. I mean, a game like GTA is selling many, many, many times a game like Dragon Age Inquisition. So maybe that's not different. Maybe what's happen- what maybe the difference is that successful in AAA has it's just 567x the sales. Um I maintain that a lot of the things that allowed Biower to make a game like Baldur's Gate was not knowing any better. All going looking back now, all uh evidence pointed to the fact that you shouldn't make a game like Baldur's Gate in in the late 90s. The the C RPG landscape was very um empty, like it was there basically was nothing. In fact, like the consoles were were really uh kind of d the king of the roost at the time, and most RPGs were Japanese RPGs being built in Japan. Um and you didn't this is pre-Diablo when we started, and then Diablo came out, and you're like, oh, yeah, and we had the whole discussion about is Diablo even an RPG, and um um uh so there was just a lot of there was just a lot of evidence saying don't make this. This is um this is not what the market wants, it's going to be very expensive, you don't know what you're doing, none of you have made a game before, um, and and just sort of that ignorance just leading to success. But honestly, when you look at Larian to some degree, I think you might be able to argue the same thing. There's there was there's a bunch of things. Yeah, like I mean they were making divinity, and they're like, you know, divinity the divinities did fine, not triple A, but like they did they did well. Um but to then say we're gonna make a giant D game that is uh that is going to um be like just huge. We're gonna spend as much as a triple A game, but we're gonna sort of spread spend it at a uh upper AA uh fidelity. So we're gonna have we're gonna be able to spread this money very wide, very big. It's like this is a giant game. Um we're going to have parts of the game ship in great shape, parts of the game ship kind of unfinished. Like it's it's there's a very strong parallel, I think, between Ballersgate 1 and Ballersgate 3 in terms of I think the sort of thinking. It's like, yeah, you all evidence said people don't really want this. Your other games are selling three, four, five million copies. You're spending you're spending enough money that you need to sell better than that. Um, but then you do it and it's like, oh wait, actually, no, your game of the year, and you're you sell a trillion copies and uh and you literally shift the discussion around an entire space in in uh video games into a different place, which is what happened with well, maybe not with Ballersgate 1, but by Ballersgate 2, that's essentially what was happening with BioWares. It's like the the um uh your the conversation is shifting because it's like, oh, okay. And that's what happened with Baller's Gate 3.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

So I think there is power in not knowing any better. Or knowing any or knowing better and doing it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

I think it's really interesting that being able to compare those things not just because they're obviously of the same same uh series, but and I can I can totally see that. I think it's interesting with a game like Borders Gate 3 because as soon as the success hits any of that risk element, you sort of forget that because it almost gets sewn into well, of of course it was gonna be this thing, but it's like And we haven't seen like we've yet to see uh I guess you could argue maybe exp.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Edition 33, but we've yet to see the next uh uh Ballersgate 3, like the another thing that sort of repeats what they did and does super well. So you could make this argument, and then I've made versions of this argument that maybe this is lightning in a bottle, maybe this is um maybe this worked for reasons that you can't necessarily repeat. I guess we'll see how the next divinity does from Larian. Um I I'm very curious to see because um it doesn't have the DD license, um, it doesn't have uh front realms, it doesn't have other things. Um I think it'll do well. Will it do as well? My guess is no, but um but it doesn't have to do as well either. So uh sometimes games sometimes games come out and they make a giant splash and then and then have virtually no impact on the wider um gaming development culture. Like something like Breath of the Wild is a game like that. Whereas it came out, it had a very long dev cycle, it did really well, it was really well received, but it didn't really then feed back into the overall development psyche of the game industry as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

And then so to sort of go back to say to Baldur's Gate 1, if you're saying there's that don't don't know any better, right? You know, is it which is I'm sure but there has to be someone banking on you don't bank on not knowing better, but someone's making a business decision that is like for you to do what you know, or again, maybe it's maybe at that stage they're not thinking too hard about it or they think extremely hard about it.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

So I think that I'm I don't want to undercut you know how much risk Ray and Greg are taking in the late 90s, but I I do think that there is something to be said with we are taking risk, but we're not dangling by our fingernails. So you you're you're developing in a way where like I mean when I started at Bioware, I didn't get I wasn't my salary is very low. So like there and teams are small. So the burn rate of Bioware in the late 90s was pretty modest. Um and I think that allows you to go longer, try more stuff without having to make sure that it's going to immediately pay off coming out the gate. You know, so much of development in AAA is we're doing this with the assumption that it's gonna sell at least let's say seven million copies. All our decisions are making are made with that assumption. So if you're doing something that might that we can't immediately point back to that, there's gonna be someone in the business department looking like, well, maybe you shouldn't make that decision.

SPEAKER_03 25:15

And I think that there's something to be said for we're making this we're not that's not that's not the way the decision is happening.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

It's not like Ballersgate going back to Ballersgate 3, quite expensive, quite an expensive game to make at the end of the day. But every step along the way, it wasn't really that expensive. It was because you're basically double A fidelity, triple A budget, you're able to be like very much every step along the way is a step that's taking you ahead. Whereas um if you're if you're in the Fidelity Death Dolt, if you're making a game with photoreel graphics, everything you add is so expensive. Like if you want to add another, I don't know, if you want to add like another talking cat, another cat into Ballsgate 3, that's an afternoon. If you want to add another talking, if you want to put a talking cat into GTA, that's probably gonna cost you $10 million. And there's something to like Ballsgate 1 at the time uh compared to the other AAA games, if we call it a triple A game, around it, is a kind of an ugly game. Like it's not, it's I don't think ugly is exactly fair, but it's a game that doesn't have high fidelity because it's very high. The characters are these tiny little sprites, and this is coming out at a time like it's up against games like StarCraft with with like these ridiculously good cinematics, at least for the time. Um, and the cinematics in Ballersgate 1 are literally the camera pointing from a hundred feet in the air down at these tiny little things with a few tiny few little cinematics. There's something there where it's where you are delivering content, maybe going back to the conversation about character, the character creator, is you are delivering content at a acceptable but lower fidelity. It leaves room for the player's imagination, it it uh allows you to experiment, it allows you to have content that a player never sees. You know, when this has been a problem uh in games that I've led more recently, it's hard to make a piece of content that most people won't see when that content's very, very expensive. When that content is much more modestly priced, you're much more willing to say, well, we'll put a cave behind this waterfall, and only 10% of players will even ever see it. That's okay. If that cave cost $20 million and has a cinematic and uh and and and and and then it's then you're feeling like, oh, well, we can't literally throw $20 million away because only 5% or 1% of the players are gonna see it. But Larian isn't having to make those kinds of decisions as much. Bioware in the 90s isn't making those decisions as much. It's like, yeah, we made this, we drew it. It took the it's the the level is the work of a week or two or several weeks, but it's just one little part of it. We can kind we we're we feel comfortable hiding it away, and maybe nobody sees it, and that's all right.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

