BioWare’s Two Biggest Franchises Were Divided Internally, Reveals Former Dev

Former developer at BioWare, David Gaider, shared in a social media post that BioWare’s two biggest franchises were internally divided. Gaider provided information regarding BioWare’s development teams – which consisted of essentially two separate workforces. One team was previously from Dragon Age, while the other was from Mass Effect. 

“You see, the thing you need to know about BioWare is that for a long time it was basically two teams under one roof: the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team. Run differently, very different cultures, may as well have been two separate studios,” Gaider said. 

“The company was aware of the friction and attempts to fix it had been ongoing for years, mainly by shuffling staff between the teams more often.”

The above quote was mentioned while the now creative director for Summerfall Studios discussed his personal experiences at BioWare on bsky – a social media platform catered towards developers.  The topic came up as he gave context prior to his founding of Summerfall; David Gaider worked at BioWare for many years, having been heavily involved in the Dragon Age franchise. 

Much of David Gaider’s personal career experiences towards the latter half of staying at BioWare, as according to his social media post, resulted in him being barred from creative liberties – often facing conflict internally due to business structures and decisions. Gaider received feedback for his ideas being “too Dragon Age,” with “the implication being that anything like Dragon Age was bad.” 

“I won’t go into detail about the problems except to say it became clear this was a team that didn’t want to make an RPG […] I saw the writing on the wall. This wasn’t going to work,” he mentioned, showcasing an example of the internal conflict within Bioware’s development team. 

“I called up my boss and said I’d stick it out and try my best, but only if there was SOMETHING waiting on the other side, where I could have more say as Creative Director. I wanted to move up. I was turned down flat, no hesitation.” 

David Gaider then went on and co-founded Summerfall Studios – a business decision prompted by the internal disagreements within BioWare. 

Summerfall Studios was founded in 2017, best known for creating Stray Gods, a single player that released on August 9, 2023. Stray Gods is a roleplaying musical, available to play on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch.