Ben Irving, who has been a part of BioWare for about eight years, is now leaving the studio and has accepted another company’s job offer. He was lead producer for Star Wars: The Old Republic ans in the past two years he took over as Anthem’s lead producer to push the game out of development and into our hands. This is usually sad, but not in this case and not in my eyes!
Who is Ben Irving and why I think his leaving BioWare is exactly the opposite to sad news and scary announcement about the future of Anthem?Ben Irving was lead producer and nearly brought Star Wars: The Old Republic to a crash with a few, apparently and obviously, wrong decisions regarding the game’s approach and direction in several expansions and DLCs.
He has been a part of the BioWare team for about the same time as SWTOR has been online – eight years. He became Lead Producer for the Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne expansions, which are the two most controversial and criticized DLCs in the game’s history. Before that he had different roles, starting as Release Manager in 2011. Here is what he writes about his six years in SWTOR on his Linkedin page:
I was responsible for the vision and strategy of SW:TOR, the health of the team and the business (P&L). I was the face of the game and handled press, live streams and external communication (examples below). In my 6 years on the project I was part of shipping the launch game, the conversion to free to play, 6 expansions, 215 game updates and creating some of the best Star Wars stories ever told.
In the past year and a half or so Ben Irving was a part of the Anthem team. He took over the job of a lead producer of the game. His love for showing up and communicating with the audience as a host of developer live streams, did not grant him much credit, sadly for him.
Back in his SWTOR time, Irving was known to ignore some players’ demands and focus on entirely different things. Granted, he was the boss and he did what he thought would be best for the game and most of all – best for the company’s profit (BioWare and EA). Surely,the fact that I didn’t like most of his decisions doesn’t make him wrong, but I was and still am a passionate SWTOR player and I did not like what the devs were doing under his rule. These are my personal thoughts and feelings here, not the community’s.
I personally did not like most of his decisions during his rule over SWTOR and perhaps this is why I was not happy to hear he is moving to perform the same duty on Anthem to take on the same role there. Did you know Anthem’s live service and SWTOR are being taken cared by the same BioWare Austin studio? Not the same team, of course.
I can’t tell which part of the decisions made for Anthem are his. He is the Lead Producer, however, so we can easily assume they are all his decisions or he approved them at least. We all know how bad the loot situation was until the Cataclysm launched two weeks ago. Things are even worse now, but that’s a topic for another discussion as BioWare did a fantastic job of showering us with Masterwork and Legendary drops, while at the same time scaling up the RNG factor to 11, making it even harder for us to get exactly the item we want and farm for.
It certainly could not have been Ben’s idea to launch Anthem unfinished. No, I think this is entirely on EA
On Twitter Ben Irving posted several long massages, saying a lot, but not revealing almost any details. That, in my experience, is another reason why I never liked his dev stream hostings. Not in SWTOR, nor in Anthem.
(1/3) After 8 amazing years at BioWare I have made the decision to move on and have accepted an exciting opportunity at another gaming company. Since the first time I played Baldurs Gate many many years ago, BioWare was the dream place I always wanted to work.
— Ben Irving (@BenIrvo) August 15, 2019
(2/3) I will forever be grateful to all the people who gave me the chance to work on great products with amazing people. I believe Anthem has a bright future – there is a great team working on it and I look forward to following its progress (and playing it!) from the sidelines.
— Ben Irving (@BenIrvo) August 15, 2019
(3/3) I have really enjoyed interacting with the Anthem community – Streams, Twitter and Reddit. Through the good times and the tough times. You all are in great hands with @Darokaz and @UNTDrew (and have been for some time now). I wish nothing but the best for all of you. Ben.
— Ben Irving (@BenIrvo) August 15, 2019
While I may not have agreed with many decisions made for SWTOR and Anthem, it is more than obvious that both games are still here today. Whether it is because of Ben’s actions or in spite of them, I want to think that he truly gave his best and wish him good luck on his new job at that other company.
If I have to highlight one thing from this announcement, is that this should NOT be considered a bad thing that Ben Irving is leaving and this most certainly does not mean Anthem’s future is doomed. The Cataclysm did a wonderful change for the game in the very right direction (except for the loot I barely touched base on up there).
What do you think of Ben’s departure from BioWare? Many of the giant press claimed he was a veteran of the studio, but really 8 years is not a lot on the “BioWare scale” in my opinion.
