Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.'"

4 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 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.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  2. EA by EnsilZah · · Score: 5, Funny

    Assuming direct control.