In a recent earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said that the long-awaited Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to meet the company’s sales expectations. During that, Wilson said the reason for that mostly came down to it not “resonating” with audiences and not having the “shared world” aspects that gamers were looking for. The ex-head of Dragon Age disagrees.
Mike Laidlaw joined BioWare in 2003 to work on Jade Empire before becoming creative director on Dragon Age: Origins. On social media, Laidlaw seemingly referenced Wilson’s comments.
“Look, I’m not a fancy CEO guy, ” Laidlaw writes, “but if someone said to me ‘the key to this successful single-player IP’s success is to make it purely a multiplayer game. No, not a spin-off: fundamentally change the DNA of what people loved about the core game’ To me, I’d probably, like, quit that job or something.”
Ironically, Laidlaw did indeed quit BioWare in 2017 and joined Ubisoft Quebec on an unspecified project. That was right around the time EA made the pivot to live service for the project that would eventually become Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Laidlaw continued by saying, “Just thinking out loud, of course. Who’d be silly enough to demand something like that? …Twice.”
Laidlaw eventually went on to found his own studio, which had just released the single-player RPG Eternal Strands.
Laidlaw isn’t the only ex-Dragon Age dev to comment recently, as longtime BioWare writer David Gaider also provided his interpretation. Gaider wrote on every Dragon Age game up until Veilguard. On social media, he writes,
“If I really dig into my empathy, I can kinda see the thinking here. Like, let’s say you don’t actually know much about games. You’re in a big office with a bunch of other execs who also don’t know much about games. What are they all saying? ‘Live games do big numbers!’ ‘Action games are hot!'”
He provided some advice after that, on how a game like Dragon Age can still be successful.
“My advice to EA (not that they care): you have an IP that a lot of people love. Deeply. At its height, it sold well enough to make you happy, right? Look at what it did best at the point where it sold the most. Follow [Baldur’s Gate 3 studio] Larian’s lead and double down on that. The audience is still there. And waiting. ❤️”
At this point, there’s no guarantee we’ll actually see another Dragon Age game ever again. After EA laid off dozens of employees, BioWare is now down to under 100 workers and is singularly focused on the next Mass Effect. However, that game is early in production, and we likely won’t see it for at least a few years.
