EA announced that Casey Hudson, GM at BioWare, and Mark Darrah, Executive Producer on Dragon Age, are departing from BioWare. The upcoming Mass Effect and Dragon Age installments will continue to be developed with new people on board.
Christian Dailey, who joined BioWare from Blizzard, will take over the ongoing development of Dragon Age 4. We are yet to see who will become the replacement for Hudson. In the meantime, Gary McKay, BioWare’s Sr. Director of Development Operations, has been appointed interim Studio GM.
Hudson, the creator of Mass Effect, is leaving BioWare for the second time. In 2014, he left the studio to work at Microsoft, but came back in 2017. His return helped the company win gamers’ trust back after the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda, which got uneven reception. It was Hudson who practically saved the development of Anthem, although the game failed to meet commercial expectations, let alone the expectations of fans.
EA execs didn’t name any reason for the departures other than that “talented creative people” sometimes “want to try something different.”
Hudson, however, does say this: “2020 has been a year that forced all of us to re-imagine how we think about work and life. For me, it’s been the realization that I still have tremendous energy to create, but also that I need to try something different. I’m not sure exactly what that is yet, but I know that I want to start by rediscovering my creative passion through more personal work.”
Should we expect an announcement of a new indie studio from Hudson and Darrah?