One of the biggest and most shocking failures of this year, a year full of otherwise pleasant high profile surprises, was Mass Effect Andromeda, the long awaited fourth entry in Bioware’s flagship space epic franchise that launched to middling reviews, player antipathy, and a dismal performance in the commercial market.
There were many reasons as to why Andromeda failed- and many of these have been discussed ad nauseam at this point. However, speaking during a recent episode of the Waypoint Radio podcast, Manveer Heir, a former BioWare developer, noted that a lack of diversity internally at Bioware had something to do with Mass Effect Andromeda‘s eventual failure.
“I wasn’t the only one [who spoke out]. There were other people, there were other white people, white men, who spoke up. There’s a lot of really good people inside of BioWare who spoke up on this stuff. The lead writer at the time did not seem to care or understand and so this is what happens when you have a homogeneous leadership. The leadership of Mass Effect: Andromeda was all white men,” he said.
He added that his objections were not entertained by Bioware. “When I realized I was in an environment that did not accept that and want that, and that was telling me I was being too angry or I was speaking up too much, and basically tried to tell me to sit down and be humble, I was like…peace out.”
Diversity of opinions is important for any work of art undertaken on this scale- the more diverse opinions you have, the more people can tell you something that you yourself might miss. I don’t know how many players were dissatisfied by Andromeda, but there were probably some.
Mass Effect Andromeda is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Via: Gamasutra.
