Leadership lessons from Mark Darrah’s days at BioWare

Why would a former video game executive producer like Mark Darrah start YouTube channel?

If he played with his demons, he could use it as a platform to constantly hate and react to everything in the video game industry. But he left his demons in the Fade and pursued a higher goal: to pass on the knowledge gained from many years of creating games at BioWare.

Darrah recently made waves by releasing a series of videos detailing the making of BioWare's ill-fated 2019 online role-playing game. Hymn. It's a fascinating look not so much at what went wrong creatively with the game, but at what went wrong with the production itself.

This episode prompted us to invite Darrah onto the Game Developer Podcast to not only get more lessons not already on his channel, but also to discuss the topic of sharing this kind of knowledge on YouTube, a medium that doesn't always welcome the nuances of video game creation.

Communication can make or break a game

This episode also provided an opportunity to dive deeper into the question Darragh raised. HymnDevelopment: BioWare was never 100 percent united in a single vision for the game until its first presentation at E3. This was the result of game director Casey Hudson (who initially left the project and then returned before its release) decided to disclose details of the project to other departments.

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Hudson apparently preferred to keep the entire vision within a tight group and share information with other teams on a need-to-know basis. Darragh offered a detailed look at why this strategy failed. Hymnand how the lessons go beyond “don’t keep unnecessary secrets.”

About the Game Developers Podcast

The Game Developer Podcast is a bi-weekly podcast that chronicles the triumphs, disasters, and everything in between game development, while also sharing lessons and strategies fellow developers can use to hone their craft. A podcast for game developers hosted by Bryant Francis, edited by Pierre Landrieu, and featuring music Mike Meehan.

Follow the game developer on bluesky or on LinkedIn.