The Pyjack's Den! The ME News Discussion Thread

Ben: “You left BioWare after 19 years. When was your last day there?”

Mac: “Last day, it was just over a year ago. I can’t remember the exact date, I believe it was like the end of November, beginning of December last year, so I kinda just passed that anniversary recently.”


Mac: “There’s a couple of factors you have to consider before posting all over social media about leaving. As a person who, you know, I guess was fairly senior at the company, you don’t want it to be a distraction, especially to the teams that are working. You know, I was on the Dragon Age team at the time, so. You don’t want a whole bunch of news about ‘oh, another dev is leaving’ or something like that, so it was right before Christmas break, we just agreed that, you know, I’m not gonna talk about it right now, and I didn’t have a need to talk about it, I didn’t have any plans, there was nothing I really wanted to discuss. So I just sort’ve was happy to keep it quiet. I thought the news might get out on its own, but it didn’t, and then eventually I was ready to just sort’ve start talking about things. And also just, you don’t want people kinda finding out the wrong way and then making a story out of something that isn’t a story. So eventually, I was just like, I’ll just update my LinkedIn and see what happens.”

Ben: “The press love writing these stories. So it was just like a quiet, agreed-upon thing of like, you know, anything we can do just to not make people worried or stressed, that’s the way to go?”

Mac: “Exactly, and you know, it was one of those things too where I was asked a lot internally and talking to the team, and everyone there about 'why now’ and what, you know, it was one of those things where it was really just time for me. After 19 years, it just felt kinda like this was the moment. So there wasn’t like a definitive triggering event, right, anything I needed to discuss, and so again it was one of those, let’s just part ways amicably and you’ll continue to do your thing and I’ll go do my thing and figure out that.”

Ben: “Did it kinda time up with kinda a re-shuffle or a re-org with Dragon Age, or was it really just a kinda random moment in that game’s development where you decided to step out?”

Mac: “Yeah, there was nothing particularly going on at that point, I should say we had some big milestones that I knew I wanted to get the team through before I did that, and like one of the last things I did there was, we had a big presentation with the very higher-ups, Andrew Wilson and his team, just sort’ve showing the state, and I wanted to get it through that sort’ve phase before I announced so that they had stability going through that, and then once that was over, I just said, yeah, I think it’s time.”


Mac: “No, we were in at the studio, but I think like a lot of companies, it just never returned to what it was before. I remember we had a few, the most effective thing was we would try to bring people together for a reason, and then you’d find you’d get a decent number of people, but for a studio that could support I don’t know how many people, I’d be guessing, but a few hundred, I rarely saw more than 15 or 20 people at the studio. It was nice to get in and having meetings with people, see people face to face, it’s also nice just to get out of your house and go work at the office every once in a while, but the impetus, or the driving sort’ve like 'everybody’s there’, it just, it hadn’t materialized by the time I left so.” (this question was about was BioWare remote working still at that time or no)


Ben: “How stressful was your job at BioWare?”

Mac: “That’s a really good question. I don’t think, I never really thought about it as a stressful job, I mean, game development has stressful moments is the way I think of it right. There’s always points in any development cycle where, you know, the unknowns feel like they’re outweighing the knowns, and time is running is short, whatever it is, and that’s what sort’ve amps up your stress, but I loved what I did for the most part and I’m one of those people who loves both a challenge and problem-solving, so most of the times when we had those, I always felt like, okay, we’re gonna figure something out, we’re gonna do something there. I think when I left, if you think about sort’ve, weight off my shoulders, or whatever it was, I think it was more about, you know for a while I’d been feeling my time was kind’ve coming to an end there, and all I can say about that is just like, you know, I’d explored the things I wanted to do, the things I still wanted to do in my career I probably knew I wasn’t going to be able to do there, so that was starting to create I think internal tension for me, and creating a little bit of angst or something like that, so there was certainly some stress around that. And just the idea of having to tell these people that I had worked with for almost 2 decades that I’m now leaving, I was surprised how much anxiety that created because I’m one of those people that once I make a decision, I make that decision and go for it. Once I had made this decision and I was confronted with, now I have to tell people, that was, yeah, that really hit me a lot harder than I thought it would. The first person I told was Gary McKay, the General Manager at the time. Just out of, you know, he was my manager, and the person I spent a lot of time with, certainly in the last year of being there. And then, I actually kinda kept it quiet for a while, again out of respect for, don’t disrupt the team, I wanted him to have a plan, how did we wanna talk about it, things like that. So I told him, let him sit with it, then we, slowly trickled out the information.”


