Mark Darrah, one of the key figures behind the development of the first few Dragon Age games, recently shared his thoughts on why another entry in the fantasy series is unlikely to happen at EA. Essentially, Darrah believes that after Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to meet EA’s sales expectations, no one at the company wants to pitch a new DA game.
A gaming industry veteran, Mark Darrah joined BioWare in the 1990s, beginning his tenure as a programmer on the original Baldur’s Gate. While Darrah worked on a range of beloved BioWare projects like Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights, he’s mostly remembered for his work on the Dragon Age series. Alongside Dan Tudge, Mark Darrah directed Dragon Age: Origins, and he took on sole directorial duties on the sequel. Though Mike Laidlaw directed Dragon Age: Inquisition, Darrah is still given an executive producer credit on the Game of the Year-winning entry. Darrah officially left BioWare and EA in December 2020, but he returned in March 2023 to consult on Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Dragon Age Producer Says ‘I Don’t Know Who at BioWare Would Pitch a Dragon Age”
In a recent interview with FRVR, Mark Darrah was asked about the possibility of EA releasing a new Dragon Age game in the near future. Darrah begins by stating that EA has a “complicated relationship to shipping games.” Darrah explains that someone once described EA to him as a “hedge fund with a video game hobby that it wished it didn’t spend so much money on,” and he believes that remains true today.
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Three months after launch, EA confirmed that Dragon Age: The Veilguard had sold 1.5 million copies. According to EA, this figure was roughly half of what the publisher had expected, and thus the game was considered something of a commercial disappointment. Given that the last mainline entry failed to meet sales expectations, Darrah believes that the Dragon Age franchise is now on ice at the publisher, stating in the FRVR interview that he has “no concept of who could, would, possibly pitch [a new Dragon Age] at EA.”
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Darrah goes on to say that, based on what he’s heard, if an EA-owned studio pitches a game based on pre-established IP and it’s greenlit, the moment the studio actually starts working on it, they’re approached by several people who “think they control” the original rights. These enigmatic figures then reportedly “rip you apart and chew you up and spit you out,” resulting in the IP-based project being canceled almost immediately. This essentially suggests that no one outside of BioWare wants to touch the Dragon Age IP. But additionally, according to Darrah, no one at BioWare wants to work on Dragon Age either, leaving the series in a sort of limbo.
Former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider expressed similar sentiments in a recent interview with PC Gamer. While Gaider said that he’d enjoy the challenge of returning to work on the Dragon Age series, he’d be extremely reluctant to work with EA again due to how they acted during Dragon Age‘s development. According to Gaider, EA never had faith in Dragon Age, and any commercial success the series saw was considered a fluke by the publisher’s higher-ups.
- Released
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October 31, 2024
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ // Blood, Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence
- Publisher(s)
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Electronic Arts
