BioWare co-founder on EA: '[They] give you enough rope to hang yourself'

BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk recently revealed during a podcast he was going to attempt to take over Electronic Arts (EA) from within if the success of Star Wars the Old Republic was monumental.

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Zeschuk appeared on Simon Parkin's podcast My Perfect Console and gave some back story on the founding of BioWare and how the developer's success led to it eventually being acquired by EA, which purchased VG Holding Corp in 2007, which at the time owned BioWare Corp and Pandemic Studios. Many fans of the old BioWare attribute the developer's "downfall" to EA bringing the developer under its umbrella, but according to Zeschuk, that isn't the case, as right after EA acquired BioWare, the developer proceeded to hit home runs in terms of releases with the debuting of Mass Effect and promptly after Mass Effect 2.

Despite BioWare's success, Zeschuk recognized that working under the umbrella of a massive publisher wasn't a great environment for him, with the co-founder of the studio citing a lack of "entrepreneurial-ship". These concerns led to Zeschuk announcing his retirement from BioWare in 2012. Zeschuk went on to explain that when working under a massive company such as EA, developers need to learn to work within a set structure.

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Zeschuk pointed a finger specifically at the large North American companies, saying, "Big companies exist to exploit properties. They exist to exploit games. Most of the big North American guys, they're just good at 'Hey, let's just squeeze the most money out of this franchise.' They don't kind of create a lot of them, and I kind of realized early on that I like making games. I don't like just operating."

"EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself," Zeschuk told Parkin. "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's came out 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 for two-and-a-half years making Star Wars the Old Republic [and] I knew that was kind of a one-way trip," he told Parkin. "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 $2 billion a year successful. But it didn't work out so I was like, 'Ah, I'm fine.'"