Ben: “So what did you wanna do? Did you want to run a project, run a smaller project? Like what did you realize you were not capable of doing within BioWare?”

Mac: “One of the great opportunities I had which kinda came outta the blue was working on MELE. So that was a project I think we wanted to have greenlit, for years we’d been asking to do it, and when the opportunity came up and EA came to us and said, hey, can you do this? We were like, yeah, we can do it! But it wasn’t on a road-map, you need to think about a lot of the planning that goes into these games, cycles that can be 4 years long, hundreds of people involved, you plan all that stuff out. And all of a sudden we’ve got this project that’s unplanned, what do we do with it, right? And so the way to make that successful was really for me to be a little bit rogue, a little bit sort’ve entrepreneurial in how we were gonna build this out with the people we had and the people we could get without disrupting the other teams in the meantime. Looking at different methodologies, so one of the big ones was I knew I wasn’t going to have a huge internal team, so how do we create this, you know, yes it was a remaster, but it was a remaster of 3 whole games plus all their DLCs, it was an immense project. I quickly realized this was gonna need co-dev work, like we’re not gonna be able to handle this just with our internal team. So it was kinda just a whole different mindset of how we were going to run things. Anyway, long story short, that process reminded me a lot of early days BioWare, we were a small scrappy team, a lot of people were wearing lots of different hats, a lot of people with opportunity to lead even if that wasn’t in their title, just because that was the nature of what we needed folks to do. And there was a lot of camaraderie that was formed with that team, I think because we stayed small. Also, looking at what we were able to accomplish working with some really talented co-dev partners, I was like, yeah, this is the future, like, I think this is how AAA gaming needs to go when you look at how complex and challenging it is. And so a lot of that was just reminding me of, you know, call it the 'good old days’ or whatever, or certainly things that I remembered about originally starting there that I wanted to do. Like, let’s start something small, let’s be scrappy, let’s do that. And then on top of that I think the other big thing was, you know, I got to work on 3 new wholly-owned IPs from the ground up. Jade Empire, Anthem, and Mass Effect of course. I knew I wanted to do new IP again. I wasn’t even thinking it has to be my IP, that’s great, but really I knew I wanted to do new IP again. So between all of those things kinda culminating, I was just feeling like, I don’t think, and you know, to be fair I asked around, like, well, can we do something like this at BioWare, or is there opportunity at EA? And when it became pretty clear that there probably wouldn’t be, at least not for the foreseeable future, that’s when I started thinking, it’s like, no, okay, I think I’m done.”


Mac: “I think the other big thing too was after MELE, because it was so successful to me as a project, in the sense of, team was healthy, we really got along, and of course it was critically and financially successful. It just felt like this is the bow on my, on all of the things I’ve done, and Mass Effect, which is like, all of things, really. I don’t want to do any more Mass Effect after this, like why, why tempt fate? Right? So I also knew I didn’t wanna move into that space, and I do love sci-fi, so it was like, well now what are my options, at BioWare?”

Ben: “Were people trying to nudge you towards the Mike Gamble, new Mass Effect project? Or was it clear you could move to Dragon Age if you wanted and no one was gonna bug you about that?”

Mac: “No, I think it was more of a, you know, I was looking again for something new and different in general, and people recognized that, and they were trying to figure out what we can do, but you know, there’s always these other competing factors going on that end up dictating what projects are gonna happen and which ones aren’t, and it just became clear that it’s like, yeah, I’ll probably need to find something else.” “[on the MELE team] it was also a reminder of what a smaller team could accomplish, I think due to just varying factors, I found myself on increasingly large teams. And again I was trying to find a way, and I don’t wanna say there’s something inherently bad or wrong with large teams, it just feels like it’s sometimes necessary, but I also deep down felt like, maybe there’s a different way, maybe there’s a way that we can actually have a smaller internal group where we can really focus on culture and who we are, showing up every day and actually enjoying working with each other, and making that a focus, as opposed to just the project and the needs of the project. That’s always a challenge, that push and pull.”

