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BioWare Founders Announce Retirement

Posted by Soulskill on from the thanks-for-all-the-fish dept.

hypnosec writes "BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk announced their retirement from the gaming company as well as the video game industry. In two separate blog posts, the founders announced their decision and their future plans. Muzyka writes, 'After nearly two decades in videogames, I've decided to move on to pursue an entirely different set of challenges.' Zeschuk writes, 'I've reached an unexpected point in my life where I no longer have the passion that I once did for the company, for the games, and for the challenge of creation.'"

20 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. yup... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I no longer have the passion that I once did for the company, for the games, and for the challenge of creation."

    I would lose all my passion as well if I sold my soul to Electronic Arts...

    Killed Westwood Studios and C&C / C&C:RA, now working on the final edges for BioWare!

    1. Re:yup... by Sir_Sri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I would lose all my passion as well if I sold my soul to Electronic Arts...

      and now had enough cash I didn't need to work and could actually enjoy games as a player rather than as a developer.

      And their studio catastrophically fucked up with SWTOR, and that means heads have to roll.

      It's very unlikely that it's a coincidence they're going out at the same time. I suspect between the furore over the ME3 ending and the financial disaster that is SWTOR EA told them 'you have your millions, GTFO, oh, and you have a retention agreement for at least 5 more years, so you can leave, but you can't work for anyone else without losing a boatload of money in shares'. Or it told one of them (Zeschuk, who is ultimately responsible for SWTOR) to leave and the other tried to salvage the situation and said 'if he goes, I go' and EA said 'if you're going to stand with someone who lost us easily 100 million dollars, you go too then'.

      None of what is wrong with SWTOR is really an EA issue. It's a game design issue at a basic level (how do you travel around the world, what quests are there to do every day, are they interesting to do more than a couple of times, can players understand how to level up and raid etc.), and that means whomever was in charge of that studio (Zeschuk) hired the wrong people, or trained the ones he hired wrong, or didn't get the right feedback during testing (which they definitely didn't, I was in a lot of the testing and they didn't really understand anything past the first 200 hours of play time, which is the first month for an MMO). If he was still an owner at a private corporation (and Bioware pandemic had been owned by someone else than just the founders for a while I believe) it might have survived as an expensive learning experience, but at a public company when you report to someone else, you don't make mistakes like that and keep your job.

      Killed Westwood Studios and C&C / C&C:RA

      The list of studios destroyed by EA is a lot longer than just westwood. But, ironically, they are resuscitating the C&C franchise with BioWare montreal. Though I suspect EA has forced a change of direction on that title because they didn't seem to be planning what they say they're doing now.

    2. Re:yup... by popo · · Score: 4, Informative

      This news comes ironically as Baldur's Gate is being re-released. It was their finest moment.

      --
      ------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
    3. Re:yup... by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Origin
      Westwood
      Bullfrog
      Maxis
      Bioware
      Several others not mentioned...

      Yep...when you sell your soul to EA, you only have yourself to blame.

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      Om, nomnomnom...
    4. Re:yup... by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thank you AC I thought I was the only one! The millisecond I saw the headline all i could think of is all the devs from great software houses that ran screaming after spending time in the PHB hell that is EA. Is there any of the guys from Bullfrog or Westwood or any of the greats they bought still hanging around?

      And I would bet my last dollar the reason they are "retiring from gaming" is that EA made them sign a no compete clause when they bought the company. Watch in 5 years or so they'll come out of "retirement" with some killer new game from a fresh idea that EA told them wouldn't make a new Call Of Halo: Gears of Killzone cookie cutter franchise, since that seems to be pretty much all they care about anymore.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:yup... by constpointertoconst · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and now had enough cash I didn't need to work and could actually enjoy games as a player rather than as a developer.

      Personally, as a player-turned-developer, I find it difficult to enjoy games past a certain point without the opportunity to participate in their creation.

    6. Re:yup... by hedleyroos · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have my doubts about the Enhanced Edition. Even the webpage is not up to the usual high Bioware standard. And you'll need an always on internet connection to play, and have to pay constantly for DLC. No thanks, I'll buy the original from GoG and use the BiG World project.

