BioWare is a good case study since a few articles and books have been written about their history (one of the co-founders also has a few videos on YouTube about how they managed the business).
If you read enough of of them you can see BioWare has had three phases in their life:
1. Shattered Steel to Mass Effect 2, where they were largely independent and taking on feast-or-famine work (more of the former given the quality of their work at the time)
2. Mass Effect 3 to The Old Republic, which ringed-in the EA era and cracks in the quality of their work start to show. The end of this era is also when the co-founders and some key contributors to their past games left.
3. Dragon Age 3 to Anthem, which ringed-in stronger ties with EA—specifically having to work with Frostbite—and where we see that a lot of the problems we saw in the last era were probably chronic rather than acute. Lots of key contributor churn.
If you read enough of of them you can see BioWare has had three phases in their life:
1. Shattered Steel to Mass Effect 2, where they were largely independent and taking on feast-or-famine work (more of the former given the quality of their work at the time)
2. Mass Effect 3 to The Old Republic, which ringed-in the EA era and cracks in the quality of their work start to show. The end of this era is also when the co-founders and some key contributors to their past games left.
3. Dragon Age 3 to Anthem, which ringed-in stronger ties with EA—specifically having to work with Frostbite—and where we see that a lot of the problems we saw in the last era were probably chronic rather than acute. Lots of key contributor churn.