BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk spoke about last week’s BioWare shutdown, which resulted in the loss of 50 jobs as part of 400 job cuts across the company, as well as the cancellation of Mass Effect 5, which we now learned (via a leaked internal trailer) was called Mass Effect: Universe.
Speaking to 80 Level, Zeschuk lamented the studio’s end, but said he said his own emotional farewell to the studio after he and co-founder Ray Muzyka left it on their own terms in 2012, several months after the launch of Mass Effect 3. “I kind of went through all the emotions like a long, long time ago,” he said. “You have to break away from that and kind of say, ‘OK, I’ve had my emotional moment.'” He continued: “I’m just at a point in my life where I have my own other business,” he said. “My (beer) brewing business is doing very well. I have everything else that I do, and I’m not sentimental or nostalgic. I kind of feel like that chapter is closed.”
That said, he certainly had opinions regarding the closure of the great RPG studio he helped build. “I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t suck,” he said. “And I think that’s a little sad. It’s actually, in a way, sadder for the city of Edmonton, where we’re from, because we were sort of a beacon of hope and enthusiasm and possibility. We showed that you could do something really special in a place that wasn’t known for doing things like that.”
Regarding the private buyout of EA by the Saudi Public Investment Fund for $55, Zeschuk said he was not surprised that BioWare was ultimately shut down. “I think that was the final nail in the coffin,” he said. “I think that was the crux in a sense. Again, it’s a completely different company now…BioWare makes these kinds of unusual games that take a long time and are complicated and so it’s easier to release sports games every year and it’s a better business model in some ways.”
Zeschuk has not been shy about expressing his feelings towards executives with no game development experience owning and running game development studios.
“There’s this strange belief that you can just recreate great games with random people and AI. It doesn’t work,” he proclaimed. “The other harsh reality of almost all of these companies is that the people who go into business never really come from development. Because none of these people have ever made a game, never really sat down and made one, from start to finish, even a small thing, they just don’t know how it works.”
Public reactions to the closure of BioWare and the cancellation of Mass Effect were strong. Here on IGN, I wrote that BioWare was the greatest RPG developer of all time, Jackie Thomas lamented that BioWare would never have the chance to redeem itself after Mass Effect Andromeda, and Matt Purslow wrote that EA never really knew what it had with BioWare. Meanwhile, composer Austin Wintory revealed that he had been in discussions with EA and BioWare about composing the Mass Effect 5 soundtrack and that he was such a fan of the series that he even went so far as to release 22 minutes of Mass Effect music that he had created to help convince the publisher to hire him. And among the general gaming public, fans have expressed anger and sadness at the loss of a studio with such an incredible legacy.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s senior preview editor and host of IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Unblocked Podcastand co-host of Next generation console watch. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor’s ham”, not “pork roll”. Debate with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
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