Daniel Erickson is leaving BioWare

Paddyspub · October 2012

I hope that othe peeps that were in BW before EA ruined it, do start a new game company.

AxiosImmortal · October 2012

idc what you all say tbh, EA won the golden poops award.

william0532 · October 2012

Originally posted by Karteli
Originally posted by william0532
Originally posted by noncley
Originally posted by Jonoku
We are talking about daniel erickson leaving bioware.......he left because EA didn't pay him the money he wanted. He is starting fresh and new to make more money and EA wants to be cheap and not pay the guy more. I don't blame him.

Also Bioware doesn't exist anymore, the studio is filled with EA workers. They mine as well put everything with a EA logo only. They destroy every company they buy and ruin them and devourer them. Bioware is as good as dead. End of Discussion.

This is fantasy. Erikson was fired because there was no more work for him to do at Swotor since there aren't going to be any more expansions and 'stories'. And the reason there will be no more expansions or 'stories' is because the development team, of which he was a senior, customer-facing executive, screwed up the world's surest bet: make an MMO using the SW IP off the back of Bioware's reputation and EA's money.

If Erickson is now saying 'Oh, I left because they wouldn't pay me the money I deserved' then he is as delusional as the time he told us 'Oh, no-one really wants a true flight sim because I don't remember Han and Chewey going about mining, do you?' (of course, this bald hipster douchebag forgot to mention that mining stations and mining ships were in fact crucial element of both Kotors, but that's beside the point). And if hs is ineed going around trying to peddle this bull, then it's symptomatic of his arrogance - and the stupidity he ascribes to us, the people he wanted to buy and play his game. Well, he's all gone, and we're still here.

No, Erickson is out of his ass - like Georg Zoeller who had to leave the industry to pursue 'new opportunities in the Philippines' or Ray Muzyka who is quitting games forever to devote his life to 'speciality beers'. Erickson, like them, has been canned and deservedly so. Any sofwtare or development or games company that ever picks him up is deliberately swallowing a poison pill.

It cracks me up how fanboys see developers. Now while distributors can make crap call's like pushing for DLC and what not, the fact is, Bioware was going bankrupt, EA saved them, gave them a job for 5 more years before they failed with mass effect 3 and then finally put the nail in the coffin with SWTOR, most expensive mmo ever, unfortunately all that money went to b actors and not too content. And no matter how good a writer is(I'm not claiming erickson was a good writer), he cannot write a thousand stories and have them all be good, thats like asking Stephen King to write 20 top selling novels in a year.(hell even stephen king can screw up a story, what was the whole point behind the giant space turtle in IT?)

Bioware had as many flops, as they had hits, but fan's see only the great when trying to think irrationally on a forum, especially when they are trying to explain how EA is responsible for everything from TOR, to Global warming. They flopped harder than ever on their dream of what MMO's should be with TOR, and for that, they are getting canned faster than tuna. EA funded TOR with no constraints, they let them run rampant with no supervision and they got burnt. If anything I hate EA for not doing some market testing of mmo players, and hiring some outside blood to be involved with developement. I've never seen a poll about what should be in mmo's with Voice acting at the top of the list(or even included on the list of options), yet some how it was the fourth pillar that all mmo's where missing?

Funny thing is, every other mmo started to scramble to get voice acting on everything lol

BTW, I haven't seen anything on D Erickson claiming that they wouldn't pay him his money, I think that the poster of that fact is using made up facts to back his assumptions.

The flops came after EA was involved. Whether it was EA's retraining of employees to take shortcuts, their micromanaging annoyances, or just tramatized BioWare employees losing morale, who knows why. When I think of EA I see a nightmare job from Office Space, where each employee has multiple bosses. Nothing gets done in any speedy fashion, because every small activity and decision requires 20 signatures.

If BioWare wasn't sold, SWTOR may have been KOTOR 3, according to various rumors, including an "unofficial" announcement of KOTOR 3 in 2005 (http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=150149). The new SWTOR MMO wasn't officially announced until a year after EA bought BioWare (http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/10/21/star-wars-the-old-republic-first-details?page=1). EA is money hungry, so I could totally see them wanting a MMO that would "more than compete with WoW" (Ray Muzyka) (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/306437/bioware-old-republic-will-more-than-compete-with-world-of-warcraft/). You can claim BioWare was making these statements, but lets be serious, they were saying them on behalf of EA, as they were instructed to do in order to keep their jobs (or for Ray to take a gamble, and rise up the corporate ladder). Every action post 2007, when BioWare was sold to EA, can't be taken seriously, and is subject to corruption.

Nothing really new, and nothing astounding to be gleamed from any of this, but it's just an inference of what gamers see, and why your pro-EA endorsement post doesn't jive with what others noticed.

First off, bioware wasn't a seperate entity(under VG, which also included pandemic), when VG holding's sold bioware and pandemic to EA they had to borrow 35 million to stay afloat during the transistion. Thats why people say they where going under. Whether it was pandemic, or bioware, or just the fact that VG corp made bad choices, they where more than eager to jump on that 600 million dollar offer from EA.http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15831(old news)

They kept the total 800 employees from the two companies(for how long, I'm not sure, it seems alot have been laid off in the last 6 months for some odd reason)

Lastly, I'm not giving a glowing endorsement of EA. If you want me to rant about EA sucking, bring up DLC. As far as swtor goes, I blame Bioware 100%. EA funded them(more than any other mmo). EA let them push the game back(or made them push it back till december for the christmas money, hell I don't know, either way the game got pushed back)

Bioware(especially Daniel Erickson) believe that voiced story telling was the thing that mmo gamers where too stupid to know they where missing. Hell, after listening to bioware rants about the fourth pillar(story) long enough, I started to think maybe they where right. After playing the game, I realized I wanted all the stuff that mmo's usually have, and that story telling was only the answer to making leveling fun, which doesn't do crap in the long run. Bioware believed in what they where doing. TOR is Bioware's product, they where proud in it, they believed in it, and they where wrong with their gamble. Nothing really to do with EA other than speculate about evil back room deals.

I will complain about EA when fans start to understand the full scope of the blatant hijacking their F2P model will be(you get to play one warzone a day on the free plan!), but till then, I don't ever want to see anyone from Bioware ever work on an mmo again.

And how come nobody every cries about lucas arts? He jacks 35% of the revenue! How is a game going to make money or invest in new content when they are giving up 35%? Even SOE pointed this out during SWG, and how short sited they where in the deal with Lucas Arts. For a StarWars game to be able to compete, they have to basically be twice as successful as any other mmo to be able to afford the money to expand.