Despite being a part of EA, BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muyzka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk maintain that BioWare retains "huge autonomy" and is "not being forced to do anything or told to do anything."
In an interview with Eurogamer , the two founders clarified their relationship with EA and how BioWare operates, now that it has so many different high-profile projects and responsibilities. They described how their corporate responsibilities have removed them from close, direct involvement with game development, and how more stringent business practices like market research, mock reviews, and extensive testing have become a part of BioWare's development cycle. For all that BioWare has evolved, however, they maintain that they are still faithful to the company's core values.
"At the end of the day," Muyzka said, "we're responsible for the quality of the content and games we release, and we're committed to try and always take feedback really seriously from our fans and be humble about how we take it - use it to make the next games better."
They admitted that they are more conscious of "commercial elements" than they used to be when BioWare was an independent, niche developer. "Way, way back, years ago, we didn't even consider those, we just made stuff. And some of the stuff we made, in retrospect, was kind of crazy, like MDK2 - that's just crazy!" said Zeschuk.
Still, the pair stressed that they also know that they can't be leaders of innovators if they are too risk-averse. "...We understand the commercial pieces but we're also willing to take risks that we think are sensible - and we're willing to take risks that may seem kind of crazy," Zeschuk said. "We're still driven to a certain degree by that intuition that we had back in the day."
"The key is to never lose sight of the fact that, at the end of the day, we're making entertainment and art," Muyzka added.
