Unofficial Dragon Age Day @unofficialdaday In honor of surpassing $15k on Tiltify, it's time for a round of 5 Dragon Age: Inquisition codes! This is for the Origin PC GOTY Edition!
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Winners will be randomly selected, and you can only win once.
David Gaider @davidgaider Happy #DragonAgeDay, everyone! Big thanks to @unofficialdaday for keeping it going and to the DA fans who made working on the series so rewarding. All the love to the DA team at BioWare - there's so much passion going into DA4, I know it'll be worth the wait!
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard Prime Posts: 3,912 Prime Likes: 9733 Posts: 2,894 Likes: 12,961
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard
Crystal McCord@mrscmccord Happy #DragonAgeDay ! I am so incredibly happy to have joined the team for the next Dragon Age as Narrative Producer. This community is like nothing else! It blows me away how much love for the IP there is out there. Thank you all for sharing and especially to
Ben Gelinas @bengelinas Happy #DragonAgeDay to everyone who celebrates but also specifically to everyone who has ever highlighted passages or stuck page markers in their copies of World of Thedas Vol 1 and/or 2. Or made the recipes.
Jo Berry @joanna_Berry Fun fact: the Dalish hearth cakes in the World of Thedas Vol 2 are based on my mother's recipe for Welsh cakes. For the most authentic version, cook on a proper cast iron bakestone #UnofficialDragonAgeDay
Crystal McCord @mrscmccord Happy #DragonAgeDay ! I am so incredibly happy to have joined the team for the next Dragon Age as Narrative Producer. This community is like nothing else! It blows me away how much love for the IP there is out there. Thank you all for sharing and especially to @unofficialdaday!
Unofficial Dragon Age Day @unofficialdaday *Cue the celebratory tavern music*
We’ve hit $20K for @ablegamers! Only $5K left to go until we reach our goal of $25K for this wonderful cause. THANK YOU to all who’ve helped us get here!
Angela "Dragon Age Daylirious" Mitchell (she/her)@drunkdalish Every year I send our friends at @bioware silly questions for #DragonAgeDay, and here are the 2021 answers, from @patrickweekes, @sherylchee, @eplerjc, @biomarykirby, @karinweekes, and more, on embarrassing crushes, favorite moments, even Fade gravestones! www.dumpeddrunkanddalish.com/2021/12/bioware-friends-answer-our-silliest.html
Unofficial Dragon Age Day @unofficialdaday WE DID IT!!!!!
Thank you, THANK YOU to everyone who participated! We've reached our biggest goal ever for @ablegamers to celebrate #DragonAgeDay and we never could have done it without all you wonderful heroes!
Congratulations everyone, and THANK YOU! You made this possible!
It's not Dragon Age specific, but it is good to know that they feel respected and listened to at BioWare.
Alt.NonBinaries.Trans.Lina Blue heart @pr0mptcr1t1cal Five years ago today I started at @bioware. I was just on a one-year temporary job, and fully expected that to run its course and that to be it.
Yet here I am five years later, involved in publishing now and still excited to be going in to work.
This is the longest I've stayed at a company working full time (I supported a charity for 16 years, but that was occasional work, so it doesn't really count).
A significant part of the reason I've stayed is the people I work with, yes, the friends I made along the way.
Without the support of the team(s) I'm on, and my friends here, I wouldn't have found the courage to come out (twice); it's certainly nothing I would have been able to do at my last job, that's for sure.
And while there have been challenges, and problems, and days where I've debated going elsewhere, in the end I stay because I've been listened to, and respected, and I want to see things improve for everyone, and if possible be part of that change.
I don't know how long I'll be here, but hopefully at very least long enough to get a certain statue of a certain Shepard.
For now I want to keep doing what I can to help everyone get the games we love making out the door and in to the hands of the people who love them.
