Speaking to GamesRadar+, BioWare veteran David Gaider explained that before he left BioWare, his tastes had become somewhat "old-fashioned" in EA's eyes. "I was very vocal on the Dragon Age team," he says. "I was always trying to push it to our traditional mechanics. And that wasn't very welcome in the EA sphere."

He says that EA considered those mechanics - the kind that shaped games like Dragon Age: Origins - to be "slow and cumbersome," rather than the "action-y and slick" presentation that the studio was being pushed toward. That meant that Gaider's views "were often not very welcome" despite his long tenure at the studio and work on many of its most famous RPGs.

That's partly because, he says, EA didn't think the traditional RPG audience was one that was worth focusing on. He claims that the overseers referred to those mechanics as being "'in the cave'". The cave, he explains, "was where nerds went. The nerds were in the cave. You made an RPG and the nerds in the cave would always show up for an RPG, because it was an RPG."

I think this is all real rich of Gaider to say. I remember the pre-release hype for Dragon Age 2, which he was one of the lead writers of. I remember the constant shade Laidlaw was throwing at Origins about how slow, cumbersome and outdated he thought it was, how they were now designing the new game around the idea that "every time you press a button, something awesome has to happen" as if that was some massively insightful statement, and how RPGs were a boring genre for nerds and they were now going to aim for the hip new Call of Duty audience and sell 10 million copies (no, this is not hyperbole, they really said this). I remember how Gaider never once contradicted these statements, but outright echoed them on the official forums. And now he has the gall to say "Ackshully, I wuz on da RPGamers' side THA HOLE TIEM!!" Fuck you, you were happily riding that gravy train right from the beginning. And if not, then you were too damn cowardly to speak up when it mattered or simply pack up and leave like Brent Knowles did.