BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk has revealed that BioWare had higher hopes for MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic. In a recent episode of the My Perfect Console podcast (transcription courtesy of Time Extension), Zeschuk said that the potential success of The Old Republic could have led to him, along with BioWare’s other co-founder, Ray Muzyka, into making a bid to take over Electronic Arts from within the company.
However, the dream was a longshot, with Zeschuk saying that Star Wars: The Old Republic would have needed to make an incredible amount of money – around $2 billion a year – for the move to be possible. And ultimately, as history showed us, Star Wars: The Old Republic was, at best, modestly successful.
“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,” said Zeschuk. “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.'”
For some context, Star Wars: The Old Republic was, at the time, one of the most expensive video games being developed. The MMORPG was quite ambitious, and wanted to meld the multiplayer fun of other games in the genre with BioWare’s penchant for telling stories.
Zeschuk also spoke about how he realised his dislike for big companies after having worked with EA. He described working with the publisher as being given “enough rope to hang yourself,” citing the need to work within the massive company’s structure as being something you need to learn.
“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’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.”
“Big companies exist to exploit properties,” he continued. “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.”
Zeschuk, along with co-founder Muzyka left BioWare back in 2012, shortly after the announcement of Dragon Age: Inquisition. More recently, BioWare released Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Check our review of the RPG for more details. Star Wars: The Old Republic, on the other hand, is still available to play as a free-to-play MMORPG on PC.
