Muzyka and Zeschuk Leave Bioware & EA
Bioware co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have announced their retirement from Bioware and EA. This is big news as Bioware has a very large and very devoted fan base. Bioware has made numerous fantastic games over the years. I think my first Bioware game was the original Baldur’s Gate and there have been many great games since then. Their departure poses numerous questions (only some of which will probably ever be fully answered): Why did they leave? Why did they both leave at the same time? What are they going to do now? We’ll walk through these questions to try and make sense of what this all means.
Muzyka and Zeschuk have an interesting past as they are both physicians. They had finished medical school and decided to turn their passion for games into a new company and career. The whole notion of wandering off the safe and more normal path of simply continuing their medical practice to pursue their passions sounds a whole lot like the American dream if not for the fact that they are Canadian. The rest is pretty much history with titles including Shattered Steel, Baldur’s Gate I and II, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1/2/3, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
They each wrote a sort of goodbye which got posted on the Bioware blog where they each briefly mentioned future plans and then spent lots of time thanking everyone. The immediate implication in the fact that they both left at the same time would be that they are both going to be doing something else together. This is not terribly uncommon – just look at what’s going on at Respawn Entertainment with Jason West and Vince Zampella. The curious aspect is that from what they write, it does not appear that they will immediately be working together on anything. Muzyka mentions getting involved with social innovation and spending time mentoring entrepreneurs. Zeschuk mentions getting into beer-making and creating webisodes about other microbreweries. They both mention that they for sure won’t be involved in making games for a while, and might not ever again.
So why did they leave? Well the only reason you stop doing something that you used to love (especially when money is no longer an issue for you), is that you don’t love doing it anymore. Bioware was founded in 1995. We’re talking around 18 years of making games. I think a major point to keep in mind is the 2007 acquisition of Bioware by Electronic Arts. They went from having a very high level of creative control to being under the boot of EA. This is a pretty common occurrence in the video game world. Small developers need money, but are more likely to be driven by passion and a love of what they do so small studios pop up that make great games. Large publishers have money, but the corporate culture and bureaucracy squash innovation and they tend to be more concerned with hitting premature release dates than on releasing quality games. So the large publishers buy the small developers, collect profits from their success, and squeeze them dry.
Some might take that as an exaggeration, but just think back to the EA Louse debacle. Without getting into a debate over how accurate that or other similar accounts were, at a minimum it showed that at least some employees were pretty unhappy. How do you think Muzyka and Zeschuk, who left solid careers as physicians to pursue their passion of video games, enjoyed being part of this culture. Which option sounds worse: the good, upstanding employee who is overworked and mistreated? Or the good, upstanding manager who is forced by his superiors to enforce this type of atmosphere. Let me be clear what I am talking about. I am in no way implying that Muzyka or Zeschuk were at all involved in the day to day enforcement and rule making of this type. The much more likely scenario is that the other mid-level managers, who were given large, broad goals with strict deadlines, have been responsible for much of the day to day enforcement. What I am saying is that Muzyka and Zeschuk were leading the Bioware label while there was at least some level of dissent from employees and that’s got to make their job not nearly as fun as it surely used to be. The truth of the matter is that the general public will probably never know many of the reasons they decided to leave or exactly what happened.
At any rate, the hope is that they will spend a year or two looking into these other hobbie-type activities and then get back to gaming. Two plausible answers are that they could either be waiting for a non-compete clause to end or they could simply just want to be respectful to their former employer. It doesn’t seem like they were totally burned so maybe they just want to leave with some goodwill to prevent the negative perception for EA associated with them jumping ship to immediately start a competing company. Plus, I’m sure the last 18 years have been plenty busy for the pair and I’m sure they’re looking forward to just getting involved in things that are more low key for the time being. I certainly hope we haven’t seen the last of them in the gaming world, but you never know, maybe they are finished for good. Either way, the most important thing to be said is Good Luck Dr. Muzyka and Dr. Zeschuk! Thank you for all the amazing worlds, stories, and characters you have created over the years for me and your many other loyal fans. You will be missed.