14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, Dan Thudge, who was the executive producer on BioWare's Dragon Age role playing game, announced that he was quitting that project, in order to take an executive position at the Disney’s Propaganda Games studios, which has until now only created one title, the 2008 Turok release, met with almost universal disdain by gamers. The studio is now working on two new videogames that the former BioWare man is set to oversee.
Thudge has offered some explanations regarding his somewhat surprising move. His previous experience includes videogames like Mass Effect and the recent Sonic Chronicles and Dragon Age is still in development, to be released later in 2009, so why choose to go to Disney?
Thudge told Gamasutra that “With the lead SKU (the PC version) of Dragon Age: Origins in its polish stage and a focus on the console conversions, it was a good time to make a change. I have a passion for creating great games and managing great companies. The role of general manager at Propaganda Games and vice president within Disney’s video games business allows me to do both.”
Dan Thudge revealed that his extensive experience with role playing games would come in handy in his new position; at least one of the games under development at Propaganda is a RPG, with the other is said to be a more straight action title.
He is sure that the team at BioWare can polish up Dragon Age: Origins and make it an impressive fantasy RPG, but he says that, at Disney and Propaganda, there are more resources and intellectual properties on which he can draw on to create interesting videogames.
Initially, the PC version of Dragon Age was set to arrive in summer 2009, with the console versions of the videogame coming in fall. Only recently did BioWare announce that all the releases would take place later in 2009 in order to take advantage of a unified marketing campaign.