Jacobs Out, Mythic & Bioware To Merge – No Surprise Really
Posted by Stropp on June 25, 2009The MMORPG blogosphere is buzzing today. It’s been announced that not only is Mark Jacobs leaving EA-Mythic as of today, Mythic will also be merged with Bioware with the current Bioware heads (and founders) heading up the new structure with the Mythic business remaining intact but reporting to Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.
A few bloggers have expressed surprise at the announcment, with only Heartless_ saying I told you so and reminding us of the toxic effect that EA has on the game developers that it buys.
Me. I’m not so surprised really. On both counts.
Jacobs rapid departure, despite the positive spin, looks very much like the old tap on the shoulder. It’s no secret that EA was hoping for a WoW killer with WAR, or at the very least a game that would strongly compete with WoW in the US and Europe. For it to only have 300k subscribers sixish months after release would be the topic of many heated boardroom discussions.
These sort of conversations usually result in asking someone to fall on their sword.
As for the merger. No surprise there either. Big companies buy out smaller companies all the time and take over all the administrative functions, laying off the unnecessary staff. Why support two finance departments that duplicate the effort of the other? Sometimes a bigger company will buy a smaller more innovative business simply for the IP. Once that has been transfered, bye bye. Slash and burn.
And with the current financial crisis, EA would be looking at cost-cutting in every part of their business. Merging the two studios does make a hard business sense. I’m more surprised that it didn’t happen earlier.
Don’t forget that originally Mythic were going to be EAs MMORPG department. All MMOG development was going to go through them. Then they bought Bioware. A few eyebrows were raised at that. With the poor performance from WAR, Bioware seem to have become the shining star of MMORPG development at EA.
My guess is that they were waiting for the Land of the Dead release for WAR and possibly some other internal figures and perhaps some milestones from Bioware before doing the merger.
As for the toxicity refered to by Heartless_? Yeah. EA does have a well deserved reputation of taking over a successful and innovative studio, absorbing everything that makes money, and discarding the shriveled husk of culture and innovation.
The only saving grace in this situation is that Mythic has been merged with another studio (Bioware) with a strong culture of innovation. Hopefully much of that will be allowed to work through both studios.
As for Bioware? My guess is that they’ll need to make a very strong success with The Old Republic if they want to avoid a similar fate in the future.
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[...] on it). Tobold suspects the merge came because Warhammer did not meet the goals Jacobs promised. Stropps agrees. Abalieno at Cesspit would have preferred this ended differently, with more learning and caring. [...]
Whether or not 300k subscribers is fine for Warhammer Online depends on how much money went into it. I don’t like the common business practice of assuming firing is the answer to failure, but perhaps Warhammer did fail. I don’t know.
I’m a bit disappointed at the news, but not because it’s EA involved. Look at EA’s current line-up. They have a ton of great games on the horizon and recently released, some of which have come from EA’s own studios (ex: Dead Space). I don’t know a lot about EA’s past, the time period people usually complain about, but I see more quality games coming from EA today than from most.
The reason I’m a little disappointed is because I hate to see homogenization in a genre of games that is already too stuck on design standards. I like Bioware, but I think they’re less likely than Mythic to offer innovations in combat and exploration because they’re too obsessive about story and dialog. In any case, putting them in charge will certainly mean less variety than if Mythic had remained separate.
@Aaron – It also depends on how well they did in box sales. Despite the falling numbers of subscribers, they did sell a ton of boxes at release and that has to go a long way to offset the cost of development. Certainly I don’t consider it a fail, a RvR game was always going to be niche and they were trying out quite a few ‘experimental’ ideas. 300K seems quite successful really.
That homogenization is always going to happen, to a certain extent and especially with large companies. Internal studios have much less freedom simply because they have to prove their earnings to the company, and as you say, the price of failure is a loss of job.
Your point about Bioware is interesting. I’m not completely sure that a loss of variety will be the case, but… even if it is, it’s about time a company did start working on some innovations in the story and dialog areas of MMORPGs. Those have been sadly lacking in the current crop of MMORPGs. And who knows, this merger might bring the people with the C&E experience into Bioware and shake things up.
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