    7. Re:yup... by datavirtue · · Score: 2

      I keep telling my son (9yrs old, don't know if he believes me) that building games much more fun than playing them.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    8. Re:yup... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It is activation only DRM. Where did this always-online DRM rumor start?

    9. Re:yup... by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      None of what is wrong with SWTOR is really an EA issue. It's a game design issue at a basic level

      What's basically wrong with SWTOR is that everyone really just wanted KOTOR3.

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      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    10. Re:yup... by Ironhandx · · Score: 2

      No no, Everyone wanted KotoR 3 with co-op mode.

      AKA you're supposed to be overpowered depending on the difficulty level you choose. You're not supposed to be balanced but all classes should be playable... etc. Sort of like Vanilla WoW. All classes had SOMETHING to make at least one of that class desirable in a raid but beyond that nothing was very terribly balanced. This is where Blizzard got it right. They made it FUN first, and balanced afterwards. So much feedback from so-called "elite" players espousing that "balanced" IS fun has destroyed that game. They did the same thing to SWTOR.

      Sadly they spent so much time balancing that PVP was pretty good at first (in beta) and still the most popular feature at release, then turned thier backs on it entirely without taking enough time to properly fix PVE first.

      Essentially, you can't have it all. Either your game needs to be PVP focused or PVE focused, and the other thing is going to be bolted on and should stay that way.

    11. Re:yup... by Hatta · · Score: 2

      No, I certainly did not want KOTOR with co-op. I want to be the protagonist of the story. That can't happen in multiplayer RPGs.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  2. EA will do that by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They rushed Star Wars the Old Republic and caused over half the users to leave because the top 5% of features in Wow were not there.

    It is so frustrating as SWTOR now has a dungeon finder, sever consolidation, user population support that matches wow per realm, and other things that match it with wow today but most refuse to go back and it frustrates me.

    If only EA didn't want to slaughter the goose to meet Christmas sales and released it today the number of subscribers would double. EA also fired a lot of good employees and implemented budget cuts so they can't fix the problems and work on the next patch easily.

    They sold their souls and got rich. Go buy a yatch and play the games for the rest of our lives. They do not have to work again

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:EA will do that by Fulminata · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Most other games doing server mergers have had a system in place where the oldest character kept the name, as long as that character was over a certain level to ensure that it wasn't just a place-holding alt. Another popular alternative is to allow players to check a server for naming conflicts before doing a transfer and to select a server where a conflict doesn't exist. SWTOR's forcing all transfers to go to a single server prevented this as an option, but they could have still done the first one.

  3. Well done, Ray and Greg! by wermske · · Score: 2

    My warmest congratulations. Clearly, you've out leveled this zone. You have enjoyed a long and productive career of which you can justly be proud. The experience, skill, and capabilities you can share with social institutions is rare and badly needed. Good on you. Game on...

  4. EA by EnsilZah · · Score: 5, Funny

    Assuming direct control.

  5. Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't give a shit about what happened with SWTOR. I haven't played a MMORPG since UO. But the work Bioware did with the Baldur's Gate series, SW KOTOR, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect is legendary. For a decade, Bioware was the Pixar of game developers. So I will remember them for their kickass games. It is a pity that Bioware is gone. Hopefully some company is ready to fill the void.

  6. In the end... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...they are faced with three options.

    A. They can destroy the company.AKA "the blue ending"

    B. They can join EA. AKA "the red ending"

    C. They can merge them both. AKA "the green ending"

    In the end, it all looks the same.

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  7. "Retiring" by klingers48 · · Score: 2

    This is pure speculation on my part but I'd suspect that any non-compete clause on their contract would remain in effect for at least for a couple of years after they left EA. Big, bright new things in a couple of years, I'm sure.

  8. Re:Bioware is... by Asmodae · · Score: 2

    BUT, GROWTH! How can you grow if your audience is only 10's of thousands? There's millions of gamers out there! We need more farmvilles, more WoWs, if you're not growing X% per month/quarter/year you are a failure! /sarc