10 Video Games That Made Their Creators Leave The Industry
6. Anthem
Before leaving BioWare in 2018, James Ohlen was the company's Senior Creative Director, and having worked there for over 20 years, was a major creative force behind the likes of Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon: Age Origins, and Mass Effect.
Ohlen's final credited title was BioWare's troubled open-world shooter Anthem, which released to wildly polarising reviews from critics and players alike, while reports soon emerged of just how troubled the game's development truly was.
Clearly, Ohlen and other major BioWare personnel were put through the wringer during the game's strained creation, and so it wasn't terribly surprising that Ohlen eventually left the company - except that he did so an entire seven months before the game actually shipped.
Having suffered through the bulk of development, Ohlen evidently knew what was coming, but in addition to quitting BioWare, he also decided to step away from games development entirely, opting instead to open up his own book publishing company, Arcanum Worlds.
There is an asterisk here, however, as less than a year later Ohlen was indeed lured back to the industry by Dungeons and Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast.
They appointed him the head of their new game studio Archetype Entertainment and offered him an enormous amount of creative control while still allowing him to operate his book company.
Ohlen said of his decision to return, "This is just an opportunity to work on projects as personal to me as the good ol' days of the '90s and early '00s," and other ex-BioWare employees who subsequently joined Archetype have similarly commented that their passion for gaming has been renewed as a result.
A truly happy ending, then.