Ben: “I remember Mark Darrah, when we were visiting for Anthem, he was even talking then about how eager he was to get a small team rolling making a smaller game within BioWare, were just a lot of kinda the old-timers all had this sense of like, we need to make smaller things for our own sanity at this point?”

Mac: “Yeah, I think so and, you know, the nature of just even the content pipelines that you create, you end up with these teams that are just so big to fill these massive worlds, and the way it scales generally too, there’s a bit of a rapid exponential factor at the end where just the teams scale so fast. As someone running a project, you feel like you lose contact with the majority of people, like you don’t have that sort’ve one-on-one contact with people, so you’re then working or trusting or delivering messages through leads or through directors through leads and then just everything starts to feel a little bit more disconnected. And it’s driven home a lot of times, when I would meet someone on a project that maybe I had led, and I realized well okay, well, I know you were on the project, and you realize that their only touchpoint with me was meetings where I presented or something like that, and that was it, and that’s their whole viewpoint. And that’s not a way to sort’ve, I feel, truly inspire people, or get them on board with something. You want that one-on-one opportunity and it’s just really difficult to have it in those big teams.”


Ben: “Who do you think you learned the most from in terms of studio management, team management throughout your career so far?”

Mac: “One of the people I still sorta keep in touch with is Greg, one of the founders of BioWare. I’d say he’s one of the people who to this day I sort’ve consider a mentor and someone that I look up to. I mean he did it from the ground up with Ray. And to me sort’ve looking at, because, a lot of his advice is really, 'don’t do this, I did that and you don’t wanna do that’. Like he’s got really fantastic insights on that. But also when I joined BioWare, Ray and Greg would take everybody out to lunch, like you met them, no matter what when you started. I think I was the hundred and thirty-something employee, and they still took everyone out to lunch, made sure they met them, they also interviewed them. That’s a good example. Even just, I always felt like, even from day one, even though I didn’t have a reason to, if I wanted to work into Ray’s office or Greg’s office and talk to them about something, I could. If you ask Greg, he would say starting a game studio is really hard, the business side of it is really hard, and if you don’t have really solid partners in part of that process it will pull away from your ability to actually make the game, which is what you’re really there to do.”


Mac: “We reach out, Casey Hudson and I touch base every once in a while and like I said I talk to Greg, plus there’s, I keep in touch with the MELE folks quite a bit just because, you know, I think, again, we had that tight-knit group. It’s a fun community, a thing that’s really interesting to me is, how, I don’t want this to sound bad, but, how, I guess, a little bit myopic or lenses-on you can be when you stay at one studio for a long time, right. There’s an assumption that game development is similar everywhere, and sure, yes, but also once you start talking to people who’ve had experiences at wherever, Rockstar, Crystal Dynamics, wherever it is, you know, you start to go, oh wow, yeah, people had vastly different experiences going through these processes, they had different methodologies, they had different creative processes, things like that. And again, this is one of the things that you didn’t realize you were kinda missing until you found it. It’s really exciting to get out there and start talking to people and figuring that out.”

Ben: “From the outside perspective, it’s easy to be like, oh, I bet Mac’s having a hard time unplugging from BioWare, and specifically from ME and the ME lore? Do you feel that? Is it tough to emotionally unplug from being a ME guy for so long?”

Mac: “Nope, it actually wasn’t. But again, to be clear, this wasn’t like a decision in a day, like I said, this was burbling, I think, for a little bit. Like MELE shipped in 2021, spring 2021 I think, and I left in, you know, holiday 2022, so there was a long period there of me sort’ve unwinding and unplugging and kind’ve feeling like, you know, yeah, I think I’m kinda done with this. So you know, it was a process for me. I’m sure it seemed more abrupt from the outside looking in. But, you know, I went through my own mental journey of that. Back it up even further, I’ll be honest, when MELE came up, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. Like I was already starting to have that feel of, oh, another Mass Effect, do I have it in me to do another Mass Effect? There’s part of me that sorta had that feeling of like, do I wanna revisit all this, do I wanna go backwards? Because there’s a sense of like, am I gonna go back? And obviously I’m so glad I made the decision to do it because I personally learned so much through that whole process, it was fantastic and I really enjoyed our time together. It was also nice because it was a nice short project. That was one thing that was kinda really special about that too, being able to kind’ve start and finish in like less than 3 years.”