You know, you you said like you said, Boulderscape one shouldn't shouldn't have worked, or there's no there's no evidence that that was gonna be the right next next thing. Yeah. Um so then what was it about it that that did work? What was it giving that that no one had an idea that people even wanted? And what I'm I guess curious about is what are the foundations that that is setting up for where Bioware is then gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Is this a game about gathering a bunch of other characters with personalities that you're talking to? It's not as sophisticated as games that would come later, like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, but it still it's like I'm gonna find a character and they have a backstory and um and they have wants and needs and they want me to do stuff, and if I don't do stuff, they're gonna leave. And that's really what um defines Bio Games, well, honestly, forever. I mean, the only even a game like Jade Empire, where we tried to not have followers, ended up having followers because we realized we didn't we couldn't make a game without them. Um that's that's what it sets in motion. That's probably a big part of what it provided that games and I'm someone's gonna someone's gonna come out and say that I'm wrong here, but uh, but when I think of games RPGs from before that, I guess I mean I guess you have the Final Fantasies. So I guess you do have I guess you do have RPGs that have characters with personalities before before that. But in C RPGs, often the characters were these sort of sacks of stats. They were they were there, but they didn't have as much to do or say or um uh or in input into the storytelling. So it so Ballersgate 1 provides um a uh a bunch of characters with personalities that you can interact with and have a converse conversations and they want you to do stuff, and that really is I think what set BioR up going forward. It's weird actually, because when you look back at it, Ballersgate One has the first I think the first two group uh followers you come across after Imouin are um pears, which is super odd. Like they join you, it's like Khalid and Jahira, and it's um who are the other two? There are another two, and it's like it's like which is odd because it's just weird that we're having group like pairs join your party. Um but I I think that's a big part of it. Going back to I think that there's actually so I said, you know, there was no evidence it was going to work, but I actually think the evidence against it working was actually really flawed, and and uh I like I think that you know the the the last big CRPGs were probably gold the gold box era stuff, um, for the like the second edition DD stuff for uh that was years and years before. So I think there was actually just not a lot of evidence either way.

SPEAKER_03 32:01

And I think that these days that's often used as evidence that it won't work.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

There's nothing there's there are no big, deep, top-down, crunchy tactical RPGs in triple A. Everyone else must know something we don't, therefore you shouldn't make it. It's like, or everyone's having that conversation. Everyone's saying, well, the fact that there aren't any means that there shouldn't be any. And that and actually, no, it turns out people do want this. Like there, I don't think there was um in in 1997 when I joined Bioware, I don't think there was actually any evidence saying you shouldn't make Baldur's Gate. But what there was was evidence of new kinds of games, like Doom, like these, like these new genres of games that were outselling the games in in that CRPG space that had come before. So you could look at that and say, okay, this is a genre that is dying or dead, or you could look at it and say, This is an this is a genre that um is underserved and maybe can do better, maybe can move, maybe the marketplace has gotten bigger. Maybe the re one of the reasons that Doom sold so much more than than uh the than the games before it is because the market's gotten bigger, not because there was a problem with those earlier games. Um one thing to that that uh um that was actually part of early BioWare strategy is is is that like one of BioWare one of one of one of the things that Ray considered BioWare's competitive advantage was a ability to make more, to be bigger, to do more. Um so that implicitly is saying be more expensive um to make, which is certainly I would say true. And I think you could apply that to Baldur's Gate 3 as well. Like when you sit down and list list it, like you just were sit down and like list everything in that game, that that's gonna be a super long list. And some of that is we get there by compromising on fidelity. Um, and we can talk about why I think that's a compromise more game should make, but like it's you're you're doing more, but I think part of it is also just like we're willing to spend more, we're willing to spend more time on this, we're willing to make seven cats instead of one cat. We're willing to to just we're willing to go a bit further.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

And that requires you to sort of be willing to ignore the tactical level ROIs and things.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

And so, and actually, I'll just a little mini rabbit hole or something that came to mind when you're talking about CRPG C vs, not VS, but like against Doom. I think that was something, you know, I was a big point-and-click fan, right? And I know that I feel like for a time they thought that point-and-click games were gonna be the sort of the movies of of video games and like Spielberg and the dig and um having games like Gabriel Knight with like proper like voice actors and these FMV games of Chris Walker, and then that genre kind of it obviously hasn't gone away, and it's it's a beautiful genre still, but it hasn't like like one of my questions would be like you know, CRPGs is the cornerstone of one of the biggest genres of of of video games now. Like you said, it's not maybe hitting like GTA or Call of Duty, but it's like gargantuan, whereas point and click has stayed where it is, um, sort of niche and smallish, and I don't know what my point is to that. I was just I was just thinking about those same genres that were kicking around and had a fighting chance around.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

