BioWare co-founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka chose the (relatively?) quiet life when they retired from the Mass Effect studio in 2012 a few months after the launch of Mass Effect 3. Though the pair hadn’t been part of the company in over a decade, naturally, people might be interested to hear what they had to say about the studio’s closure last week under publisher EA and its new private equity owners. Zeschuk did his first interview following the end of the company he founded in 1995, and says that he had already mourned BioWare when he left the Edmonton developer 14 years ago. But he still had thoughts on how it all went down.
“I’ve kind of gone through all the emotions like long, long ago,” Zeschuk told 80.lv. “You have to break from it and kind of go, ‘Okay, I’ve had my emotional moment.’”
While he may have felt more detached after years of distance, he was still concerned for the people who were still at BioWare, and lamented that his old colleagues and people on the team he never worked with were being pushed out into a hostile job market.
You can read the full interview for more of Zeschuk’s insight on how BioWare’s ability to put out games, even ones that weren’t as revered as its pre-Andromeda output, was still “a success” in that the studio was able to work within EA’s “framework.” But some of the more interesting parts of the interview are where Zeschuk reflects on BioWare’s original 2007 acquisition and whether or not he regrets it.
Though there has been some conjecture that BioWare was in danger of going under if not for the EA acquisition, Zeschuk disputes that, and says that the studio was “in good shape,” and that the company was looking for a means to secure more funding for the Star Wars MMO The Old Republic that was in development at the BioWare Austin office.
