The developer Christian Dailey was responsible for leading the reboot of Anthem : EA’s failed online shooter was supposed to resurrect as “Anthem Next” or “Anthem 2.0”. Dailey led a team from BioWare in Austin, Texas, but now BioWare needs him for Dragon Age. This means Anthem loses its 5th or 6th head in a row – but who’s counting?
Who is Christian Dailey? He clearly was the figurehead and spokesperson of the relatively small team working on Anthem in 2020. The team was said to consist of around 30 employees.
EA announced in February 2020 that a team from BioWare would fundamentally rework the shooter Anthem, but then there was silence for months until Dailey started tweeting.
Dailey wrote the blog posts about important changes to Anthem and regularly shared on his personal Twitter account what the team was currently working on. There was often Concept Art from Anthem to see. Ultimately, he was the developer who served as a glimmer of hope that Anthem might return.
Most recently, Dailey wrote the blog post in which BioWare explained the new gameplay systems.
Why is Dailey leaving? Dailey is being “promoted away” from his position. Because two important employees have left BioWare, Dailey now has to lead the development of Dragon Age 4, arguably BioWare’s most important new release.
He describes his departure from Anthem 2.0 as a “difficult decision.”
The reboot of Anthem apparently continues
What happens now with Anthem 2.0? This is certainly a setback for the project. But it seems that the overhaul of Anthem is supposed to continue. Dailey says: The decision to leave Anthem is easier for him because the team of Anthem and its leadership are so talented.
So it looks like development will continue, even though it is unclear who will now take over communication with players and who will lead the team.
In any case, this is a setback for Anthem. The project was no longer mentioned in the latest financial reports from EA.
Anthem suffers from a “curse” – heads keep leaving
What’s behind it: Anthem seems to suffer from a curse at the leadership level. Almost all who were responsible for Anthem or held the role of a “frontman” were only there for a short time:
- According to an insider report from the US site Kotaku, Anthem was already leaderless for a long time during development: Originally, Mass Effect veteran Casey Hudson was supposed to lead the development of Anthem, but he left in 2014.
- At E3 2017, Aaryn Flynn presented Anthem – but shortly thereafter, he went to the SpatialOS wonder company Improbable and allegedly took some top people from BioWare with him.
- As development stalled under Game Director Jon Warner, Mark Darrah came in, who was supposed to drive the team and pushed Anthem across the finish line until release. However, Darrah left Anthem after the launch to lead Dragon Age 4.
- His colleague, Lead Producer Mike Gamble, also important at Anthem, left along with Darrah.
- Originally, Ben Irving and Chad Robertson were supposed to lead the game in the post-release phase, as it looked in May 2019 – but both left BioWare relatively soon after. Irving left in August 2019 – Robertson in November of the same year.
- The last head was indeed Christian Dailey, who seemed to take the helm in February 2020 – and he is now leaving as well.
It seems as though there is a curse hanging over Anthem.
Anthem 2.0 has several questions to answer anyway. Because it is unclear how EA intends to make money with the game again. DLCs have really been ruled out.
Apparently, the position to save Anthem is not so coveted, when there is constantly a new person in the head seat.
BioWare seems to be getting into choppy waters right now, leading to questions about how high Anthem 2.0 stands on the priority list.
One of the new systems already introduced for Anthem 2.0 is the loot system. This was one of the major weaknesses in the original game. In Anthem 2.0, everything is supposed to be better:
Anthem understands how terrible loot currently is – so they want to improve it