That's an interesting thought, is um like I think what's happened with CRPGs is is and maybe this is m a little too biower-centric, but maybe I think this is true is that what you've seen with CRPGs is you've have you know wizardry, and then you sort of get and then you kind of climb you you you climb up in fidelity and and cost. So you get like you know, wizardry, bard's tail, um the goal box games, and then like Ballers Game. And then and then we make the switch to 3D. And so, and then it's like, okay, and so I'm almost feeling like and then if you follow Bioware and you we kind of follow this, like things get higher and higher fidelity and more and more expensive, and then and then we sort of reach the upper ends of what we can afford to make. And then it's almost like there's a a step back in terms of so if you so like if you compare, like I would say that what's happened with Bioware is that Bioware has increased its fidelity, increased its fidelity, increased its fidelity as a as a consequence of that increase in fidelity has narrowed its scope and narrowed its scope and narrowed its scope until it arguably has sort of stopped being, well, I don't even know, arguably, has stopped being a CRPG and started being something else, an action RPG or an adventure game or something else. And then somebody else has come along, in this case Larian, and said, Oh, actually, no, we can just we can just you you did this, we can just step down and make something with with that still looks amazing, but lower fidelity, and and we can get back to that that bigger scale. Um, and like so you start with a game that's big and then they skip smaller, and then someone goes, wait, we've gone too small, and it gets big again, and then it shrinks and it's big. And whereas I think with um with the FMV games or the is that it's hard it, I mean the fidelity has gone up, but it's been like this, it's hard to imagine that same kind of scaling. Yeah. Like, where do you go where with um with an FMB game, because they looked pretty good 25 years ago. So maybe they've stayed at the same level of saturation as they always had. I don't know. I'm sort of talking in a circle. I've never really thought about this because it's an interesting point. Like, like if I think of like I've I've played FMB, I mean, like there's some there, like there's some games on my like well, maybe not my top 10, but in my top 50, it's like, yeah, these and like, yeah, these are really interesting. I do wonder as well with games like that about they're always going to be relatively um small or not necessarily small, but spoilable. Like I do wonder with Twitch, like I think that that Twitch and streaming have affected different genres to different degrees. Um, the the a game like Uncharted, which is a four-hour-long spectacle of just the the highest level of fidelity, but you're basically it's it's essentially you're on a roller coaster. It's it's very high intensity, very high fidelity, but very short. That j those genre that genre has been decimated by streaming. Because like I could buy this, but the experience of me watching you play it on stream for six hours is very similar to the experience of me playing it for six hours. Whereas a game like uh an RPG where there's lots of branching, and it the experience is very different because I'm watching you make us decide to take the renegade path in in Mass Effect and screaming at my screen and angry at you, and then saying, okay, forget it, I'll play it myself. Um or the game or a game like Battlefields. Like it's a competitive game, it's a different the watching you play it is like watching someone someone play baseball. It's like, yeah, it's not the same as playing baseball. There's an ex-there's an experience there, there's entertainment to be had there, but they're very different. So I wonder if FMV games in these very if if certainly I I don't think streaming is why they never got big, because streaming is a relatively new thing, but that might be another pressure on them stopping them from getting big. I do wonder, like, I mean you you can imagine that maybe that's a place where someone might try to make an entirely AI-driven game, um, where it's like we uh it's it's like a choose your own adventure, but with AI generated video clips, as I don't know. I'm not I'm not super interested in experience such a game, but I could see someone trying.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

It's a good point of a genre because in terms of yeah. Again, just this not suggesting it's a good idea, but uh but if there's a genre that it could work with, it would certainly be that.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

Um Yeah, yeah, and again, yes, not not I I think that we're in a I mean I don't know where we're gonna end up with with generative AI, to be honest. Um, I think that there is legitimately a lot of very loud pushback on it right now from the game playing public.

SPEAKER_03 41:45

I wonder if that fervor will be maintained.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

My my assump and and again, I'm completely in that camp with those people, not interested in this in my games, but I do wonder if will that will get eroded bit by bit until it's not even really a part of the conversation anymore. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

It's uh yeah, I guess that's a remain to be seen. I mean, I think for me, I just it's it's because it's it's so difficult to envision what it could possibly add, you know, from a player, from a player position, because I'm sure on the back end there's people who well could do all this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Yeah, and I think and I think we'll see AI used for in fact we are seeing AI used for code, and I think people are less people have a less of a problem with that than they do with AI being used to generate art or generate writing. But I think that's maybe the thin edge of the wedge as well, and that will be used to then it's like, well, yeah, you don't care about it for code, but do you care about it if I use it to make an outline and then the writing's done by a human? Like, I just worry that it's going to be bit by bit by bit. The the the place where I keep hearing people think they want it is like, oh, I could literally talk to anyone in the town, but it's like, but you don't actually want that. Like, like actually think about what your experience would be in a town of 10,000 people, or even like a little tiny town. Let's make it really small, a thousand people, and you can talk to anybody and have a conversation with anybody. Most of those people are boring to talk to. You like that you don't want to talk to most of the people in a town, they're just there to be set dressing. So I I don't think that's a that's a feature that's that's often brought out of like, why would I want this? And and it's like, well, but you but you might think you want that, but you don't actually want that.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Well, if I if I wanted it, I can do I'll go and do that in real life, and I choose not to.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

Exact exactly. They the the the conversation you're having with rat random Peasant number 73 in your little fantasy town is not going to be more interesting than the conversation you're having with the barista at the coffee shop. In fact, it's going to be probably markedly less interesting.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Well, I think there's something as well about like even we we want we want to be to be bought in on the illusion, but I think a part of me always knows, especially when I'm playing an RPG, that I am being led to some extent because someone has designed this for me to be engaged with in a certain way. And what's always satisfying is when the game is kind of following along with me, but I know it doesn't have the ability to literally respond to me. Like it's all just pro programmed in. So I'm like, my God, they must have really thought about Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

And I mean, I do think that maybe not everyone. I certainly finding out a piece of art was AI generated for me undercuts its impact because the the effort is part of the experience. And I know that some people don't get that, and they're like, well, but it's a painting's a painting, it's a painting. If it doesn't, it why does it matter how it was created? But for me, it's like, well, but no, it matters. The the method is relevant to the impact. Um, so I don't know. I mean, the we'll see. Um, my feeling is that someone's gonna try it. Or maybe, I mean, people have already tried it, but uh, someone's gonna try it and it's something's gonna do okay, and then we'll see what happens after that. But I'm not looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

We'll wait and see. Um, so to come back to that sort of timeline, and you would you sort of started to answer a question that was gonna be my my next, and I was interested, say with Bioware, rather than looking at it game by game, but but looking at looking at a studio scaling, you know, and I wonder what the what you would see as the chapter markers, um, say if we've got Baldur's Gate one here, and then what is it that's leading, let's let's say up to like um Dragon Age Inquisition, you know?

