From the BioWare blog: “Today, BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have announced they are retiring from BioWare.” Dragon Age II may have been an abomination of a game, and Mass Effect 2 had some considerable issues as well, but that doesn’t negate the fact that BioWare has created some of the best games in history. Thanks, guys, for hundreds and hundreds of hours of great gaming, and good luck with any future projects.
Jade Empire was the only game on the linked list I’ve bothered to play and actually got into…
That was a damn good game, by the way. The rest, though… I honestly couldn’t care less about them.
Edited 2012-09-18 23:23 UTC
chris roberts is going back to space
http://robertsspaceindustries.com/
Knights Of the old republic was so good i replayed it endlessly.
Mass effect one stole so many hours of my life i lost count how many times i finished it.
Then came EA, then came Dragon age and the bioware magic was gone.
It wasn’t so bad in mass effect 2 but they really sucked the life out of them. I hope they start a new company but bioware is a shell of what they used to be. Much the same as blizzard.
Man, i feel old remembering a time when EA wasn’t a soul sucking demon.
Tell me about it, we were setting up an Amiga A600 a couple of weeks ago and were marveling at the boxed copy of Deluxe Paint 3 and the old EA logo.
It’s always sad when the rebels become the empire themselves.
That’s funny, I hadn’t even known they had a new logo before I checked the Wikipedia article after reading your comment. Guess because I don’t play with AAA games anymore, the last game I saw their logo in is about 15 years old. That’s scary.
Neverwinter Nights, while they didn’t release the toolkit for Linux, they released the client and server, and that game is amazing. There are still a decent amount of people playing it and modding the hell out of it.
Kudos on a great game! Granted, I think it would have been better on a generic role-playing system so you could make all sorts of non-fantasy mods easier, but still, for a D&D license, it was epic.
Sadly they went full DirectX with Neverwinter Nights II.
I might get flamed for this; but after the EA takeover, is it really their company?
Bioware just isn’t really Bioware anymore. The good old days are over.
Edited 2012-09-19 02:49 UTC
EA does that every dev they buy up. They suck any soul the studios have, in the end Bioware died the day they sold out to em.
it is important to at least footnote their history. my recollection:
bioware was a great computer game company that expanded into being a great computer and console game company. KOTOR is a historically excellent game and it even got a PC port. smilegroan.
then they sold out to EA because EA wanted to build a WOW clone as a Blizzard (Activision) killer. then they sucked at being a great game company.
then Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk quit. possibly because they see the end of Bioware (EA) coming, possibly because their jobs suck now, possibly because they have no real jobs at all now. maybe they want to make a kickstarter game, or maybe they want to buy an island.
the non-compete timer has started.
Anything that EA touches is destined to turn in to poop…it’s sad but true.
Agreed:
– Westwood
– Bioware
– Criterion
– Origin
Any more developers smothered by EA?
Not on that front, but I can think of a few other studios being smothered by another evil empire in the making; Zenimax. Look at what they’ve done to iD software since the take over. Carmack has become a puppet, canceling Linux clients, forcing some of the best devs out, leaving bethsoda to develope rage which flopped. So on so forth
You might want to get to know a bit more about computer games before making such statements. For example, EA powered both Black & White and Thom’s beloved American McGee’s Alice. Battlefield 3, while not my type of game, is certainly a quality piece of work.
Sorry for ruining your hipster hating on EA.
[EDIT] PS: You have to hate on Activision/Blizzard these days, not EA.
Edited 2012-09-19 10:34 UTC
Both are more than 10 years old…
maybe DICE is the exception.
As a dedicated fan of FPSes in general and the Battlefield series in particular, I would strongly disagree. The BF series jumped the shark after BF2. BF3 looks nothing like the original, nor does it play anything like it.
Want a good, cartoonish FPS? The Borderlands series and TF2 are far better games.
Want a FPS that encourages teamplay naturally? Counter-Strike, CS:S, Team Fortress, TFC, TF2, BF2 and the original BF games are great choices.
Want a decent FPS that does a good job of blending realistic factors with solid gameplay? Go for Day of Defeat:Source, DoD, Red Orchestra, or Red Orchestra 2.
Want a FPS that is monomaniacal in its pursuit of realism that still provides some really solid gameplay? The ArmA series and its granddaddy Operation Flashpoint is one option. The freebie America’s Army series is another.
This barely scratches the surface of what’s available. IOW, there are lots and lots of good choices from publishers both big and small. No need to get wrapped up in the hype of BF3 or CoD.
Edited 2012-09-19 13:41 UTC
I care for nothing bioware has done since the “baldurs gate duology, the icewind dale sagas and all that it entails” All other works has been either EA qualiity, aweful, or shit.
Edited 2012-09-20 14:11 UTC