Five Years Ago, Anthem Was A Warning

In the beginning of 2019, I was hopeful as I tried out BioWare’s new game, Anthem, in their headquarters in Austin, Texas. I was excited about the studio’s take on a live-service looter-shooter game. The demo was impressive, it was like becoming Iron Man in my suit, blasting enemies with special guns. I genuinely believed that Anthem would be a game-changer; little did I know what was to come.

BioWare had a good reputation and I have enjoyed many of their previous games such as the Mass Effect trilogy, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age Origins. However, when the demo was made public, things took a turn. Unfavourable reviews started to appear, criticising long loading screens and glitches in the flying feature. Gameplay became repetitive quickly and rewards didn’t have significant impact on the gameplay. Beyond flying, the game didn’t have much to offer.

Anthem’s problems were a result of a troubled, five-year-long development process. Several patches were released, added new content and fixed some issues, but these efforts didn’t seem to help the game enough to thrive.

In 2020, BioWare’s General Manager, Casey Hudson, wrote in a blog post about their plans for Anthem’s future. But the next year, BioWare announced the end of further development on Anthem.

Nowadays, Anthem is mostly forgotten and can be found in discount bins. We can’t know how many players are left as EA controls the servers. This is another tale of a big-budget live-service that didn’t manage to find its place in the gaming world despite abundant resources and expectations.

Currently there are over 500 live-service games either being developed or maintained. Anthem’s downfall was an early warning of what happens when studios attempt to jump onto the lucrative live-service trend, but it’s often too fast-paced to keep up with. High-level games industry decision makers need to heed the lessons from BioWare’s Anthem and other similar stories to help prevent future development disasters.