SPEAKER_02 46:11

Yeah, so I think so the early days um is you know, Baldur's Gate, and um this is we're all in 2D. We this is um definitely uh a big part that marks those early days is very much you know, Byrors Bio is toolmakers, we're making the games to make the game, we're making the things to make the games, very much defines that all the way up through Neverwinter. So you could you could use you could put Neverwinter as a as a pivot point because that's really where we fully shift to 3D. Um, but I think it Neverwinter probably marks the end of the first group. It's like we're making tools and it kind of culminates in we made a tool that we actually released to the public, and um and um uh and and that's uh where like that's what really defines that that era. In that case, in those in those early games, you know, we you have the hints of character-driven storytelling, but we're a lot of what's going on in those in this time period is just we are making games that are giant, relatively thin, I would say. Like, you know, Ballersgate 1, Ballersgate 2 is there's a lot of content, but the content doesn't always go super deep everywhere. Like it's it's your your it's it's kind of like what it was based upon. It's it's kind of a um pen and paper, tabletop, RPG that you're experiencing through the computer. So you go to an area, you talk to the townspeople, you've killed all the giant rats, and then you leave never to return to this town. There's a lot of um there's a lot of that in that era. We as we move past never winter, now we're getting into Kotor and um and Jade Empire. Uh so Jade Empire basically marks we we are not making our own uh using our own IPs anymore. So we're now we that's when we completely shift away to to or sorry, to we're not using licensed IPs anymore. We've shifting away to using our own IPs. But um Kotor and Jade Empire, that's that's the pivot to consoles. So now we are saying um that we this is a big shift towards um being like like there's a little bit of chasing um uh sales to some degree because e at that time period consoles uh uh are are quite a dominant, quite dominant part of the marketplace. If you if you're not on consoles, you are um you are limiting your sales potential. It's still also a period where uh games kind of aren't everywhere. You know, Kotor and Jade Empire are ported to the PC, but console games don't sell that well on on PC. PC games, if they're ported, don't sell that well on consoles. Like the the two the two marketplaces are almost running in parallel. So that this is the time period where we I would say shift to more of a console focus. And that's also where we get you know, Kotor, very big step into cinematic storytelling. It's not you know what Mass Effect would become, but it's it's definitely saying we value fidelity in storytelling a lot more than we did in in Neverwinter. We're we are we are gonna make a big pivot uh into that. I think this is the time period where we stop like we're still making games that are telling stories through characters, but it's become so ingrained into the culture that we've stopped saying it out loud, which is a which is a problem, I think, because I think what happens so as we go forward as we move so past Jade Umpire and and Kotor. Now you're now you're into the so there's a brief period where Biower is trying to make four games at once, that uh that it collapses down to just Mass Effect and Dragon Age. So you enter into the Mass Effect and Dragon Age era, which is pretty much what defines the the the studio from 2008 until until well basically until 2024, and then it becomes just the Mass Effect era. Um but um uh and that's a time period where you so that so in the early days the the studio was legitimately broken in half because there was a lot of worry about um Unreal getting mad at us and potentially litigious if they felt like Dragon Age was stealing features from Unreal. So there was a there I like there's a there's a wall put up between the two franchises for quite a long time that so it's it people move, but not super senior people, not super technical people, and um, and so there's a lot of you really see it in Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age 2. There's a lot of weird convergent evolution happening where um so I remember doing an audit, I think it was on Dragon Age 2, but looking at Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect's tool sets. So Mass Effect very um Mass Effect very high fidelity um um but relative lower volume of of conversations and cutscenes. Dragon Age Origins, lower fidelity, higher volume of conversations and cutscenes. But when you actually looked at the tool set, it's like they were they were accidentally invented backwards. The the tools in in Dragon Age Origins seemed better suited to making higher fidelity cutscenes. The Mass Effect tool sets seemed able to make lower fidelity cutscenes more easily. It was just this weird situation because they weren't allowed to talk to each other until like basically that time period, right? Like after Dragon Age Origins, now we're looking. And it's like, so we basically we invented crabs twice, um, but not the right crab for the right situation. Um, so that after we get past Dragon Age Origins, now we're starting to say, well, actually, this is stupid. We can probably talk to each other, they're not gonna sue us, um, which is completely right. Is I like there I don't think there was ever a world in which Epic was gonna come knocking on Bioer's door and saying, You stole, you stole blueprint, which we were never gonna do, even like you stole, I don't even know what we would have stolen that would have made them mad at us, to be honest. Um and but now we start to so so remember when I said before we stopped saying that we tell stories to characters. Um you as you get into Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, you're it's it's subconsciously we still know this this is the case, but because we haven't been saying it saying it out loud, the studio has, you know, you just get a certain amount of churn. So you have people that are at the studio that that don't know this. Um because because they weren't raised in this in this culture, and so you start to get little hints of oh, actually we've forgotten a little bit how we tell storytelling. So you get big epic um um factions, factions, storytelling through factions, storytelling through epic plot lines, we start to deprioritize the characters a little bit, and it's like and then it's like, oh wait, then we make Anthem.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Can I just ask a question on that? Just specifically just comes to mind. When you talk about that that moment, so there's a bit of churn, and maybe there's more people. I mean I don't put what's there's there's people around that don't necessarily remember whatever that original selling point was. Is that a gonna be a pretty common tipping point for companies like Bioware, and I won't name other things, but you know, where where because I'm always interested in trying to work out what is the map that leads to the the early stages where it's like two years from now a project is gonna fall flat on its face, spear anthem or a Bethesda game, or yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

