http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-05-19-writing-the-next-dragon-age

Okay, that’s an inference you could make from what I said, but it’s not what I said. We’re in GLOMAR territory: I can neither confirm nor deny.

Then I started seeing social media buzz, so I tweeted this:

ware EA ninjas! all I've said is that it's something in the DA franchise. It could be a spinoff or late DLC or a dragon breeding program… https://t.co/rxukec9xmP

— Alexis Kennedy 🕯 (@alexiskennedy) May 22, 2017

Then Google Alerts gave me this:

https://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.gamespace.com/all-articles/news/alexis-kennedy-dishes-on-secret-not-secret-dragon-4-story-process/&hl=en&geo=GB

and I thought, crikey.

(Some fun snippets from minor sites picking up the story without any fact-checking. Apparently Fallen London was a novel; I’m lead writer on Dragon Age now; and Failbetter made Stellaris.)

A couple of sites saw my tweet and followed up along these lines:

“Granted, Kennedy then went on to tweet a “clarification” once the interview hit the airwaves…Which is a pretty lame way to say that his bosses over at EA and Bioware were unhappy with his wording in the interview.”

For the record, it was a public holiday in Canada yesterday. Except for some banter on Twitter, I didn’t hear from anything from anyone at BioWare. I pre-cleared the interview with my client, because I’m not insane, and I’ve been assured today that it’s all fine, but yes, it was slightly unnerving to see the story take off.

So I can neither confirm nor deny what people have assumed I’m working on: but I will share a cautionary tale.

Back in early 2014, when I was still running Failbetter, we announced a collaboration with BioWare. We didn’t share any details.

A few months later, BioWare teased a new IP, Shadow Realms. Eurogamer, PC Gamer and Polygon noticed that the Shadow Realms trademark had been registered the day after I announced the Failbetter/BioWare collaboration, and all three suggested that Failbetter was working on Shadow Realms.

It was an entirely reasonable assumption, and a nice bit of detective work, but it was just an assumption, and it turned out to be flat wrong. The Failbetter/BioWare project was Dragon Age: The Last Court. Shadow Realms was something completely different, which sadly got canned (it looked fun!)

So if you’re looking forward to the next Dragon Age, read what I’ve said, listen to the commentary, and make up your own mind. If you’re looking for an absolutely infallible source, the only one I know is here.

I’ve really enjoyed the Eurogamer columns! But my brain is full of dragons at the moment (yes, I’m allowed to say officially it’s a Dragon Age franchise project now), and I couldn’t spare the processing power. I’ll still be writing over at GamesIndustry.biz on a slightly more relaxed schedule, as long as part of my brain remains undragoned.

My schedule has got a lot more crowded, though, with bthe announcement that I’m BioWare’s first ever guest writer. I did an interview with PC Gamer and another with Eurogamer.

My first GamesIndustry.biz column went up. It’s about Valve, and why they’re more like the Culture than the Borg.

I also wrote a blog post about the passive voice in games writing, which went up on Gamasutra. It was then unexpectedly championed by, of all people, Derek Smart, who appeared to be having a very cheerful day.

When I sold Failbetter, and went freelance, I said I wanted to learn about and experiment with different ways of approaching interactive narrative. So far, this is going well – I have a piece in the works for Choice of Games, I’ve written guest content for Paradox on Stellaris, and I’m building my own narrative-crafting hybrid experiment.

But it’s just started going even better, because I can finally announce today that BioWare have commissioned me to do a significant piece of content as their first ever guest writer. I have put probably thousands of hours into BioWare games over the years, and they’ve been a huge influence on my own work, so this has me literally rubbing my hands in delight every time I stop typing. I also get to work directly with Mike Laidlaw and Patrick Weekes – both exceptional amalgams of talent, charm, and stylish beard-hair, whose work I’ve admired since Jade Empire and the first Mass Effect.

OBVIOUSLY I’d like to say more and obviously I can’t yet. I do have an interview going up at PC Gamer shortly with a couple more deets, including the protocol for reacting when BioWare unexpectedly message you and offer you a job. EDIT: here’s the interview!