BioWare’s Anthem was developed in 15 months according to former developer

Following the poor reception of Daedalic Entertainment's The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, game developers have begun sharing stories of projects they worked on that were not well received, including a former Anthem developer who revealed more information about the title's troubled development.

The details:

• Ian Saterdalen, Lead Producer at Mythical Games, took to Twitter to share his experience as a QA Team Lead at BioWare during the development of Anthem, revealing that not only was the game not ready for release, but it was also suffering from severe crunch. Saterdalen claims that he and others worked up to 90 hours per week for 15 months, which is said to be the length of the game's entire development.
• Back in 2019, Jason Schreier published a report detailing Anthem's troubled development, highlighting how poor management, massive changes, and technical issues resulted in the game being pieced together in less than a year and a half despite being in "development" for nearly seven years. Saterdalen stated that he had read the article several times but that it only "scratches the surface" of what happened behind the scenes; however, he stated that the entire story is unlikely to be revealed as employees are still under NDA.
• Saterdalen also stated that, contrary to popular belief, the game's failure cannot be entirely attributed to its publisher, Electronic Arts (EA). He stated that a developer-publisher relationship is supposed to be based on "trust and transparency," which was not the case for both BioWare and EA, though he did acknowledge that EA has a poor track record of putting pressure on developers to rush out unfinished games.

More gaming news:

• Microsoft may have hinted at the development of a new Psychonauts game, which could be revealed at the Xbox Summer Showcase in June. The gaming giant's Australian Twitter account posted a tweet with letters spelling out "PSYCHO XXX" inside a naughts and crosses grid, implying that a third entry is on the way.
• Sony has unveiled Project Q, a handheld that will use the remote play features of the PlayStation 5 to stream games directly to the device. Its design incorporates an 8-inch screen sandwiched between two halves of a DualSense controller.