BioWare - Looking back

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Co-founder Greg Zeschuk talks about BioWare at Eurogamer:

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BioWare co-founder reflects on Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, life under EA, and the "worst advice" received from Xbox

"There's all kinds of shenanigans we did."

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.

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