If Electronic Arts and BioWare’s Anthem is an ice cream flavor it would be rocky road — and that’s an understatement. Well, it seems Anthem’s path might become even more unsteady with its Lead Producer, Ben Irving, departing from BioWare.
If you have no idea who Ben Irving is, he’s the Lead Producer on Anthem, he’s also the guy that replied to Reddit user “TheWalkingDerp” on a post asking what happened to the missing features in the following image:
Irving’s response to the above image reads as follows:
“The short answer is that the cost of transparency is things change. We did our best to be transparent on the journey to going live but with that we knew things would be different in some situations. Sometimes people would be happy and sometimes they would be upset.
It’s the cost of transparency.
Edit: to elaborate – game development is full of change. There are a million reasons why you set out with an idea and it evolves over time. This is common in every game. We shared as much as we could. Some things change. So the cost of transparency is that some things we said become not true, not because someone was dishonest but because it changed over the course of development.”
According to Irving, Anthem’s promotional campaign was not false by any means it was EA and BioWare being transparent…
Anyway, now that you know who he is, Irving is departing from BioWare as we speak and has another studio waiting for him as he jumps ship:
(1/3) After 8 amazing years at BioWare I have made the decision to move on and have accepted an exciting opportunity at another gaming company. Since the first time I played Baldurs Gate many many years ago, BioWare was the dream place I always wanted to work.
— Ben Irving (@BenIrvo) August 15, 2019
(2/3) I will forever be grateful to all the people who gave me the chance to work on great products with amazing people. I believe Anthem has a bright future – there is a great team working on it and I look forward to following its progress (and playing it!) from the sidelines.
— Ben Irving (@BenIrvo) August 15, 2019
(3/3) I have really enjoyed interacting with the Anthem community – Streams, Twitter and Reddit. Through the good times and the tough times. You all are in great hands with @Darokaz and @UNTDrew (and have been for some time now). I wish nothing but the best for all of you. Ben.
— Ben Irving (@BenIrvo) August 15, 2019
The aforesaid should come in as no surprise given that people on BioWare’s team were constantly leaving. Much like how Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider left, Senior Creative Director Mike Laidlaw, and former BioWare Montreal developer Manveer Heir.
Irving claims Anthem has a bright future and that a great team is working on the looter-shooter, but if its development and updates have made headlines for all the wrong reasons expect the same stuff moving forward.
Lastly, with Irving parachuting out is expected given that Anthem did not meet EA’s Q4 2019 Earnings Conference target number of 5 million copies in six weeks.