So I I think so, because I think that so um Bioware had a lot of like you know, let's talk about our visions, let's get posters made, let's get like I even have, you know, here's a here's like I've got this notebook. Um like it's you know, it's this is this is one of those from a long time ago. The best stories you can play, and you know, yeah, creating create the most engaging games in the world is one Bioware. Like, there's just a lot of like the Bioware did a lot of exercises to try to state its values, state its vision. But the problem is, and I see this at other companies as well, the ones that I've worked with and ones that I've just seen from the outside, is the thing that is probably the most important to you is the thing that's so obvious that you forget to say it out loud and write it down and carve it into stone. And so you um so uh I'll use a parallel example, but so we uh there are a bunch of different uh in video games, there are a bunch of different groups that do player segmentation. They're like, you know, I'm gonna tell you all the different players that exist. And you've got players that love storytelling, you've got players that love um action and competition and uh making money and like all this uh these different things. And they in in an in an effort to make their services worth paying for, they they they emphasize the differences between these groups. It's like storytellers care about uh immersive stories. Um uh people who love uh relationships care about romances. But what they do in the effort to of emphasizing to make things different, to make their service seem value, is they often massively deprioritize the things that all players have in common, things like progression, things like um, and I think that's what happens with studios as well. There's something that is the most important thing about your studio, but right now, in the early days of your studio, when you're re when that's happening, you it's so obvious that you don't write it down. So you don't write down buyers about telling stories through characters. You write down um our games have to be really big, or you write down it's about um uh it's about um f Fantastical worlds, or you write down like you don't and then and you forget to write down the one thing that actually matters. And you so you so what ends up happening is over enough time that the things you said now become the center of your studio, and the thing you didn't say, which was the center, gets hopefully not lost forever, but gets pushed to the side. So that's what I would say happened with BioWar, is like telling stories through characters was a center. But we didn't say it. We said things like, you know, world building and and uh uh epic stories and uh things that were similar, then this the center shifted to those new things. The telling stories to characters got pushed to the periphery. And then things were different, and then it took a long time to realize, oh, it's because we've forgotten about this thing, and then you and then it had Bayer had to start the process of actually now refocusing back on this thing that it hadn't said out loud ever.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

It's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 58:19

No, so I think when you look at Bethesda, I think that yeah, I think there's it's similar. I'm not entirely sure that I can quite articulate what Bethesda's center is exactly, but it does feel like they've they've they had something, they didn't say it, and it became something else that was related but different, and now they're they're like oops, and they're having to go like, wait, what was what was that thing? We've got to go find it again and go and pivot back to whatever that was.

SPEAKER_00 58:50

That's I was I was literally about to spoke with Nate Nate Perky Pyle, you know, who was worked on you know, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim, uh 76, and a bit of Starfield, and just talking about the space from like how does Fallout 3 you go from Fallout 3 to like a thousand planets, and maybe there's been a disconnect somewhere along the line, um, you know, a thousand planets to Starfield, the the exactly what what what you were saying, you know. I don't want to try and draw parallels where they where they're not, but it it seems doesn't seem dissimilar.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

Yeah, I agree, I agree, and I do think that you see this. Now, that being said, then the world changes. And studios that just say we are all about we are all about card-based card-based roguelikes, and if you if you just like if you make that center so strong and so loud, then what's gonna happen is that the market will just slowly leak away from you and you will you will die uh that way. So you have to be willing to evolve and change. And sometimes you're gonna probably have to set that aside. Like, I mean, I can't imagine why you would set aside intentionally set aside telling stories through characters, but if your center is something and the market has is in the process of moving on, I and you're sure, you might have to say, oh, okay, we do need to move from being all about, I don't know, like like if we sort of rever like protect we make an invent a different RPG maker that's all about scale. Like their entire thing is all about just being the biggest. And the market, it's like you, yeah, you made a game, like, well, I mean, to some degree, like this is I think you could you could misattribute this to Bethesda. You know, Daggerfall is 65,000 square miles. And it's like, so it's what's its thing, it's big. And it's like, okay, so we're all about being big, but then you realize that actually the market's saying they don't want that. So we need to set that aside and figure out what we what else we are. I don't think that's ever been Bethesda's core, but I think you could pretend like it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:17

It's interesting you say about you know, the market moves on, and in some way players do, and in other ways we don't. And I, you know, I mean, I'm not young, but players are, you know, a a younger um core audience can be younger. Yeah, at the same time, I have the sort of the temperament of a very elderly, crutchety old man who wants everything to be exactly as it was. And I guess the question I was going to put to you is like, is it actually is it possible to actually make make a game that everybody is waiting to play, say in that that that genre? Because in some ways I feel like we're all waiting for something we got from Dragon Age 2 or the moment we left the vault in Fallout 3, and um but then at the same time, so I I want to hear your take on it, at the same time, Baldur's Gate 3 comes along and I know that's so forward.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

That's the thing, is that is that so um I don't know if you've played Pillars of Eternity. So I appreciate every single piece of Pillars of Eternity and and also bounce off of it really hard. It is a to me, it feels like a very faithful spiritual successor to Ballersgate 2. Um, like it feels like it's crunchy and it's like and it and then I when I played it, I was like, oh, yeah, this is exactly right, and it turns out I don't like this anymore. Um and and I'm and you know, I'm not everyone. You know, it's sold okay. But it's like when I say there were there was maybe maybe there was some evidence that that uh Baldur's Gate 3 shouldn't have worked, I would put Pillars of Eternity in the evidence that it shouldn't have worked, because it's like, yeah, this is this is um um a game that you know it's well made, it's it's it it checks all the boxes, uh not the same fidelity, sure. Um but it did it did probably well for their from their perspective, because they probably only had two million units as their goal, and it probably beat that, but it certainly wasn't Baltier 3. Um, so yeah, I I I get what you're saying. It's it's very difficult to look and say, I want everything to be exactly the same, and then you give me something that is exactly the same, and I go, oh, actually, no, I don't want that. So then what do you want? Like, I don't know. Um, and in Baldwin, you know, I I had I struggle with Bollard Gate 3 at times because uh it's its interfaces, sometimes its interface is quite challenging. Um and not in a you know, get good kind of way, in a right, we we used to be worse at this kind of way.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:06

Um so it's hard to criticize the game that did as well as it did. But it's also hard for me to say all games should be like Ballersgate 3 because how much of that are you willing to take?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:25

Is it is it is it I love whatever, I love Mexican food, and I and I love let's say I love high-end Mexican food, but I'm only willing to go to a high-end Mexican restaurant once every few months. I'm not going every day. Um I love crunchy CRPGs that demand uh like that have tons of branching and let me engage and do everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:56

