The Long, Strange Journey of BioWare’s Doctor, Developer, Beer Enthusiast

Polygon is offering a long and interesting interview with BioWare co-founder and now ex-employee Greg Zeschuk which covers everything from his early career to his decision to leave, to his current passion… beer.

Here’s a snip:

“It’s one of those things that’s always really funny because, if you’re really grumpy, you know you go, ‘˜Ah, I’m just going to leave,’ and then you’re, ‘˜No, no, no.’ And then finally there’s this point where you know you go, ‘˜Hey, you know, I think it’s time to go. And we can kind of looked at each other. You know, it’s one of those weird things. We didn’t both hatch our plots and then reveal them to each another. I think that there was just ongoing conversation that was kind of we both felt it was the right time to move on.”

Just why Zeschuk lost his passion for gaming remains a bit unclear. Was it because of the sale to EA, Star Wars: The Old Republic’s relatively small subscriber base, the anger some fans felt over the ending of the Mass Effect trilogy?

“Everything’s a factor,” Zeschuk tells me. “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. 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.”

And the passion of fans, so vibrant in the world of video games, was both a source of strength for Zeschuk and something that wore him down, he said.

“For all the people that are mad at us, there’s also a whole bunch of people who are really happy with us,” he said. “It’s a balancing act, right? We are big boys and you have to be able to deal with that criticism. I totally get that passion. One of the absolutely exciting things about having worked in the game space is that the level of passion people have for what we create is insane.”