Last Edit: Dec 6, 2021 4:50:21 GMT by ladyiolanthe
Angela "Dragon Age Daylirious" Mitchell (she/her)@drunkdalish Every year I send our friends at @bioware silly questions for #DragonAgeDay, and here are the 2021 answers, from @patrickweekes, @sherylchee, @eplerjc, @biomarykirby, @karinweekes, and more, on embarrassing crushes, favorite moments, even Fade gravestones! www.dumpeddrunkanddalish.com/2021/12/bioware-friends-answer-our-silliest.html
Every time I see this I always wonder if Cullen isn't the one who is curious?
Ted Lasso has been recommended to me by several people. At least 1 said that Ted reminded them of me. Having now watched it, I would agree. Though I may spend more time as Led Tasso... Strap in internet therapists...
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Time to capture some DAO... Its been more than 10 years.
Pallasy @pallasy_ Oh nice! Will you stream it or make a video of the playthrough? If not it's okay it's just out of curiosity
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah I'm reaching Memories and Lessons for DAO So first step is B-roll for that.
Grumpy0lLady @vortexwx38 What are you playing on? PC with Origin or something else?
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah I'm playing on PC through Steam because I couldn't be bothered. I have physical copies around here SOMETWHERE but then I need to find the USB DVD drive...
evil maureen. @evilmj do you mod or you like partying like it's 2009
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Oh no. Straight on 2009. At least for now Capturing footage for the Memories and Lessons series so I want accuracy.
Malark Morn @malarkmorn Just finished “again^n” (with n very high) one week ago. I need the remastered… when is it planned?
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah As far as I know there is no remaster planned. A remaster would be a lot of work because of the age of the underlying eclipse engine. Though if you REMASTER DAO you almost get DA2 as a side effect.
Paul Jason Meyer @mulwin444 How would you, as someone who helped build the original, feel about a from-the-ground-up re-make of "DAO" in Unreal/Frostbite with a voiced Hero of Ferelden
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Honestly a remake is likely the way to go (though WAY more expensive) One of the early pitches for Joplin was 1-User toolset 2-Find a talented mod group 3-Uplift them to remake DAO
Though, a remake means you have to modernize it more than a remaster would let you get away with
Kawaii kawaiifoxita I don’t think my heart could take a remake. I have so much love for the original.
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Yeah its tough a REMAKE often isn't even really FOR the original players. So that's weird.
Mario @pokemario98 Do you think a remake would, or even should, touch up the combat system and/or add stuff to the game? (i.e. a new origin or player race)
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah A remaster, no A remake needs to look at everything and consider what isn’t acceptable anymore
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Ok fine let’s layout as best as I remember the beginnings of DA2. - DAO shipped Nov 9 09 - SWTOR was slipping AGAIN and EA was all, “you better get some revenue into FY11 or it’s gonna suck to be you” - there was a team mostly on Awakening and some prelim work on the DLC beyond
Me, @mike_Laidlaw, @sergoldman, and @benoit_Houle (and maybe Ross) gather in the MDK2 room to discuss doing SOMETHING. Maybe we were drunk I dunno but we sign up and drag the team into what becomes DA2
Is it a 1.5 at some point in there? Yes but that doesn’t adequately cover the shortfall so that is short lived. There is no expansion that is grown into a game. It was called Exodus but the executive wouldn’t let that happen (hence DA2)
Do others remember different things? For sure. They were in different rooms. Did more exist then I remember? I mean writing always seems to have a few irons in the fire, so maybe.
David isn’t misleading anyone but I think that the “expansion pack” narrative is used by other, more senior, voices to under cut the accomplishment of the DA2 team. Should I have dragged them into that fight? No but it can be hard to tell which fights are ACTUALLY life and death.
But to be clear: @davidgaider and I are now mortal enemies and nothing will ever make that better. Winking face
David Gaider @davidgaider Here's the point where my perspective is different, Mark -- I came off Awakenings early to do 1.5 concept work, so I was on it for a fair bit. It was initially discussed (to me) as a stand-alone xp. The conversations y'all were having higher up were quite different, I expect.
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah I certainly can believe that there was a concept team on an expansion pack when “crazy meeting” happened. And DA2 would have eaten that first as Awakening still needed to ship. So we’re both right!!
