Former BioWare Developer Reveals Tensions Between Dragon Age and Mass Effect Teams

Former Dragon Age series lead writer David Gaider says that during his later years at BioWare, the studio’s Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team did not get along–nor did the team making Anthem.

“For a long time it was basically two teams under one roof: the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team,” Gaider said on BlueSky. “Run differently, very different cultures, may as well have been two separate studios. And they didn’t get along.”

According to Gaider, BioWare knew of the tension between the teams, but despite the fact that various attempts had been made to fix it (including transferring developers between teams), nothing seemed to work.

“The company was aware of the friction and attempts to fix it had been ongoing for years, mainly by shuffling staff between the teams more often,” Gaider wrote. “Yet this didn’t really solve things, and I had no idea until I got to the [Anthem] team. The team didn’t want me there. At all.”

Gaider said BioWare had asked him to write a “science fantasy” story, but his work was frequently rejected and declared too Dragon Age-like.

“Until this point, [Anthem] had been concepted as kind of a ‘beer & cigarettes’ hard sci-fi setting (a la Aliens), and I’d been given instructions to turn it into something more science fantasy (a la Star Wars), Gaider explained. “Yet I don’t think anyone told the team this. So they thought this change was my doing.”

“I won’t go into detail about the problems except to say it became clear this was a team that didn’t want to make an RPG,” he continued. “[They] were very anti-RPG, in fact. Yet they wanted me to wave my magic writing wand and create a BioWare-quality story without giving me any of the tools I’d need to actually do that.”

The tension between the Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams combined with the friction within Gaider’s Anthem team was stressful–stressful enough that Gaider tried to ensure that at the very least, he wouldn’t be put in the same situation again post-Anthem.

“I saw the writing on the wall,” he wrote. “This wasn’t going to work. So I called up my boss and said that I’d stick it out and try my best, but only if there was SOMETHING waiting on the other side, where I could have more say as Creative Director. I wanted to move up. I was turned down flat, no hesitation.

Ultimately, after 17 years at BioWare, Gaider walked in 2016, leaving the studio behind despite his fear of losing financial stability.

“After my last day, [I was] literally having a nervous breakdown, wondering what kind of idiot gives up a ‘good job.’ How was a writer, of all things, with no real interest in business supposed to start his own studio? It felt apocalyptic. Within a year, however, I was on my way.”

Today, Gaider is the creative director at Summerfall Studios, an indie outfit he co-founded.

“We make games with character,” reads the studio’s website.

As for BioWare, the entirety of the development team is currently at work on the next entry in the Mass Effect series, which was announced in 2020 but currently has no release date.