Why would a former video game executive producer like Mark Darrah start a YouTube channel?
If he played to his demons, he could use it as a platform to constantly hate-react to everything in the video game industry. But he’s left his demons in the Fade and sought a higher purpose: to pass on knowledge from his many years making games at BioWare.
Darrah recently made a splash with a series of videos diving deep into the making of BioWare’s ill-fated 2019 online action role-playing game Anthem. It’s a fascinating view not so much into what went wrong creatively with the game, but what went wrong with production itself.
That episode prompted us to invite Darrah onto the Game Developer Podcast to not just pry out more lessons not yet on his channel, but also to discuss the topic of sharing this kind of knowledge on YouTube, an environment that isn’t always welcoming to nuanced truths about making video games.
Communication can make or break a game
This episode was also a chance to dive deeper into a point Darrah raised about Anthem’s development: that BioWare was never 100 percent united behind a singular vision for the game until its first E3 reveal. This was a consequence of how game director Casey Hudson (who first left the project, then returned before it shipped) chose to tease out project details to other departments.
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Hudson apparently preferred to keep the full vision to a close group, and share information with other teams on a need-to-know basis. Darrah offered a nuanced look at why this strategy failed Anthem, and how the lessons go beyond “don’t keep needless secrets.”
About the Game Developer Podcast
The Game Developer podcast is a bi-weekly podcast chronicling the triumphs, catastrophes, and everything in-between of game development, sharing lessons and strategies fellow developers can use to hone their craft. The Game Developer Podcast is hosted by Bryant Francis, edited by Pierre Landriau, and features music by Mike Meehan.
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