Former 'Dragon Age' Lead Writer Claims EA Wanted New Audience, Was Not Worried About RPG Players

May 29, 2025

David Gaider, the former Lead Writer for BioWare’s Dragon Age franchise claims that BioWare’s parent company, Electronic Arts, wanted a new non-RPG audience and was not worried about making their RPG games appeal to RPG players.

Speaking to Games Radar, Gaider positioned himself as a champion for RPG players claiming that he “was always trying to push [Dragon Age] to our traditional mechanics. And that wasn’t very welcome in the EA sphere.”

He went on to claim that EA executives believed games like Dragon Age: Origins were “slow and cumbersome” and preferred “action-y and slick” games. In fact, he claimed that his so-called more traditional views “were not very welcome” despite the fact he was at BioWare for nearly 17 years. EA bought BioWare in 2007 just about halfway through Gaider’s tenure at the company.

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Next, Gaider shared that EA did not have a high opinion of RPG fans and RPG game mechanics claiming they were “in the cave.” He explained that the cave “was where nerds went. The nerds were in the cave. You made an RPG and the nerds in the cave would always show up for an RPG, because it was an RPG.”

He claims this perceived allegiance to the genre meant that EA “didn’t have to worry about them.” He explained, “[EA] didn’t have to try and appeal to them. You had to worry about the people who weren't in the cave, which was the audience we actually wanted, which was much larger."

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If what Gaider claims is true, as with many other companies chasing an elusive “modern audience” it did not work. The company admitted as much when it revealed that Dragon Age: The Veilguard missed expectations by about 50%. A press release stated, “Dragon Age engaged approximately 1.5 million players during the quarter, down nearly 50% from the company’s expectations.”

Furthermore, the company axed the game’s entire writing and editing team. BioWare General Manager Gary McKay then announced at the end of January that the company would undergo mass layoffs given it didn’t need as many people to work on its in-development Mass Effect game. He said, “Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio. We have incredible talent here at BioWare, and so we have worked diligently over the past few months to match many of our colleagues with other teams at EA that had open roles that were a strong fit.”