BioWare @bioware Tell us about your favourite Dragon Age memories from the last 10 years for a chance to win a signed Dragon Age: Inquisition art book and a new little Mabari plush pal! #BioWare25
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod "The last time we put horses in a game, I entered a bug because the horse was described as 'chestnut'. It wasn't chestnut, it was a bay! And everybody laughed at me!" "I forgot we have a horse nerd on the team now!" #overheardintheoffice
Sheryl Chee @sherylchee Thanks to this conversation, I have learned that there is a color of horse called the "blood bay" and it is the most metal thing I've heard today.
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod #TFW a meeting ends with: "In conclusion, Blackwall is a garbage person, fuck Blackwall." (Especially when the meeting was actually about map UI, and absolutely nothing related to Blackwall or DAI at all.) 🤣 #overheardintheoffice
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod "This could be a cutscene." "Our GAME could be a cutscene, that you're just controlling." "Isn't real life just a cutscene?" "This explains a lot." #overheardintheoffice
- Looks like BioWare is working from home for the next little while...
Chelsea Fariello @chelseafariello Whole studio is wfh now, pajamas all day every day!
John Epler @eplerjc\ As I was going home today I told my team 'alright, I'm off to be part of the 'before the outbreak' part of a post-apocalyptic film'.
Getting a preview of the temporary WFH life as my cat tries to eat my headset cable.
Michael Gamble @gamblemike Just spent 3 hours making sure my home office was appropriate for webcam use. #hidingdaydrinking
Jon Renish @jonrenish Taking care of a few last things at the office then it's work at home for a couple weeks to be safe.
Jeff fieldflux Day 1 of work from home. I guess we’ll find out if I’m cut out for full remote work or not. Already going to have to make some adjustments to reduce distractions.
This has been an unprecedented few days in an already unprecedented time. As the world works to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, a sweeping set of societal and cultural changes are now impacting all of our daily lives. We’d like to take a moment to update all of you on what we’re doing at Electronic Arts to ensure the health and wellbeing of our employees, while also making sure that everyone is able to keep playing their favorite games.
Since January, we’ve had a global taskforce closely monitoring the evolving situation with coronavirus and working daily to respond to the changing needs of our people in real time. We’ve been constantly assessing the risk of exposure in the regions where we have offices, guided by the recommendations from local and federal health authorities, and the information we’re getting from our own teams. In Asia, we’ve worked in accordance with regional health and government guidance. We previously closed our locations in Shanghai, Singapore, and Seoul, as well as our Milan office, with teams working from home. As the situation stabilizes in Shanghai and Singapore, our teams are now returning to work in line with guidance from regional health officials. Our locations in Seoul and Milan remain closed, with those teams continuing to work remotely.
We implemented global travel restrictions in late February, eliminating all travel except very rare cases, and have been working with local leadership at each office and studio to make the best decisions for our people with the information we have. At the same time, we’ve been planning for business continuity, ensuring that our people have the support and resources they need to work from home. Our IT and Security teams have scaled up our remote working systems, including deployment of VPN capacity upgrades, so that our studio and development work can be continued from home, in addition to standard business operations.
As of today, we have transitioned to strongly recommending that all our employees in North America, Europe and Australia work from home until April 1, to help limit potential exposure to coronavirus and minimize the social spread of the illness. Many of these sites, including our Redwood Shores headquarters, were already giving employees the option to work from home, and now is the time for greater measures. We will only have very limited staff for business-critical functions at these sites -- everyone else will be working remotely. Our senior leaders, site leaders and IT teams have been working together to help us prepare for this.
We’ve also taken steps to ensure that the vendors and contractors that provide services on-site at our facilities will continue to be paid, even if they’re not able to work from home in their roles.
As we take these steps for our Electronic Arts employees, we’re also very focused on minimizing any potential for disruption to our players. We are confident in our continuity plans. We don’t anticipate major changes in our games or services as a result of our teams working from home, but we’re learning through this process as well and patience will be key. We’re constantly talking and working with our teams across the world to evolve with the situation.
These are challenging times for everyone. We’re working to look after our employees and their families, and make sure we’re doing the right and responsible things to fight this pandemic illness. We have amazing technology teams that are making it possible for all of this to happen, and we’re deeply thankful. We now have thousands of employees that have taken equipment to their homes so we can keep our games and services running, and continue working on new projects. We may be doing it from our homes around the world, but we're doing everything we can to be here for you.
The Inquisitor @aleaderlost @patrickweekes can you answer questions about Solas & Mythal encountering the Sha-Brytol, or is that something we are keeping under wraps until DA4?
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Prooooobably under wraps, sorry.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes In in-person meetings, especially ones I'm running, I will often respond with, "Good point," and stuff when people say stuff.
In web-meetings, that doesn't work -- everyone stops because they think you have more to say.