But I'm not gonna play a new one of those every month or probably even every six months. So it's hard because every game shouldn't be Baldur's Gate 3, and I don't think anyone's suggesting that every game should be Baldur's Gate 3. But also and you're right, it it move the conversation forward because the people that wanted the people that were saying, I just want Baldur's Gate 2, they did buy Pillars of Eternity and probably liked it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:31

But they also mostly probably liked Baldur's Gate 3, and Baldur's Gate 3 was able to say was able to move the conversation forward and bring those people who had been old and crotchety and saying, I just want this game from 2001, why won't you make that? Why won't anyone make that forward and saying, Oh, actually, you can make a new version of this that I like too, but also 10 million other people like. But a dangerous, right? Because you know, sometimes you do that, and I mean arguably that's been that's been the trajectory Dragon Age has been on, is to be to try to be what it was in what but also something new every single time and to varying degrees of success.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:19

And so, and but you know, we were getting on to that point to to Anthem, and it's interesting when you say like the idea, a simple idea of like they forgot, we forgot something. And I think it's um again, we I think we make up all kinds of narratives as players about why a game has turned out the way it has and we don't like it, and it was through malicious intent and greed and all this stuff, but um making bigger and better games is is is difficult, right? I'm just curious, but but it feels to me like we're talking about a lead up to what is eventually, you know, assuming I know a little bit of what you're gonna say, hitting a bit of a problem. I'm curious when you're inside of that system, who's the first person that starts kind of like ringing the bell saying there's an iceberg ahead? Yeah, they realize it's too slow, too near to turn.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:14

Well, I mean the pro so so definitely after Mass Effect 3, so EA doesn't understand Bioware. Like I I would argue that Bioware was an accidental acquisition. Um that they they bought VG Partners, which was Bioware and Pandemic, mostly I think to buy Pandemic, well, and also to buy Kotor, because they wanted an MMO, uh, and they wanted uh and they wanted Pandemic, who made, you know, the the Battlefronts. And um and they kind of accidentally ended up with Bioware Edmonton, the sort of core old school RPG. So they've never really understood what they wanted. I don't I don't think they've really ever understood what they wanted from Bioware. So after Mass Effect 3, um Mass Effect the the the genre the franchise that definitely EA understands the best of the BioWare IPs. Um but Casey saw like I don't exactly know how this happened, but but Casey crafted the perfect pitch for EA at that time. What if we could make Oscar or like award-winning quality storytelling, but it's a multiplayer game, but it's a live service, but we have all of these ways to monetize that we didn't have before? Like it's going to be you think bio games are too expensive and they don't sell well enough. What if we could solve both of those problems? Because some of our content is going to be player generated. Um now, Casey's pitching this and then he leaves in 2014. I think whatever he was thinking, some of that knowledge goes with him uh or doesn't exist. I don't know. But uh so like Casey is imagining a buyer in Anthem or in Dylan, Casey is imagining, I think, a buyer game that is inherently multiplayer. So that's interesting. That is right, like that there is a certain amount of like right, what could what could that be? There's an interesting potential move forward. And certainly, like typically multiplayer games on the metrics that EA believes in terms of what are going to determine your final sales, things like session days, like how many different days does a player play it. They do so much better. So that so one of the reasons why EA persistently falls in love with multiplayer games, live service games says things like all our games will have multiplayer components, all these things is because they have data that says that one of the most important metrics for how well a game is going to sell is how many different days does a person log into your game. So, um, so and multiplayer games do way better on that one specific metric because I'm playing with my friends, even if we don't really like this, we probably play like five days. Whereas if I pick up a single player game and I don't like it, I play it once and I never pick it up. But even if I really like it, you know, a lot of uh uh Dragon Age Origins, total number of hours played might be huge, might be hundreds of hours. But if I'm playing eight hours a day, then that's um then that total number if you but if you if the metric you care about is session days. So Dragon Age often has really great numbers of hours played and and much worse session days because you tend to play longer sessions. Whereas with the multiplayer game, you tend to play shorter sessions, not always, but often. So there's just a bunch of reasons why that one metric that EA really believes in is optimized by multiplayer.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:06

Uh now, is it causal?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:09

Meh. I question that. But if you believe it's causal, then you're like, all right, all our games should be multiplayer. So Casey is hearing all of this, this all this buzz going around within the executive at EA, and he's basically pitching Biower but all the things you want. Now, going back to that, we've lost our core somewhere along the way. We've lost storytelling through characters. If you are a multiplayer game with storytelling, bio style storytelling, how are you doing um how are you doing storytelling through characters in an inherently multiplayer game with no followers? And maybe there's an answer to that question. Maybe Casey has that answer. Maybe Casey had the hints of that answer, and then he left before those seeds had sprouted. I don't know. Anthem does not have those the answer to that question. It it it doesn't even understand how to do storytelling at all in a multiplayer setting, let alone storytelling through characters. So did he so the problem is, and then because you're pitching it in this very strong way in this world where destiny doesn't exist yet, Anton for a long time, Dylan for a long time, carries this burden of it's very much defined by what it isn't. It isn't old school bioware, it isn't destiny, it isn't borderlands. It's like, but then what is it? And it has a lot of trouble defining that. And in the end, it basically is destiny, and if it had been willing to admit that to itself two years earlier, things would have gone better. Um, but it never there's so is there a world where Dylan is a bio game with multiplayer, and you know, Casey doesn't leave and he leaves that? Maybe I don't really know. Is there a world where Anthem is a Biowar game? I don't think so. There's a world where Anthem is a better game, and it does better, and in fact, there is a world where Anthem um hijacks Bioar's entire identity and becomes what the studio is going forward, and Biowar and Anthem does so well that uh are you still there?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:26

I'm I'm still here.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:27

I don't know where we're going, but yeah. Okay, so there's a world where where uh you know Anthem is a is a success. Like it if you think about the world where Anthem launches and it actually does what it wanted to do, and it launches and it and it hits and it has enough content, and everyone's like, oh, this is it. I'm tired of Destiny, I'm gonna shift over to Anthem, and Anthem is sells 12 million copies, and it has this really strong ongoing uh customer base in that world. I think that's bioware.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:02

Like I think I think that literally kills off the other two franchises.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:09

