Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka stepped away from BioWare in 2012, several months after Mass Effect 3 launched. The co-founders had already been gone for more than a decade when the Edmonton studio closed under Electronic Arts and its new private-equity owners, but Zeschuk has now shared his thoughts on the company’s ending.
Zeschuk and Muzyka founded BioWare in 1995. In his first interview since the studio’s closure, Zeschuk said he had largely processed the loss when he left 14 years ago, although the fate of former colleagues remained difficult to watch.
“I’ve kind of gone through all the emotions like long, long ago,” Zeschuk said in an interview with 80.lv. “You have to break from it and kind of go, ‘Okay, I’ve had my emotional moment.’”
Although distance gave him some perspective, Zeschuk remained concerned about the people still working at BioWare. He described the loss of jobs affecting both long-time colleagues and developers he never personally worked with, particularly in a difficult employment market.
His comments also revisit BioWare’s 2007 sale to EA. Zeschuk rejects the idea that BioWare was close to collapse before the deal, saying the studio was in good shape. The company was seeking additional funding for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the online role-playing game being developed by BioWare Austin.
“We had options actually. We thought we chose the best option that was available to us at the time,” Zeschuk said. “The company had good possibilities going forward, but at the end of the day we felt, okay, we may be better as part of a bigger thing.”
A very different EA
Nearly two decades later, BioWare is gone, and Zeschuk views EA’s acquisition by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake Partners and Affinity Partners in August as the “final nail in the coffin”. He stressed that EA is now a “completely different company” from the publisher BioWare joined.
Zeschuk believes the new ownership may regard anything outside sports games and Battlefield as “extraneous”. To avoid dwelling on the decisions made 20 years ago, he said he has created an “emotional break” and tries not to second-guess the choices made at the time.
He also argued that games such as Mass Effect cannot be recreated by assembling unrelated staff and relying on artificial intelligence. In his view, people who have never made a game from beginning to end often lack an understanding of how development works.
“The other harsh reality of almost all these companies, the people that go down the business track never really come from the development track,” he said. “Because none of these people have ever made a game, like, never really sat and made one, like, from start to finish, even a small thing, they just don’t know how it works.”
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No return to BioWare
Despite his affection for the studio and its work, Zeschuk has no plans to return to game development or pursue the BioWare name and the rights to Mass Effect.
He said he is content to play games as a consumer. Returning to development, he explained, would demand too much personal effort and sacrifice after experiencing the pressures of making major games.
“I’m happy being a consumer and playing games. I have my opinions on how to make stuff, but as enticing as it would be, it’s just not [worth] the personal struggle and cost and effort required to make a great game. Having gone through the crucible of game development, I’m not going back in there.”
There is also little expectation that EA would sell BioWare’s intellectual property. A developer who worked on the cancelled Mass Effect: Universe reportedly said during a stream that the publisher does not usually sell its properties, instead shutting projects down and retaining the licences.
That approach means EA can continue to benefit from BioWare’s creations even after the studio’s developers have gone. A Mass Effect television series remains in development at Amazon and is not expected to be affected by the shutdown, while fans continue to hope the game series can be revived.
The contrast between preserving a game licence and preserving the people who made it is familiar across the industry. For a different perspective on dedicated gaming hardware and the way players keep older experiences alive, explore RETROCADE’s arcade videos and arcade machine buying guide.
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