Related
Summary
LongtimeBioWaredeveloper Mark Darrah has called out toxicity in the gaming community, specifically those who target writers, actors, and other devs online.
While he does not mentionDragon Age: The Veilguardby name, it gives the impression of in relation this this latest release, as he calls out those who celebrate layoffs - somethingBioWare was hit with after The Veilguard launched.
He argues that many who are abusing devs online don’t actually know what caused a game to have issues in the first place, as they are not privy to what happened during development.
Mark Darrah Calls Out Those Celebrating BioWare Layoffs
This comes after multiple Dragon Age: The Veilguard devs were either moved to new studios or laid off
“I’m not saying you’re not allowed to be angry about it, I’m not saying you don’t get to express your dissatisfaction with the content of the game that you’re not enjoying” he starts.
“But when you climb into someone’s personal social media and start actively attacking that person, when you celebrate layoffs at a studio because the game that you don’t like didn’t do that well, you’re crossing a line into being cruel and fundamentally you should have more grace for other human beings.”
He then continues, saying that fans have no way of knowing what created the issues they have with a game.
He gives several examples of what could have gone wrong during development, such as the writing being poor quality because the writer was working to a tight deadline, or the direction of the game was changed last minute.
He also points out that issues can come up when the leadership of a project changes several times - something which we know happened to the fourth Dragon Age game since it started early development afterDragon Age: Inquisition.
Everyone is easy to dismiss the idea of a multiplayer Dragon Age, but an MMO isn’t such a far-fetched idea.
“When you decided to personally attack that one specific person on social media, how certain are you that it was their fault, that they are responsible for that thing that you don’t like?”
he argues.
“You shouldn’t be certain, because you don’t know exactly what was going on within the project.”
Again, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is not mentioned in the video, but a lot of what he mentions does seem to apply to the project and its turbulent development -which was restarted twice.
Now,every single writer who has ever worked on the series has left BioWare, and it’s unclear what is happening with the series now thatthe focus is on Mass Effect.
