BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk: game executives 'have never made a game'
BioWare co-founder: game execs "have never made a game" and don't get it
In a rare interview, BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk said the studio's closure is sad, but his bigger worry is the people left without jobs. He laid the blame on industry executives who, in his words, have never actually built a game and simply don't understand how the process works.
None of these people have ever made a game. They just don't know how it works.
- seanhunter
BioWare is an example of what poor senior leadership can do even to a legendary studio. If you look at their output for the last decade it’s really hard to point to any of the games and hand on heart say the idea sounds fun.
- “Anthem” was literally built to be full of grindy bullshit right from day 1.
- “Dragon Age: The Veilguard” was a total travesty. SkillUp called it a “collosal disappointment” and said the writing made “every interaction (between characters) sounds like HR is in the room”
- “Mass Effect: Andromeda” I remember reading a review which says “the game has already become its own meme at this point”. Even people who were charitable to it admitted it was worse in just about every respect than the trilogy that it followed.
…And things are going to get worse before they get better. If you turn your gaze onto another legendary studio with train-wreck management, I can’t conceive of Elder Scrolls 6 being any good given that I found Fallout 4 disappointing and since then everything Bethesda has put out since then (just their own in-house stuff, not things they publish so I’m thinking of Id and Arkane as separate here) has been a catastrophe. In a sign of how bad the mismanagement is there, Id software which has put out banger after banger which have been commercially and critically successful has seen significant layoffs in spite of that. “Starfield” was terrible, “Fallout 76” was unquestionably one of the worst games of all time at launch (although they have some […]
- Sydrik
If you want truly creative games, it won't be AAA game studios but indie game devs. AAA game studios play a different game (pun intended) and it will serve its audience and more especially, their shareholders. There is enough space in the world for them and truly creative indie game studios.
- eska
I'd take this person's opinion with a heavy grain of salt. They didn't sell to EA to grow, but because BioWare was failing. AI recreating games has nothing to do with BioWare being shut down and is therefore a red herring. The execs might not know how to make games, but BioWare has both been extremely slow at developing games and put out multiple failures in a row.
- kleiba2
I would really like to get into the gaming industry, despite the horror stories you regularly hear about working conditions. The main problem for me is that I'm really old (>50), and there's no industry near where I live.
- Fidelix
This is likely an unpopular opinion, but I think the devs and the people actually involved in the game development are at fault.
It's not like the execs are coming up to the meeting room and saying "Hey, let's make a shitty game because I am an idiot who wants to lose money...".
Their games are just bad, man. They don't know how to write a good story like in the first mass effect, they don't know what makes a game fun, and this is the natural result.
- glimshe
XBOX will be the big validation of the model. They purposefully chose an executive who doesn't know a thing about videogames. The business side is obviously important, but can a videogame company be successful if it's run by bean counting business optimizers? I doubt it, but time will tell.
- pbohun
Have any of the Bioware execs even played a game?
- kibwen
It's even worse than that. The execs at these companies don't just not make games, they don't play games, either. They fundamentally cannot understand what makes a good game because they don't engage with the medium, and do not care to.