David Gaider @davidgaider Yeah. I expect, from a project level, the xp got canceled and we moved onto DA2. From where I was, DA 1.5 *became* DA2, and we expanded what was originally supposed to be a "connective" story into its own thing.
Anyway: next time we meet, pistols at dawn. Can't be stopped, now.
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah No oops got my dates wrong. Oct 2007 is when the EA deal closed. BioWare was first acquired November 3, 2005 I called it VG Partners but the actual holding company was Elevation Partners...
Maybe VG partners was the combined Pandemic / BioWare entity... I forget
Eliseu F. @eliseuf6 I know that some people might be horrified with what I'm going to say, but I like Dragon Age 2 more than DAO
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah It’s a more popular opinion then you know
Jesse Houston @gtez RVR was also cut in 2008 if I recall correctly. The portfolio needed a bunch of years of dev, but had no revenue.
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Yup revolver shut down in 2008 to fuel ME2 and DAO
Tangerine Snim @tangerine_snim So Bioware as an independent company had a completely different kind of challenges
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Yeah we were close to the edge a few times
Cipher Six cipher_Six As a fan of SWTOR and Dragon Age, I hate how EA handled this. Rushed SWTOR out unfinished on a December 15th launch date and apparently even that wasn't enough, they had to squeeze DA in the process too. Awful decisions compromised obviously great but unfinished content
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah SWTOR was more than 2 years late by the time it came out. I don’t know the true reasons that EA bought BioWare / Pandemic but I expect SWTOR was the primary reason. They were low on patience
Anamorphic.Widescreen @awidescreen Not having worked there at the time I'm obviously missing a lot of context, and in my ignorance this strikes me as a moderately asinine way to develop software or any kind of product.
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah
Paul Jason Meyer @mulwin444 I just find it wild that EA's answer to "SWTOR is slipping to Dec 2011!!!" is "you must create a whole AAA RPG in under 16 months". I love DA2, still play it yearly, and find it amazing what you guys were able to accomplish in such a short dev time
David Gaider @davidgaider My understanding was that the issue - from a corporate level - is that without *something* being released, that would have been an entire fiscal year of giant scary red numbers.
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah Yeah that’s right. And scared corporations do… bad things.
Mike Jungbluth @lightbombmike Finishing out 2021 and welcoming @toadbulerton to the Dragon Age animation team with the least subtle, and possibly most ridiculous movie we have watched yet.. Santa with Muscles
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard Prime Posts: 3,912 Prime Likes: 9733 Posts: 2,894 Likes: 12,961
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard
Mike Jongbluth @lightbombmike Having the last day of work for the year be a mocap shoot day is the best way to wrap up the work year. Leaves you excited for all of the mocap gifts to unwrap in the new year!
Kala Elizabeth @kalaelizabeth *IF* there is an 8-10 year gap between Trespasser and Dragon Age 4 (based on the latest short story timeline) what do you think your Inquisitor has been up to? #DragonAge
Steve Streeting @stevestreeting Gamedev is all about discovering, to your horror, that all the really basic behaviours you take for granted in every decent game require a non-trivial amount of effort to make happen
John Epler @eplerjc First you say ‘I’d like it if this character could walk from point A to point B’, and then a horrible little gremlin emerges from your computer and demands your voice in payment.
Part of why I say 'every success in game dev is because of the team' is that there are probably four different people involved in making an NPC walk from one point to another.
Each of them is incredibly brilliant and gifted at what they do.
Alexei Pepers @ampepers Within EA culture, BioWare was considered indie. Next to BioWare, my team of ~100 considers itself indie. Next to that, my last workplace of 25-50 was indie. And when 5 people make something part time over years, that’s also indie. It really means extremely little on its own!
David Gaider @davidgaider Yeah, it's kind of irksome that people expect the same things from Dragon Age - with its team size of 70-100 - and, say, Witcher 3 - with its team size of 150-250... or a Rockstar game, with a team size of over 1500+.
