Former BioWare Producer Shares New Hope for the Future of Mass Effect and Dragon Age
A former producer at BioWare has shared new hope for the future of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. Alongside the announcement earlier this week that Electronic Arts would be closing BioWare, it was also revealed that the next entry in the Mass Effect series was being scrapped. With BioWare no longer in business, many fans have naturally assumed that both Mass Effect and Dragon Age will remain on ice for the long haul, with no guarantee that EA will ever do anything new with either property. And while this is a distinct possibility, one ex-BioWare lead thinks EA leadership could go in a different direction.
Speaking in a new video, Mark Darrah, who served as an executive producer at BioWare until 2021, said he thinks EA could opt to sell the Mass Effect and Dragon Age IPs rather than simply sit on them. Darrah said that he believes that this path is the “more likely” one for EA to take, especially if the company reaches a point where it’s trying to bring in money rather than simply cut costs.
“EA owns all the IPs. They own Dragon Age, they own Mass Effect, they own Jade Empire,” Darrah said. “Now, there’s nobody working on a game, or games, within the EA organization, and chances are there never will be, which might make them more likely to sell off those IPs. But it might also make them more likely to just try to forget that they ever existed and bury them in the vault.”
“I think we still are going to have to wait a little bit before we see if EA has any interest in selling off some of its dormant IPs,” he continued. “Right now, they seem to be in cost control mode. They might start in a revenue-generation mode where selling IPs might be more desirable.”
Even if EA has no plans to ever make another Mass Effect or Dragon Age game, the company could look to retain both franchises simply for licensing purposes. Mass Effect, for example, already has a live-action television series in the works at Prime Video. As such, EA can make money off of the TV show passively without having to do much legwork.
For fans who want to see Mass Effect and Dragon Age brought back in the future, though, they should be hoping that EA leadership opts to sell each IP. While there’s no guarantee that any potential buyers would be any better than EA, this would at least lead to a scenario in which new games would become a distinct possibility. Even if this does happen, though, BioWare’s work on the next Mass Effect game, which was widely dubbed Mass Effect 5, is going to be lost forever.