My workaround is to do those, "Oh, cool!" notes, as well as things like, "I have a thought when you're finished," in whatever text chat goes with the web meeting. Those little social cues are easy to miss in web meetings, and that seems to help me. Hope it helps some of you!
Tori-Parker AlexanderJack player_Parker @patrickweekes @biomarkdarrah @bioware @karinweekes the world of dragon age has many different languages both current and ancient or forgotten and it's impressive to see a company develope these fictional languages but has anyone considered like an elvhen or qunlat sign language?
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes It’s a great idea, and maybe something we’ll tackle someday. Right now, it’d be very expensive to develop and capture it for a character.
If we did, I’d expect us to use ASL for starters, like they did in Dragon Prince.
Julie 🐺 💖 @julietaube Dear Patrick, I don't want to bother you, but since you write in Dread Wolf Take Me that Solas was with the Inquisition for a year - is that the "official" canon time for the duration of DAI? Because... it doesn't really work with the events and distances.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes A typo, no. Us consistently playing very fast and loose with how long it takes to get anywhere? Yes.
The main consensus was that once we accidentally started doing things like “three-week trip to Val Royeaux to take Cole for a quick lunch,” none of it made sense, so we ballparked a year.
That said, Thedas isn’t the size of North America. It’s the size of Western Europe.
Angela D(alish). Mitchell 🐺 ⬆️ @drunkdalish Thanks, Patrick, this helps enormously! Shrinking those distances (which I tend to assume are huge because -- big map!) helps me to shrink the action into a year.
(whispers) but I'm still basing my fanfic stuff on 18 months because oh well, why not.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes 18 months is much more realistic. And is still in a place where folks would say “A year,” give or take.
Marmele⁷ @marmele22 @patrickweekes The book is a little scary (some of the storys are v.e.r.y scary). Is this the tentacled new tone for the next game? However i liked your stories, thank you so much!
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes I can’t really talk about any new game, but stuff from anthology is roughly analogous to past games:
Horror of Hormak: DAO Deep Roads Wigmaker Job: Your mother in DAII Luck in Gardens: Some parts of the Descent, maybe?
So while it might feel more immediate due to the skill of @eplerjc, @courtneywoods, and @sylvf1, the material isn’t out of line with content we’ve done in game.
They got their dates wrong (it was released on Nov. 3/09), but...
Game Informer @gameinformer Ten years ago today, Dragon Age: Origins was release for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. We featured the game as the cover story of issue #187 of Game Informer back in 2008. Any fond memories of your time battling the Darkspawn and Archdemon?
BioWare @bioware There was once a tear in the veil Through green, the spirits would wail A lying apostate elf Wished to open it himself And that’s why I sit here drinking this ale. - Inquisitor #StPatricksDay
Flukas @flukasskywalker Dear @bioware @patrickweekes @john_Eppler Please hire @nerdi_nikki . She has GREAT ideas like: Instead of just having your protaganist doing quests / loyalty quests for other ppl... how about your companions do a quest for YOU the player? She's really smart! And a good person!
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes I love this idea! Don’t know if it would work for the game we are making, but cool to explore regardless.
Also, doesn’t Nik prefer they/them?
Nik 🏳️🌈 @nerdi_nikki That’s correct, I do prefer they/them. Thank you.
I was considering exploring it in my own potential maybe game design or at least just...inane idle backstory fodder for writing about my current Inquisitor.
I appreciate the enthusiasm 😅
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes It brings up some interesting questions. In Inquisition, while you can control anyone in combat, you do all quests as the Inquisitor. People identify with the Inquisitor as their avatar.
If you control Sera or Bull for a quest without the Inquisitor, you could further the story, but you the player are more “story author” than Inquisitor.
I could see some people loving that and some feeling like it hurt immersion.
I’m interested, though, whatever we end up doing. DAO had cutaways (Loghain doing bad stuff while the Warden is elsewhere), but in DAI, we mostly left those out, limiting the world to (mostly) what the Inquisitor experienced.
Nunzio DeFilippis @ndefilippis Tomorrow, Fenris, Francesca, and Autumn the Mabari have big choices to make.
Dark Horse Comics @darkhorsecomics Dragon Age: Blue Wraith #3 arrives this week: bit.ly/2x41DXE Fenris, the "Blue Wraith," has joined a young mage in a quest to stop the reckless experiments of rogue mages.
By @ndefilippis Christina Weir @furukawaheinz @blambot @atiyehcolors @sachinteng + @bioware #dragonage
Casey Hudson @caseydhudson In challenging times it’s important to come together as a community. At @bioware we have joined with other companies in Edmonton’s #yegtech community in an initiative to support the @yegfoodbank over the next three months. Join us! #YEGTechCares
CNBC @cnbc Jim Cramer says Boeing 'will run out of money' if it is not 'saved'
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Listen, Boeing, #RealTalk: Getting money from a giant bailout might “save” your wallet, but only by accepting Andruil, Lady of the Hunt and Sister of the Moon, into your heart, can you TRULY be saved.
