BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk has looked back on his time at the company behind Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic, and discussed some of the studio’s most notorious moments, as well as his relationship with mega-publisher owner EA.
Speaking to Simon Parkin on the My Perfect Console podcast, Zeschuk said EA had been a decent partner, despite some BioWare fans’ view that the studio’s buyout was the beginning of its end.
“I like to comment that EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself,” Zeschuk said. “And what I mean by that is you have to learn to work within the structure and I think we did quite well, if you look at the Mass Effect [trilogy that] came out of there. It was actually a pretty successful run.
“But you have to understand how to work within a big company. And, for me, that was the end. It was like, ‘oh, I don’t like big companies’. So I knew by year two that I was going to leave at some point. I just didn’t know when.
“I lived in Austin on-and-off half-time for two-and-a-half years making Star Wars: The Old Republic and that was like my swansong in the industry,” Zeschuk continued, recounting his work on his final game. Both of BioWare’s co-founders famously quit the company and games industry in 2012, and Zeschuk now spends his days happily working in craft beer.
“I knew that was kind of a one-way trip,” Zeschuk says of his decision to focus on BioWare’s big Star Wars MMO bet. “If it was super successful, super-duper successful, Ray and I would have probably launched a bid to try and take over EA from the inside, being the corporate pirates that we are. But it needed to be like $2bn a year successful. It didn’t work out so I was like, ‘I’m fine’.”
As for EA in general, Zeschuk says the publisher behind FIFA and Madden “let us operate freely” – though BioWare’s antics sometimes raised eyebrows.
“There’s all kinds of shenanigans we did,” Zeschuk recalled. “We actually made Facebook games under false pretenses, under false names actually.”
Zeschuk remembers a game about a yeti running around delivering gifts, which BioWare staff made as an experiment to test the platform.
BioWare was not allowed to work on mobile games, Zeschuk continued, but some team members were curious about it – so they made up fake company name to test development for it. The idea was that BioWare might want to include mobile integration into one of its bigger games – which indeed happened with Mass Effect 3‘s Galaxy at War app.
“You can’t have a company of cowboys,” Zeschuk said. “I wouldn’t say we were cowboys, we were usually somewhat calculating in what we did. But we liked to try stuff. So when they discovered we had a couple of Apple development devices and we weren’t in the mobile division, they were like ‘what are you doing?'”
While discussing his biggest regret of his time at BioWare, Zeschuk recalled receiving advice from another gaming giant – Microsoft – which ultimately swayed the company into launching Jade Empire for the original Xbox, to a middling response.
“Microsoft was like ‘no no, you should release it now, right at the end of the cycle, because it’s a great time’,” Zeschuk recalled. “It was the worst advice, absolute moronic advice from them, the stupidest thing ever. I’ll say that and Peter Moore will punch me in the mouth next time he sees me. It wasn’t his fault, but we should have pushed that to the beginning of the [Xbox] 360.
“We could have rezzed [Jade Empire] up, we could have amped it up. We could have said no. We just missed… I wish I’d said, ‘this is a terrible mistake, give us another six months, give us the chance to make it a launch title for 360’ and we’d have had another franchise, and then who knows. I just think it would have been a way more successful product at the beginning of a cycle than the end, because by the time it came out people weren’t even buying Xbox anymore, they were waiting for the next one.”
Zeschuk recalled concerns from within BioWare at the company’s acquisition by EA, particularly around the perception that the publisher had a culture of overworking, or ‘crunch’. But this was something BioWare already had experiences with itself, he noted.
“There was a pretty heated all-hands in the studio to talk about the sale and whether EA was going to force its philosohical work-life balance onto us,” Zeschuk said, “but we actually all did it to ourselves. We were the ones who were immature, and so we were the ones who could get ourselves out of that.
“I think we did the best we could, we always could have done better, but I don’t know. There are times you had to put in maximum effort, but we also tried to institute things like, ‘hey there’s still sympathetic… if you work from home, go home. You don’t have to be in the office’.
“The biggest offenses in that world were, ‘just in case, we’ll have you stay in the office for hours on end in case someone needs you’. Nah, just go home. We’ll call you in. Be reasonable. We tried to do it better. I don’t know if we did? I think we did it better than we could have done. There’s always ways to improve.”
Finally, Zeschuk recalled the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, when a fan backlash prompted the release of a new extended ending to the sci-fi space opera in response to complaints online, but also harassment and death threats.
“I think intentions were good,” Zeschuk said. “You can never do anything perfectly, and that’s one of the challenges as a game developer. To some degree, especially when there’s high expectations – think of a series like Mass Effect, absolutely beloved, an incredible overall experience – and then to maybe not reach the players’ expectations of agency and decision-making at the final step when providing a more nuanced ending… it’s complicated.
“Speaking fully and honestly, I was a bystander on it as I was working on Star Wars: The Old Republic, and so I was in the mix but not in the firing line, if that makes sense. But I really felt for the team because I understood the purpose.
“Your dream scenario is [to] release a game no one’s really heard of and do it really well, because as soon as the expectations are there, it’s really tough,” he continued. “And the other extreme pressure on the other side of that… you got these giant business conglomerates that are pushing for certain release dates and release times. At BioWare, when Ray and I ran [it], our most effective thing was pushing for the dates that made the most sense that made the best possible game.
“We would play something and declare that, with lots of resource, it wasn’t ready, and make it happen at a later date. I look at a game like Anthem and think ‘man, there’s such a great core to that game, but yeah, it needs to bake for another year’.”
BioWare has now shrunk down in size following the completion of Dragon Age: The Veilguard last year, with a smaller team committed to Mass Effect 5. Its release window is unknown.
For more from Zeschuk, do check out his episode of the My Perfect Console podcast – it’s well worth a listen.
