With Anthem finally due to fully shut down in January, it's an appropriate time not only to look back at what went wrong, but also, why was this thing even green lit in the first place? Thankfully, we have former BioWare executive producer and Mass Effect veteran Mark Darrah, who was with the company through Anthem's conception, development, and release, sharing his insights into the game's very beginnings.
In Part 1 of a new video series titled, 'What Really Happened to Anthem' (timestamped here), Darrah dives deep into the dynamics at BioWare in the early 2010s and the motivations for pitching Anthem, explaining that the Mass Effect leadership team had grown tired of working on just that series and wanted to do something new.
"At this point in time, it's [codename] Dylan and what it is presenting, what [Anthem general manager Casey Hudson] is pitching to EA, is BioWare as a new thing. It's BioWare doing storytelling but doing it in a live-service, always online, brand new business models, brand new way of thinking about the way we do storytelling.
"A lot of this early vision from Casey doesn't actually really make it into the final game, but it's why Anthem was able to generate this much momentum within the organization – because what Casey was essentially pitching was 'what if BioWare game but it could do FIFA numbers? What if you could tell a story with your friends? What if we had an onboarding that allowed you to try the game but seamlessly move into paying for the game?'
"Maybe not free-to-play, maybe free-to-play, maybe some sort of cliff where you paid for money, but something that brings the business model forward. Whatever you, an executive within EA, are imagining, maybe this game can be that game. Are you tired of BioWare taking a long time to make games that only sell pretty well? Well, do I have the game for you."
Looking at it through this lens, it suddenly makes a whole lot of sense why Anthem got the green light: EA wanted money, of course. FIFA is one of the most lucrative video game franchises of all time, landing just behind Minecraft according to Wikipedia, so it's not surprising to hear EA's ears perked up when Hudson apparently mentioned FIFA numbers. I'm sure there was more to it than just that, but I'm also sure EA likes money.
Of course, Anthem did not do FIFA numbers, selling short of EA's expectations and ceasing development entirely in February 2021 despite an attempt by BioWare to massively reboot the game. Both Darrah and Hudson left BioWare just a few months prior in December 2020.
"It isn't Destiny. It isn't Borderlands. It isn't Mass Effect": Ex BioWare lead says Anthem's vision for "the future of storytelling" struggled to come together because it had "no one really clearly saying what it is"
