Earlier today, BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk announced their retirement from BioWare/Electronic Arts.

I’m not entirely surprised – we’ve been seeing hints and hearing rumors for several months now.

Ray Muzyka’s Retirement Letter/Blog Post

After 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.

I feel the need now to move on to a new chapter in my career. With the growth of BioWare to multiple locations as part of a public company, following two decades of multiple successful product launches across many platforms and business models, I’ve largely personally achieved what I wanted in videogames; I now desire to take on a brand new entrepreneurial challenge. I believe strongly in the power of free enterprise to enable sustainable change, so my next ‘chapter’ will likely focus on an entirely new industry, something exciting, different and frankly downright scary – investing in and mentoring new entrepreneurs, and more specifically, the field of social/impact investing. (More)

Greg Zeschuk’s Retirement Letter/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.
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Some of you will be curious what I’ll be doing next, and I can state that I’m not going to be working in games for a while, and there’s a strong possibility that I won’t be back. After my departure I’m going to be spending significant time with family and friends, as well as pursuing some personal passion-driven projects related to craft beer. The main project I will be working on is a web-based interview show called The Beer Diaries where I interview notable brewers and showcase their beers. If things go well, I’ll work on other beer-related shows, apps and projects. If not, I’ll have drunk a lot of tasty beers and may be back in games or even something else completely different. Ultimately time will tell. (More)

Comments from Aaryn Flynn, General Manager of BioWare Edmonton and Montreal

And now with their retirement, the creative teams at BioWare Edmonton & Montreal are ready to carry on that legacy:

• DRAGON AGE 3: Inquisition – Yesterday, we announced that BioWare is now developing the next chapter of the Dragon Age series. Executive Producer Mark Darrah and our teams have been meeting with fans about what they want in a new Dragon Age game. I love spending time with the Dragon Age team as they work on Inquisition. The thought-provoking discussions, the fun, and most of all, the discovery of what’s possible on a new engine is both exhilarating and humbling.

• MASS EFFECT – Executive Producer Casey Hudson and his team are coming off an amazing eight-year run with the Mass Effect trilogy. But they’re not done yet. We are releasing more multiplayer content and we have more single-player stories coming throughout the next six months, including Omega which is coming in the Fall. But the Mass Effect universe is vast, and Casey and our teams have plans for another full game. “Where to go next?” with such a project has been a question a lot of us have been asking, and we’d all love to hear your ideas.

• BRAND NEW GAMES FROM BIOWARE – Both Dragon Age and Mass Effect started as single games but grew into vast universes. But we aren’t stopping there. While Casey continues to oversee the development of our new Mass Effect project, he and his leads are putting together their vision for an all new game set in a fictional universe, built from the bottom-up with all new gaming technology. (More)

As an Ultima fan, I’m slightly concerned. From various tweets, Ray Muzyka was the one approving of Ultima Forever.

Inevitably the comparisons will be made to Richard Garriott and Mark Jacobs. Garriott leaves, the Origin branding was slowly removed over the next few years. Mark Jacobs leaves, a few years later the Mythic branding was slowly removed, to the point that in a bitter sense of irony, here in 2012, UO is the last game to have Mythic’s branding on its website (only because UO hasn’t had its website overhauled yet).

To BioWare’s credit, they recently started advertising UO and Dark Age of Camelot on its homepage, but we haven’t seen BioWare fully support either game. I have heard that UO and DAOC will be getting official forums on Social.BioWare.com alongside Warhammer Online’s forums. I have also heard that both will be better supported from a customer service perspective as well as a community relations perspective, but I’ve been hearing that for a while, and nothing has happened.

As I said, today’s announcement is not entirely unexpected, but I know Ray was a fan of Ultima, and from him down to the next person talking up the Ultima properties is a huge gap of silence.

I’d feel a lot better if the person(s) who have the Ultima and DAOC franchises under their control spoke more about them.