BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk surprised the industry when he announced his intention to leave the company he’d nurtured from its infancy into a powerhouse. He noted that the simultaneous departure of his fellow co-founder Ray Muzyka was not really planned and that it seemed like a nature decision to him.
“I just felt like my passion was waning,” he said. “It’s one of those things that’s always really funny because, if you’re really grumpy, you know you go, ‘Ah, I’m just going to leave,’ and then you’re, ‘No, no, no.’ And then finally there’s this point where you know you go, ‘Hey, you know, I think it’s time to go.'”
“Everything’s a factor,” Zeschuk continued . “There’s nothing that’s not a factor, but there’s no single one thing. I think the best way I can describe [it] is: Do the same thing for twenty years and it’s very, very intense. It’s very high pressure. It’s very high stress. It’s challenging. It’s sometimes rewarding and sometimes it’s not. And you just get tired of it after awhile. That is probably the easiest way to for me to describe it. Sometimes you just need to change things.
“One of the few things I find kind of funny is the responses of the fans, because they sort of respond that they are kind of mad at us for leaving because they think we owe them more games. You know it’s sad, I wish I could deliver on that, but I don’t think I would be as good as I was in that space historically. Like I said, the fire wasn’t there.”
BioWare established itself with a number of hit licensed and original titles until it was purchased by EA in 2007. “I think one of the reasons that we survived and succeeded within EA was that our company was mature enough and there was enough good people throughout to handle the EA bear hug – something that is well meaning but vigorous,” said Zeschuk. “We needed to be strong to survive that and I think we did and you evolve from that as well.”
When asked if he would ever reconsider coming back to games, Zeschuk said, “Yeah, it’s probably not. I’m having fun doing what I’m doing, so probably not. We’ll see, but I’m not planning on it at this point for sure.”
Source: Polygon
