Anthem Dev On Dealing With Toxicity, Interceptor Bio Reveal, and Control Tweaks

BioWare recently spoke about how it’s refreshing to be speaking about Anthem in terms of what it’ll play like rather than what it’s story will be- and that’s what we have more of today. Chris Schmidt, senior systems designer at the Canadian studio, and Ben Irving, lead producer on Anthem, recently answered a few interesting questions from fans on Reddit about the upcoming shooter.

When asked about how BioWare plans to deal with toxicity in the Anthem community, Schmidt said that though BioWare doesn’t know exactly what kind of community will shape up around the game, they’re putting plans into place to have both reactive and proactive measures.

“The general toxicity question is a great one,” Schmidt said. “There has been quite a bit of talk about this recently in game development, led by the Fair Play Alliance. There are some great learnings about methods to combat toxicity that have been shared by several studios for the greater good. The tricky part is before you launch the game you don’t really know how much toxicity will surface in your player community.

“The approach we have been taking is a proactive one: studying best practices and success stories around the game industry and applying some of those in Anthem. I can’t really speak to details at this point, but I’m working with a holistic plan with the ability to both be proactive and reactive to whatever flavor of community standards settle in around Anthem.

“It’s an important issue, and I’m encouraged that game developers are openly talking about it and sharing solutions among the dev community.”

In a separate thread, the question about controls was raised, asking whether BioWare had anything specific in mind regarding keyboard and mouse controls. Irving responded by saying that controls in the game are feeling solid with both, keyboard and mouse, and a controller, and that BioWare are still tweaking keyboard and mouse controls.

“Right now they both feel pretty solid,” he said. “We are still working on making flight feel good with KB and M mainly just turning so you don’t need the longest table in the world. That will be sorted shortly.”

Lastly, when a fan asked when BioWare would be revealing more details about the Interceptor in Anthem, Irving couldn’t say much, but did say that more details would be coming “soon”. “We have a few things to work out then we hope to share some information (I’m sorry) soon,” he said.

Anthem is due out on February 22, 2019 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. BioWare recently hit a new landmark in the game’s development. Read more on that through here.