Ben: “You’re welcome to slink out of the camera frame if you’re so exhausted by it, but, is it a matter of like, in doing MELE, I’m gonna have to revisit the ME3 ending and talk about it again? I mean, the vibe I always had from visiting BioWare is like, it was a no-joke - traumatic thing for the studio to go through, like extremely stressful.”

Mac: “Oh yeah.”

Ben: “Is that genuinely on your mind when you’re thinking of picking up MELE as a project? Revisiting the end of ME3 and all of the baggage with that emotionally.”

Mac: “Yes, I think so, I mean, for sure, I knew, at least, at the very least I was like, well, this is gonna bring those conversations back up again. But, you know, had they ever stopped? Like I can think of a few interviews that I did, I’m sure, around Anthem time or something like that, and people, it always just comes up. It’s like, oh, yeah. Or like, I’m doing stuff for comics that are kinda not related, and it’s like, okay, well let’s talk about - you know, it’s just, I feel like it’s in everybody’s rolodex of 'things we have to ask Mac in a meeting’. So it’s like it hadn’t really ever stopped, so. It was a consideration, but not one that really caused me much pause.”

Ben: “Also the nice thing too is, bundling them all together, it’s like, alright people from the press, I dare ya to play through all three games in a time where this is still gonna be relevant, and then you can post an article about it. But most people revisited ME1 and said 'this rules’, moving onto the next project, and then the hardcore fans would stick with the full trilogy and play through all of those. I didn’t see it bubble up again from my vantage point, but I’m sure you did.”

Mac: “Well, actually, a couple of comments we had were actually very much to the point you said, that when you experience them back to back like that, it puts a different lens. I’m not saying it fixes the endings or anything like that, don’t quote me as that, but it put a different lens on the endings, and on that whole experience. And then the other thing was, you know, I think a lot of the pain around that was the sense of ending, you know, ending Shepard’s journey, but you have, it’s kind’ve like, we’re giving you the full trilogy once again, so if you wanna re-roll and start over, re-roll and start over. And that’s what I hear, a lot of people. They literally play it all the way through and then start all the way back at ME1. If you think about it in the past, like if you think about the difference in the way it looked, the way it played between ME3 and ME1, when you’re done ME3, where was your, you know, you had to be hardcore to go all the way back to ME1 and pick that up again. So it does really feel almost more like an ending in that regard, right? And now it’s kind’ve like, I don’t know, we’ve kinda tried to smooth it all out, it feels like all one cohesive thing, jump back in if you wanna jump back in, so yeah.”


Ben: “How often are you thinking about ME, and I’m sorry for screwing up ME so much, but like, in a given week, how many times do you think of, or something reminds you, of a little bit of lore from ME or a development moment from ME?”

Mac: “It’s a good question, I mean it is super-entwined with all of my development experiences, so I would imagine it’s definitely in there as far as just, you know, remembering times with friends and times where we had different problems that we’ve solved previously on other projects. So 100% it comes up. One of the things was, it just happened to be a very, very busy week, because we were getting close to our own studio announcement, and someone told me that it was N7 Day, and I had forgot. It’s not that I’d forgot, like I knew it was coming, but then it was just like, oh, what are you gonna do for N7 Day? It’s like, is that today? And that hasn’t happened in how many years for me, right, I was just like, I was so laser-focused on the new project that, so, it’s not that I didn’t know that it was happening, I just had other priorities.”


Ben: “Can you put into words just how much the release of MELE kind’ve boosted morale at BioWare? Do you feel like it was a huge thing? I mean, the studio’s been quiet for a pretty long time. And it felt like a good boost of good will from the outside, at least.”

