Corinne Busche wasn’t looking for a job when she sat down for lunch with BioWare’s leadership team in 2019. She had been a fan of BioWare’s games since the days of Dragon Age: Origins , and she wanted to, in her words, “meet my heroes.” “So I went to lunch with a couple of folks in the leadership team at BioWare, and we started riffing about progression systems and skill trees and economies, and we just really resonated with one another,” Busche remembers.
“And much to my surprise, they expressed an interest in me joining, and it was kind of the question you don't have to ask me twice. That was such a dream opportunity, and to be able to step in this space, visit the studio, see my favorite characters on display throughout the walls, I was immediately sold. Immediately.
” Busche was coming off a stint at Maxis, where she helped design the systems on various The Sims projects. In taking the helm of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, she became part of a wider talent pipeline flowing from Maxis to other parts of the games industry. It’s a pipeline that includes the likes of Eric Holmberg-Weidler, who was credited with fine-tuning many of the systems that comprised The Sims 4 before spearheading the Professions revamp in World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight expansion .
Justin Camden, who also worked on The Sims, is one of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s technical designers. At first blush, it might not seem like The Sims has much in common with an RPG like Dragon Age outs.