Crystal McCord @mrscmccord In our first full week of quarantine, @bioware and @ea exceeded all expectations. Shipped tech to ppl’s homes, created an allowance to buy home office, full company zoom video chats, daily zoom workouts, mental health check ins, parent support networks, and daily hangouts. ❤️ ❤️
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Someone at work asked how our current stuff does on the Bechdel-Wallace test. It’s interesting, because our games don’t test neatly that way. The customizable PC makes it either very easy or very hard.
Not intended as an indication of quality or feminism. Some bad stuff passes, some good stuff doesn’t. But it’s a useful barometer for whether a piece of content has female characters who aren’t defined by relation to a man.)
Mass Effect: If you play as FemShep, nearly every talk with Liara works. Most with Tali and Ash, although they talk about their male relatives sometimes.
If you play as MaleShep, you almost always talk with one person or a mixed-gender group. It’s hard to pass.
If you go with the interpretation that you only pass if the conversation has no men in it, not just multiple women, it’s almost impossible, since Shepard talks in most conversations. You’re left with ambient talks you overhear, maybe?
Given the limitation of what kind of games we make, I prefer an altered version of the test, which is, “Does the content have a female character with a story arc not primarily about her relationship with a man?”
By that logic: Tali in ME2, Vivienne in DAI: No. Their arcs are about men in their lives.
(Again, doesn’t mean their arcs are bad! It just means the games don’t pass based on them. If all arcs were like this, that might indicate we were giving female characters short shrift.)
But ME2 also has Samara, whose arc is about her daughter. DAI has Leliana and Sera, whose arcs are about women in their lives.
So both games pass.
Like I said, this isn’t a gauge of inherent quality. Great games can fail, weak games can pass.
But it’s helpful for us to think about when we look at stuff we’re making, to make sure we haven’t accidentally made every female character’s arc about how they relate to men.
(And while we have nothing to announce at this time regarding future content, I can say that we plan to pass by any reasonable standard.)
melisuer 🏳️🌈 is also known as cheryl/carol @smolwarden as a bioware fan that loves the DA and ME series, the customizable pcs are not only customizable within the game mechanics but also thought-out in the players' minds, and i think that would affect the outcome too! eg. i have nonbinary, trans etc. characters through the games, and i assume a lot of other players too. considering that the series are free to interpret that way, the outcome of the bechdel test would change in each playthrough even if the player chose the same gender "in-game" as before.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes YYYYUP. You can make a character who never talks to Liara more than the bare minimum, if you care to do so.
You could judge by “content any player who finishes the critpath MUST see,” or you could judge by “content that is available, that a player COULD see.”
Charlie Cordes aka. Sylien @sylien_ I think the “does a female character have a fulfilling story arc” test is called the Mako Mori test! My favourite test are the sexy lamp test and the Furiosa test... which basically “did the character make dudebros mad just because the character existed”.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Yes! I altered the language slightly to apply what I THINK is a tougher standard, but the Mako Moro test.
I LOVE the Furiosa test and hadn’t heard of it. I hope someday to work on a character who passes.
Dark Horse Comics and BioWare have today announced two new books with extremely different content: BioWare Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development and Dragon Age: The First Five Graphic Novels. Both are, essentially, exactly what they sound like. The first is an in-depth look at the history of the developer with interviews, photos, and other art while the second is a collection of the graphic novels, starting with The Silent Grove and concluded with Knight Errant.
The game history book is also set to be a hardcover volume while the graphic novel collection will be paperback. They retail for $39.99 and $29.99, respectively, and both are set to release this coming October. The graphic novel collection notably exclude the original, non-Dark Horse Dragon Age comics as well as the most recent miniseries, Blue Wraith, which only just concluded publishing.
Here's how Dark Horse describes BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development:
"From BioWare’s isometric role-playing roots to its intense space operas and living worlds, chart the legendary game studio’s first 25 years in this massive retrospective. See what it took to make games in those wild early days. Pore over details of secret, cancelled projects. Discover the genesis of beloved characters and games. Includes never-before-seen art and photos anchored by candid stories from developers past and present."
In this 2018 GDC talk, former BioWare creative director Mike Laidlaw details some of the most important lessons he's learned about how narrative fits within games and how writers or narrative designers tasked with bringing stories to life can gel into cohesive storytellers, while still working well with the larger game team.
BioWare @bioware "You are unique. In all Thedas, I never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from the Fade. You have become important to me. More important than I could have imagined." #BioWare25 Lavellan by @koteg_rnd Solas by @zstedjas 📷@tamaralekher