Mac: “Yeah, I think, you know, certainly internally, obviously, you know, working from the MELE team, the MELE team was stoked about the release, felt really good about it, given. You know, again, there was a lot of that like, we’d been given this small team, are we gonna be able to do it? So that was fantastic. But then of course, everyone loves to see when the fans are happy about stuff, and there was so much good will around the campaign, like the whole campaign and then the release, I think everyone really definitely got a boost. Obviously we love to see good Metacritic and everything like that, but it was the fan response I think that really sort’ve made everyone feel kinda like, you know, we’re less in a defensive mode with what we’re trying to do, and more like, yeah, no, this is, we’ve made great things and we will continue to make great things.”


Ben: “Lessons from the past. Andromeda. I know that was a tough project overall. As Creative Director, working so much with BioWare Montreal there, was that also kind’ve priming the pump for working with a distant studio and trying to connect people across physical barriers? When you look back on ME:A, what lessons do you take on development from that?”

Mac: “The remote part is a really good point because I, you know, I realized in that process that we could be doing this a lot more. And the key, which I don’t think we had at the time, either solved or maybe put the emphasis on we should is, is really being careful of that 'us-them’ kinda thing. And we did our best with that, but I think we could have done better with it for sure. I know the Montreal team sometimes felt like, oh, you know, there’s the mothership in Edmonton and then there’s us, sorta thing, even though they were by and large driving the development of that from day one. And so obviously me coming in, that was something I was very sensitive about, because I was coming more from the Edmonton office, but I realized pretty quick is like, yeah, this can work. We had the tools, we had the technology, why aren’t we doing more of this remote distributed work? So I think that was a big lesson learned. And I think the other big one for me was, that was, I wouldn’t say the turning point in my career but it was a point where I really started to emphasize people over product and process. And that was kind of an evolution in my career, I’d say, like, when you first join, you’re an individual contributor, you tend to be hyper-focused on your product, like, I’ve gotta be the best writer I can be. Then you kinda progress in a little bit and you realize, hey, these things aren’t as efficient as they could be, or maybe we could do this better, right, so you start to go process, that’s the thing that’s gonna make all of this better. But as a leader you start to realize, no, all of that doesn’t matter if you don’t spend the time with the people, if you don’t get to know the people, if you don’t have a great relationship with them and trust is built. And I think that was my big lesson learned on ME:A, which was, while I knew we could do remote, it didn’t afford me, at least in the way that we managed it, to really develop the relationships the way that I wanted to. And I wish I had been able to get to know that team a little bit more. And so that’s why, when I had that opportunity with MELE, it was top of my list right at the start, it was just like, we’re gonna have a small tight-knit team, we’re all gonna know each other. And even the co-dev. The way we approached co-dev was, you’re part of the team, right, like, you fly out, you come see us, we’ll fly out, we’re gonna come see you, you’re gonna be in our tools, you’re gonna be part of the team, we’re gonna have the same expectations of you as we have of the team, and that’s the way to make that work, right. So that was one of the big lessons learned for me.”


Ben: “Are there gigantic ME:A fans that you hear from a lot, a subset of ME fans that we don’t see from the outside?”

Mac: “Those might be more rare. I think what I see a lot are people who either are, you know, 'ME:A wasn’t that bad, you know, it was okay’, and I see a lot of people who are like, in hindsight, they appreciate it more than they did, which is often the case, right, you know, something, you know, the criticisms of it weren’t unwarranted, there was a lot that we could’ve done differently, I think. But I think with time, heals all wounds, I think a lot of people look at it and go, yeah, but there’s a really great premise here, there’s some really interesting things here, and you see a lot of people wanting to even make sure that we tie ME:A back to whatever happens in the future, that’s a common thread.”

Ben: “And it seems like that’s happening, without you revealing anything.”

Mac: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I’m out of the loop, so I can’t say anything about that. But I’m just saying that, you know, I see that as a common reference right now. It’s like, 'we really hope that these storylines make their way back into the ME universe.’”


Ben: “Did you have any parting advice for Mike Gamble on your way out the door for leading the new Mass Effect project? Does he come to you for advice, or do you just get together every once in a while and talk about the challenges of everything they’re tackling?”

Mac: “It’s more like, we would sort’ve share stories and talk about the different challenges and stuff like that. I think, you know, every person who ends up leading a project has to find their own way and he’s finding his own way with it, so, yeah.”