BioWare founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzkya both announced their retirement via posts online Tuesday afternoon. Known as the “doctors”, they founded the company in 1995 after receiving their medical degrees at the University of Alberta. They are also credited as executive producers for Baldur’s Gate series, Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Shattered Steel, Jade Empire, and the Neverwinter Nights series. They are well known and well loved in the gaming community, especially among BioWare fans but it looks like SWTOR would be their last project.
The official BioWare blog posts:
Today, BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have announced they are retiring from BioWare. Both have written blogs to discuss their retirement – click HERE for Ray’s and click HERE for Greg’s. Please join us in wishing them all the best in the future. Also, Aaryn Flynn, General Manager of BioWare Edmonton & Montreal shares his thoughts about Ray and Greg and what is coming up for BioWare HERE.
In their carefully written blog posts, they both explain their reasoning behind leaving the gaming industry to pursue another chapter in their lives. Ray says: ”
fter nearly two decades in videogames, I’ve decided to move on to pursue an entirely different set of challenges. This has been an incredibly difficult decision to make; after thinking about it for many months, I made the decision to retire from videogames back in early April 2012 – at that time I provided six months’ notice to EA, to help enable a solid transition for my teams at BioWare.
The decision to leave the videogame industry is hard to explain, but essentially I feel similar now to how I felt in the early days of BioWare over the decade post-medical school, while I was still practicing as an ER physician, back when I first realized that the world of video games was my next career ‘chapter’. Two wonderful decades working at BioWare and later EA was the result of that decision. It’s not often that you can truly say you were able to pursue and achieve your dream job; I know how lucky I am to be able to say that now, in my early 40s.”
You can read more from Ray and his reasons for leaving here.
Greg explains in his own blog post:
“Writing a note like this is something one imagines doing once in a lifetime, if at all. The experience of following a dream, achieving it and along the way working with the most talented, passionate and engaging people imaginable isn’t something I’m likely going to repeat again. Building BioWare over the years with Ray and the many other people involved was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I’ll cherish it always.
After nearly twenty years working at BioWare I’ve decided it’s time to move on and pursue something new. This decision isn’t without significant pain and regret, but it’s also something I know I need to do, for myself and my family. I’ve reached an unexpected point in my life where I no longer have the passion that I once did for the company, for the games, and for the challenge of creation. For the people I have had the privilege of working with, however, my passion burns as brightly as it did the day we started. The people I work with now, and that I have worked with in the past, have inspired me and really made all of the challenges we’ve collectively faced over the years worthwhile. We have been blessed with tremendous success over the years at BioWare, and the reason is simply down to a large number of great people doing great work. Successful people or companies have to admit luck also plays a part in their success, and it certainly did for us; a few times over the years we made the right game at the right time and success flowed as a result. When we got it right, it was like a hole in one or a home run; it was a magical feeling and incomparable in positive impact for everyone involved.””
Read the rest here.
