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Star Wars MMO creative director leaves BioWare
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Author:  Cyrus Rex [ Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:02 am ]
Post subject:  Star Wars MMO creative director leaves BioWare

Disturbance in the Force: Star Wars MMO creative director leaves BioWare
Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/dis ... z28WlAoGMX

Quote:
BioWare loses another marquee member of its creative staff, as Star Wars: The Old Republic's Daniel Erickson resigns.

Star Wars: The Old Republic hasn’t had the rockiest first year an MMO has ever had. Age of Conan, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and many others never racked up the more than 1.5 million players BioWare and Electronic Arts’ years in the making game did when it opened for business last December. Few MMOs have lost players as quickly as quickly as Star Wars has though, with 400,000 players abandoning the game between February and May alone, forcing BioWare to redesign it as a free-to-play game. It is now, perhaps unsurprisingly, losing its creative staff almost as fast as its players. Creative director Daniel Erickson announced on Thursday that he is leaving BioWare.

“As part of leaving BioWare I’m officially starting a Twitter account for job hunt and design thoughts,” said Erickson.

He went on, clearly frustrated with the current cut throat state of the video game industry as the retail market dwindles, and other game formats take center stage in the quest to replace lost revenue. “When 90 percent of the industry is saying the exact same thing (social, mobile, FTP!) a huge number of people are going to lose that race. Job hunt thoughts: If you think a monetization approach is saying the exact same thing as a game idea, I don’t know why we’re talking.”

As recently as July, Erickson was discussing how he and the rest of BioWare’s Austin team were working diligently to improve The Old Republic to try and reignite interest in the project. “What we always say is, before the game came out it was out game,” he told Digital Trends, “As soon as it launched, it became the community’s game. [What] we’re saying now is we’re going to find any way we can to get the game in front of people. Because when people play The Old Republic, they like The Old Republic. If we can get people to get in there, play it, hang out… we’re really confident we’re going to get a bunch of new players from that.”

Shortly after that though, EA announced that the game would go free-to-play to level 50, and then went on to layoff a significant number of staff members at the Austin office, including executive producer Rich Vogel.

BioWare is bleeding these days. In addition to the exodus of The Old Republic’s staff, the company’s founders left the studio at the end of July.

Author:  Azzameen85 [ Sat Oct 06, 2012 2:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Star Wars MMO creative director leaves BioWare

I wouldn't have left the game if they would have accepted my creditcard(s).

I couldn't pay at all...

Nor could my friends in Denmark, Norway, Germany, France and Italy...

But my canadian and US friends didn't have any issues...

Author:  Cyrus Rex [ Sun Oct 07, 2012 8:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Star Wars MMO creative director leaves BioWare

Azzameen85 wrote:
I wouldn't have left the game if they would have accepted my creditcard(s).

I couldn't pay at all...

Nor could my friends in Denmark, Norway, Germany, France and Italy...

But my canadian and US friends didn't have any issues...


I had to use paypal, they would not take my credit cards because the IP showed me in Kuwait.

Author:  X2-PB [ Mon Oct 08, 2012 3:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Star Wars MMO creative director leaves BioWare

<bit of a rant>
Mainstream games these days are like mainstream movies, music, art (to some extent), and even the industry I work in - engineering (well, in the UK anyway) - they exist to make money. The art is no longer the focus. Everything is acutely designed to minimise the financial risk. Art and innovation are big risks and so they get minimised.

I mostly play independent games these days. Firstly, because they tend to run natively in linux. But mainly because they take me back to the games I used to play in the 80s and 90s, which were innovative and clever; they were fun and challenging. The majority of the music in my CD collection is from the 50s and 60s (and some bits from the 20s) because modern music does nothing for me.

These days the definition of a professional engineer seems to be a person who manages an engineering project. Engineering innovation has stagnated in the UK because why spend money on engineers, researchers and scientists when you can make cosmetic changes to a product, up the version number and sell it as a new product?
<ok so that was a bit more than a bit of a rant!>
</rant off>

I sympathise with Erickson, I really do.

Author:  X2-PB [ Mon Oct 08, 2012 3:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Star Wars MMO creative director leaves BioWare

... and on that note, having not actually played since March/April time, I've cancelled my subscription.

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