That's interesting. That's interesting, and then and then everything you're saying, I'm then thinking about you know, Dragon Age and the you know, the the it's not equivalent, but the at the same time what the you know the the the final game of that series as well, which is obviously doing something very, very different. Um yeah, I'm just curious on your understanding on or take take on on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:33

I mean, I'll do a deeper dive on Veilgarde at some point, but the thing to remember is that so Veilgarde is basically four games with very crude stitching holding them together. It's it's the it's Joplin, which is basically a sequel to Inquisition, and it's Morrison, um, the the multiplayer live service game that was proposed in the world where they needed to steal everyone and put them onto Anthem, and it's the game that's trying to pivot back from that game, but doesn't have time to do a full cold reset, and then it's the game that actually ships. And it's so I what I would argue uh is that Veilguard is by the time it's shipping, it's not trying to do something very different. It's carrying the it's carrying the baggage of at least uh one game that came before it that was trying to do something very different, and and and never was it never because it is still it is doing storytelling through characters. In fact, it is doing it more expressly than a lot of games near it from BioWare.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:56

It is it's just yeah, it so it's a victim of its circumstances more than it is victim of its intentions, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:14

There's intentions in there, but not intentions of the game that actually shift and so then it makes me and again keep coming back to you know, what is the cautionary tale for a company like Larian? Um and I and there are others where they're like you you know uh that's on the peak, peak the the the cusp of the wave, and like what are the steps that a good company can do to ride that for as long and all most empires, all empires fail fall. Yeah, so like the question I would have for Larian is did their core shift with Bollard Gate 3?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:54

Did it did it um did like did they take a big step with meaning to or not to a different place? And is that new place where they actually want to be now? Because when I look at like the trailer for Divinity, the new Divinity, I um not being like super duper familiar with all their previous work, if I'm a Baldur's Gate person and I and I like I just the only Larian game I've ever played is Baldur's Gate 3, I think some people are going to look at that trailer and go, what, what? And it's not that it's not true to what Larian was, but it might not be true to what Larian is. So in in maybe kind of the opposite of what we've been talking about with Bioware, what maybe have happened with Larian, maybe, is that they took a big step to the left, and and now they're kind of trying to step back, but maybe that's the step they don't want to take. I don't know. Um I think that um, like I think Larian's doing something that Bioware never did, which is it's very much deciding to be one thing at a time. Um, and there's a lot of risk involved in that, but the power of that is there's never there's never these moments where your your studio is is branching into two different things and slowly evolving away from itself, and then you're trying to force those two things back together again, and it's bouncing off itself along the way, which is which Bioware did a bunch of times. Um and then had to, I mean, you could argue that you could argue that the core of Bioware isn't telling stories through the early core of Bioware isn't telling stories through characters, it's crunchy, top-down tactical RPG mechanics. But then you made Kotor and you made it's like, okay, so then you just did you just abandon that? But then you made Dragon Age origins, which is kind of that again. So you're you're you're revisiting old things over and over again and sometimes simultaneously. Whereas Larian, I think, is much more lucky. If it's moving, it's moving as a whole. Um, like I think that was a post-mortem from Silksong. They said, you know what, we should only be doing one thing at a time. Yes. And I think, you know, from its inception, Bioer never imagined itself as that kind of studio because it couldn't imagine, it was too scared to only have a single iron in the fire. But there's a power to that, there's a stability to that. Even arguably, Bethesda's kind of done that. I it it's got other things like Elder Scrolls and and Fallout 76, but for the longest time, it was one thing at a time. Almost everyone was focused on that. I do think that is helpful. Um I do think you have to evolve and you have to be willing to change, but I think you also have to be willing to um I mean, I do think that one thing, the lesson, the the the the the one of the lessons from Veilguard is if you are pivoting, then pivot. Not don't just don't just say you're not multiplayer anymore, and then very slowly turn this giant cruise ship to try to get back to your original path, because all of this this arc you're carving out here is all wrong. This is all wrong. Like, whereas like it's funny because Veilgard has two major pivots. So when I go on to Anthem, we literally effectively cancel the project, cancel Joplin, and and restart making Morrison. So the game stops, turns 90 degrees, and then starts on a new course. But then when Morrison moves back to being a single player game, it's we don't do that. That doesn't happen. It instead goes like we're gonna we're gonna be a single player game, but we're not gonna set aside all of the things and decisions we've made. We're just gonna very slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly turn back towards where we started. And and that's a mistake. So, I mean, I I would say if you have to pivot, acknowledge that's what's happening, and like hard, hard lesson, because people that have made games for a long time, um successfully at least, you you know, you give done or even kind of done a lot of weight. And so it's a it's a hard lesson to um to take. Um now, I do think one thing at a time, you first of all, you're less likely to suddenly take a 90-degree turn because there's just a lot of more um there's a there's a lot the voices are gonna always be a lot more aligned. Like you don't have one of one of probably the largest, biggest problem for Veil Guard is that it ran for 16 months when I was on Anthem without an executive producer, without um without a single central voice, with a externally uh imposed direction that was arguably antithetical to the franchise as a whole.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:22

And it drove with people and senior people on it for 17 months in away from what it was. So don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:35

But if you do do that, um the the right thing to do would have been to say, uh, let's just abandon that Jeep. It drove into the swamp, let's just leave it, and we'll go back and start again, which we never which which never which happened when we started to drive into the swamp. Like we we we stopped to switch jeeps to drive into the swamp, but then once we were in the swamp, we didn't swap, stop, and switch jeeps to get out of the swamp. And so, yeah, I that was pretty meandering.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:06

Okay, this is great as the best, best sort of uh uh analogy for video game development I think I've um heard. And I guess, you know, just then finally for you being outside of all of that, I'm just interested. Like, what is the work that you're sort of finding most satisfying, or when you're working, you know, um, you know, engaging with studios or games?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:28

