The Doctors Retire from BioWare. Who Will Succeed Them?

The BioWare Blog greeted its readers with news that likely surprised many people this morning: company co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk (“the Doctors”) announced their simultaneous retirement as heads of the RPG developer and its associated Electronic Arts label.

The timing is a bit uncanny, leading some to speculate that the pair may have been forced out the door, but there is a certain symmetry to their departure that I think diminishes the possibility that this was anything other than something they had planned to do themselves. They did, after all, found the company together, and have very publicly co-guided and co-shaped its evolution from an Edmonton-based independent developer of harder-core RPGs into a brand of their own, an EA label that has become synonymous with heavily story-driven, emotionally engaging mid-core RPGs. It’s fitting, then, that they should bow out together and let someone else take the reins.

And really, it’s a move that’s consistent with their other actions of late.