Ever since the launch ofDragon Age: The Veilguard,BioWare’s developers and fans have been slowly shifting their focus onto the company’s next project.
Mass Effectis a legendary IP in the gaming scene, and one that’s lacked a major release for far too long. People are eager to see where the story goes, and while BioWare’s beenkeen to give occasional teasers, they’ve had to slow downas development ramps up.
Now, we havea direct statement from BioWarethemselves. The company is “changing how we do things”, but aside from noting a smaller development team, they keep their cards close to their chest.
In keeping with our fierce commitment to innovating during the development and delivery of Mass Effect, we have challenged ourselves to think deeply about delivering the best experience to our fans. We are taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine how we work at BioWare.
Several “veterans from the original trilogy”, like Mike Gamble, are noted to be on the development team for the next Mass Effect title - while other unnamed developers have been moved onto other projects.
Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio. We have incredible talent here at BioWare, and so we have worked diligently over the past few months to match many of our colleagues with other teams at EA that had open roles that were a strong fit.
BioWare’s choice of words, though, has given fans some hints at what this all might mean. Their use of “agile” later in the post throws up several flags for many.
The Current State of Mass Effect Development At BioWare
BioWare’s statement has hada mixed receptionfrom fans so far. Much of it comes across as very corporate - “restructuring” into something more “agile” is an idea you may be familiar with, if the waves ofgame industry layoffshave been on your mind.
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The message also implies, according to fans, that the upcoming game is still very early in development. This would normally be expected for a studio that released a game like The Veilguard only a few months ago. But since the next Mass Effect project has been teased for years at this point, it’s caught a few fans off guard.
As far as the corpo-speak goes, this ‘restructuring’ doesn’t seem to be quite so disastrous as mass layoffs, as we’ve seen with other studios. People are being moved around and staying employed - itcould be worse.
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