Ferret Baudoin Joins BioWare

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NWVault has received the news that Ferret Baudoin and his wife Alice are moving to Edmonton and he's going to be a Senior Designer with BioWare now. Here's a snip:

Ferret Baudoin, former Lead Designer for NWN2, and his wife Alice, were kind enough to send word that they are moving to Edmonton, Canada, where Ferret will take up a Senior Designer position at BioWare. Unfortunately he couldn't speak as to the circumstances behind the switch in companies nor what project he'll be working on, however it's good to hear that he will still be in the gaming community I cover.

Read the rest at NWVault.

[ April 24, 2006, 00:37: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Hmm, wasn't he knocked out of the lead spot really late in development for no publicised reason? Might explain things...

 

Perhaps Ferret was the right guy to work on some of BioWare's games in the making.

 

A rational explanation? On SP? Naw, we believe in conspiracy theories here. I believe that, back in the time of Black Isle, he was working on Fallout 3 and Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps Bioware has forgotten their vow to never work with royalty-requiring material again and decided to give BG3 a shot? Oh gee, look at that, a 20 foot boa constrictor just slithered out of my toilet boil... wait, nope, its my rational sense trying to overpower my flights of fancy and desire for more FR games from Bioware.

It is odd that its hush-hush but I can imagine that both companies prefer game-related publicity, not publicity towards the internal affairs and wheeling and dealings of the company.

 

Obsidian does NOT work for BioWare. Both companies are independent developers who have their games published by different publishing houses (NWN2 is being published by Atari, Mass Effect is being published by Microsoft).

This isn't really "hush-hush." If it were, Ferret would not have even revealed where he went. People who work in the game industry move around all the time, and he probably had his reasons, just like anyone else who changes jobs. Because we love the games so much and are so close tothem, sometimes we, as fans, mistakenly think we're entitled to know all the details of changes like this. We're not. For the same reason that total strangers aren't entitled to walk up to us on the street and have us tell them where we work, for how many years, how much money we make a year, and why we moved to a new job.

 

No, Obsidian does not, and did not, "work for" BioWare, in any way, shape or form. KOTOR2 was Obsidian's project from the outset, and was published by a company called LucasArts, not Bio. Obsidian was directly responsible to LucasArts for development and delivery of product; Bio had already gone on their merry way.

Game designers have every right to move to a new job at any time, the same way anyone else has the right to move to a new job at any time. Bio is known for being open with its fan community on things like mods, but no one, other than the involved parties, has the right to know the exact circumstances behind any job change, nor will any of it matter as long as Bio's and Obsidian's products continue to be good.

Think of it this way: a stranger walks up to you on the street and loudly demands to know what you do for a living, for how long, how much you make, and whether you've changed jobs (and why). Now have the stranger, whom you've never laid eyes on, claim to be "a big fan of yours." Does that change anything? You'd still be put out by such a rude and awkward question, as anyone else would, because strangers simply aren't entitled to know that kind of information.