BioWare's Founders on Leadership
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Partnerships And Accelerated Growth
In 2005, BioWare was acquired by Elevation Partners. "We learned a great deal from them in the 2 years or so we worked woith them," commented Muzyka. "We really came to appreciate the value of having partners [like Pandemic], and that's why we're really excited to be joined with EA."
He added, "One of the funny jokes we say is 'hey, we sold the company twice and we still get to run it!' When it comes to the fans on the boards who are upset at where we're at, we just say 'don't worry -- we'll show you."
Amid all this positive growth, was there anything BioWare wished they didn't do, like downsizing or killing projects?
"We've never downsized, but we have had to realign projects.. we've killed projects," said Ray. "We were going to do Shattered Steel 2, but Shattered Steel didn't sell well enough to justify that.. We're both medical doctors. The way it worked is that we graduated in '92 as doctors and we practiced as doctors for a few years ... we founded BioWare in '95, and for the first few years we didn't pay ourselves but worked on the weekends to keep ourself in soup and beans... we had faith in the people, and faith in the vision, and the good thing was we were really naïve."
Adds Zeschuk: "It was also our environment... it's not like there was this huge bunch of game developers that flow in and out of the company, so we learned how important each individual was. At the end of the day we felt like every person is like gold. Every person is so important... even as we get bigger. That's one of the really important balance points for the company."