Um I love working with indies. I do that not as much because they don't usually have money, but uh even though I charge indies way less than I charge uh triple A, um uh I love working with indies because there's a nimbleness that comes with that. Um but one thing, even in triple A, let's call it AAA, is that I feel like I'm seeing cracks in I feel like we've been racing the industry has been racing, the triple A industry especially has been racing towards pricing themselves out of existence. Um like, you know, um Inquisition is a much more expensive game than Dragon Age Origins. Dragon Age Origins is a much more expensive game than Ballersgate 1. Um, they're not bigger. Well, I mean, they probably have probably gotten bigger as well, but they're it's it's it's both that games have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and Fidelity has gotten higher and higher and higher and higher. And what I'm starting to see is two cracks appearing. A willingness from the pla from players to accept smaller games, not tiny games, not you know, not uncharted, but this game is 30 hours long, not this game is 300 hours long. I think we're actually starting to see some people reject really big games and say, I don't want that anymore. I want something that I can actually imagine finishing. Even if I don't, I can imagine finishing it. But also, we're starting to see players be willing to accept adequate fidelity. So not ugly in AAA, but Expedition 33, if if you look at it as a game developer, it is filled with shortcuts and corner cutting and and and uh compromises they have made to keep their costs under control. Uh and I think that even unsophisticated players are somewhat um uh aware of that, but it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:49

No one cares. Like the like I think what Expedition 33 and Bosegate 3 show um uh is that we've gone too far.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:58

We've we've been chasing this this gold ring of photoreel or whatever it is, to and we've driven dangerously close to a cliff's edge. And um and and now we get we're seeing increasing evidence that we could actually back it up pretty far, save a lot of money and a lot of heartache, and maybe it's okay. Now, I say this, and that and this is something I say in a lot of interviews, is GTA 6 could change everything because it's definitely spent what $2 billion to I think that might actually be the real number um to drive as far out to the edge of that fidelity cliff as possible, possibly even building like a pier off the edge of that cliff. So a lot of times games like that, GTA, come out in the marketplace and make a huge splash and do really well and don't end up impacting development of other games very much. And honestly, I hope I hope that's what happens here. Because if the if the lesson that game development as a whole takes away is we need to be as as pretty, as big, as as all open as a GTA, then then it'll just blow the entire industry up. If instead, which has happened before, even with GTAs, the industry says, wow, that's amazing. We can't make that. Let's go back to making the thing we were making, and it and it doesn't have it has an undersized impact compared to its sales. Like it'll sell 100 million copies. If it sells 100 million copies and it has a hundred million dollars, uh 100 million copies of impact on the industry, it might destroy the industry completely. If it has a hundred sells a hundred million copies And it has the equivalent of like a five million, six million, seven million, ten million seller, then um that's much more healthy, I think, for the industry. Like take some lessons, play it, learn thin things, but but don't learn photoreels the only way to go. I hope. I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope the AAA doesn't take that away.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:22

Well, that gives us something to uh keep an eye on in the uh coming months and years.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:28

Yeah, yeah. I and and I have a lot of hope that that's we are getting nice, strong counterexamples. Like I think so, like I think if you you know a game like Balatro comes out, the trip triple A looks at that and goes, well, we can't make that. Because it would be people would would not accept a game like that from a triple A studio. And I think there's truth to that. But when a game like Ballers Gate 3 or Expedition 33 comes out, I think there's there's some of that. Some triple A studios look at that and go, well, if we've made that, you would, you would have, you would like crucify us for the following things. But I think there's a little bit more willingness to look at games like that and say, that's like a that's like the triple A games from major publishers. So maybe there are lessons there. Whereas the the the this very successful deeper indie games have virtually no impact on triple A. These these upper AA games, I think do. And I think that I think that the industry is the triple A industry is starting to look at those games and say, it's happening in movies as well. Like it's like, yeah, you know, obsession and backrooms, you're like, oh, right, okay, right. The major game studios look at that and go, right, we made a game, we made a I made a movie for four dollars, and yeah, it's not gonna do as well as Spider-Man, but um, but it did really well. Is there a lesson there? Whereas, you know, the stuff that's showing at cons, they're not they're not really paying attention. But it was in real theaters, and it's like so I think that there's something so I do have hope that we are going to back away.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:18

Partially I think it's because honestly, I can see it. But I mean Expedition 33 and Bosch Gate 3 are very pretty looking games.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:28

Stunning I I can see the I can see the compromises, I can see the shortcuts, but I I've done this for a long time. I think most people aren't really even consciously seeing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:43

I interviewed the uh hair designer for for Expedition 33, and I think that was an interesting because they poured a lot of effort into their hair, which is one of those things.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:52

Uh put good hair on something, and you can start to cover up a few of those um and I do think that maybe there's a some lessons to be learned about um um one of the things that is often talked about in AAA is um consistency of like you'll talk people talk about consistent textile density or consistent. So it's like if I take a screenshot and I put this person's hair right beside this phone book that's in the background, they need to look similar in terms of um of fidelity. Um and the problem with that statement is that means if your hair is going to look really good, your phone book has to look really good. And I think that actually that may be the wrong lesson. I think maybe the lesson that maybe that Exposition 33 is showing is no, actually, you look at people's hair a lot more than you look at people's that it a lot more than you look at the phone books in the background. So actually don't worry about that. Make the thing that you want to look really good look really good, and everything else just needs to look not distractingly bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:01

Well, that worked for them, because it is like make everyone gorgeous, and then and then obviously story that has to be there.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:08

But uh Yeah, and I mean it and they do you know fix characters so they don't have a like they're there's yeah, and then it there's lots of there's lots of really clever things they're doing to do to to save costs.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:27

But um great! Do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:31

Well, um yeah, that's an optimistic note to end on about the the potential if there is hope it is in the double A's and the Indies, of course, but in terms of educating or shifting those uh those those liners of the AAAs.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:46

Um Yeah, that would be my hope is that the I mean I guess to pull a random analogy out is you know, if if we're we're AAA is is racing indie cars, if but you know, if suddenly we're seeing the next tier down of uh of uh I can't remember what they're called, but GT cars, if um if suddenly they're starting to get as fast as as indie cars for one-tenth of the budget, maybe time to pay attention to what they're doing and and learn some lessons.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:22

That's a good another vehicle-based analogy for us to end on. No. Well, thanks so much for your time, Mark. I've absolutely loved this conversation. I sort of had hoped we'd get this deep um into the weeds, and I think people are gonna really enjoy hearing the your takes on it. So, yeah, thanks for your time.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:42

Awesome. Thank you.