‘Anthem’ Woes Highlight Game Developers’ ‘Crunch Time’ Crisis

Why does the game industry keep subjecting its developers to this crap?

Game developer BioWare hoped that “Anthem,” its massive open-world game, would become an industry-defining blockbuster. But according to critics and many players, the final product is a mess — and a bad workplace culture (including excessive reliance on “crunch time”) might be the culprit.

In a lengthy article posted to Kotaku, Jason Schreier details mass burnout among BioWare developers, along with a lack of project focus. “I actually cannot count the amount of ‘stress casualties’ we had on ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’ or ‘Anthem’ [both BioWare games],” a former (anonymous) developer told Schreier via email. “A ‘stress casualty’ at BioWare means someone had such a mental breakdown from the stress they’re just gone for one to three months. Some come back, some don’t.”

Other (also anonymous) sources pointed to “indecision and mismanagement” within the “Anthem” leadership team as a key reason behind this burnout, along with a supposed “lack of vision.” (According to various studies, poor leadership and unclear direction are top reasons for workplace burnout, along with excessive workloads, so the claims of BioWare’s developers make sense in context.)