"The triple-A industry has become over-specialised, specialised to the point of hyper-fragility," Mark Darrah states in a foreboding interview found deep in the pages of the Summer Eternal Anthology, recently covered by Edwin. As a former executive producer at Bioware, who corralled teams on Anthem and Dragon Age, after starting his career as a programmer on Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Jade Empire, Darrah has seen firsthand the growing scale of video game production and the challenges it can bring.
Darrah's also been vocal about the difficult development of Anthem in the past, and the struggles he had at Bioware. However, while what he says in the interview may be familiar, I found it gained sharper definition when read in light of games industry news and some of the interviews I've had with developers this year. So let me pull together some of the choice bits with the extra context from our own RPS vaults.