Former BioWare head Greg Zeschuk left the studio he established with co-founder Ray Muzyka back in September. In his farewell message , he stated the passion he felt for making games and "the challenge of creation" simply fizzled out after 17 years. (His new trade: beer. Lots of it. ) Speaking to Polygon , Zeschuk expanded on how burnout and other factors affected his decision to move on from the industry.
Previously, former BioWare Project Director Trent Oster suggested Zeschuk's dwindling enthusiasm stemmed from fan negativity over Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, two projects the beer-loving doctor had a heavy hand in supervising and managing. In Polygon's interview, Zeschuk revealed that only made up a fraction of what caused his departure.
"Everything's a factor," Zeschuk said. "There's nothing that's not a factor, but there's no single one thing. I think the best way I can describe is: Do the same thing for twenty years and it's very, very intense. It's very high pressure. It's very high stress. It's challenging. It's sometimes rewarding and sometimes it's not. And you just get tired of it after awhile. That is probably the easiest way to for me to describe it. Sometimes you just need to change things."
"One of the few things I find kind of funny is the responses of the fans, because they sort of respond that they are kind of mad at us for leaving because they think we owe them more games," he continued. "You know, it's sad: I wish I could deliver on that, but I don't think I would be as good as I was in that space historically. Like I said, the fire wasn't there."
When asked if he'd ever entertain a return to gaming, Zeschuk stuck with his original hard goodbye from September, saying, "Yeah, probably not. I'm having fun doing what I'm doing, so probably not. We'll see, but I'm not planning on it at this point for sure."
