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I Shall Be Your Companion, Your Provider and… Your Master
By Corvus | October 12, 2007
I’m going to diverge from the schedule a bit to react to yesterday’s major news.
You’ve probably heard by now that Electronic Arts has purchased Bioware/Pandemic for $855 million.
So many titles suggested themselves for this post. Evil Aempire Eats All and From Beneath You It Devours being two of the least alarmist. I settled on a quote from the opening cinematic of Ultima VII, Origin’s last minute love letter to EA… just before they were snatched up, hollowed out and discarded.
I am not some raving Bioware fanboi. I have respect for the good things they’ve done, I’m curious about their MMO, Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I enjoyed Jade Empire enough that I would be willing to see other games set in that world, but I no longer own Jade Empire, which means I don’t consider it worth replaying. It’s not because it’s Bioware that this buyout upsets me.
It’s because Bioware/Pandemic were the single largest remaining independent development studios. And now… they aren’t. They are now EA. The move was cunningly executed. Everyone seems surprised by it. I certainly was. One day there is this huge group of Canadians bucking the industry trends, working on story based original IP without the guiding hand of a publisher to tell them to add more sparkles and ship on time. The next day… there wasn’t.
But it’s clear that the move was in the works for a while. Some time ago, John Riccitiello left EA to head a private equity firm called Elevation Partners. Elevation Partners spent something like $300 million on VG Holding Group, which is the umbrella under which Bioware and Pandemic started their little romance. At the time, I remember people being a little puzzled by these two studios cuddling up together. I guess they weren’t so much interested in each other as they were putting on a show for a more voracious and predatory partner.
Anyway, John Riccitiello was recently called back to the mothership. He rejoined EA just before this merger was announced. John was quick to assure the press that the move was above board and legit of course. EA doesn’t pay those very expensive lawyers to sit around and practice their putting, you know.
Frank Gibeau was pretty enthusiastic about this acquisition and stressed in one interview that EA now owned a bunch of original IP, adding, “So shut up about us being the borg, you pussies.” All right, he didn’t say that last bit, but honestly! This is how EA lives up to its promise to develop more original IP? It buys studios that have already developed it? C’mon Frank, that hardly seems in keeping with the spirit of the promise, now does it?
Even EA’s recent restructuring seems to have been in preparation for this move. A sports division, a casual division, the Sims division, and an “everything else” division. Looks like the “everything else” division was created as a management layer for riding herd on the upcoming acquisition. Frank said:
The reason we did this deal is because it’s an incredible strategic fit with EA and there is an unbelievable collection of talent from BioWare and Pandemic.
It also puts us in categories that we’re not in right now.
EA was sitting on $3 billion before this purchase. But why spend that money creating new jobs? Why spend it diversifying the market a bit? Why spend it fostering competition? Far more lucrative and easy to spend it snatching up an existing infrastructure. This mentality is why I despise EA so much.
So this leaves EA with another couple billion dollars to spend. Hm… look out Ubisoft. By the hair on my chinny chin chin, I’d wager you’re the next little piggie they’ve set their sights on. And I have a lot of hair on my chinny chin chin.
Okay, I’m going to leave you with a point to ponder and go about my day. How many games has Bioware developed and released over the last three years? How about Pandemic? What is the ratio of games per annum to game quality? Well:
EA plans to release four or five games a year from the studios in each of the 2009-2011 fiscal years.
Tagged:Industry. | 6 Comments »
October 12th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Ah – my eyes – it burns, it burns!
This is such terrible news for me I can’t even begin to tell you. Without violating non-disclosure, I’ll just say that EA has been aware that its product catalogue has been significantly short of cRPGs… But now, they have decided to just buy up the main player in that field instead of investing in some cRPG titles of their own. Let you imagination wander to see the implication for me…
So long innovation in cRPGs! It was nice believing in you.
October 12th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Yeah. Screw you and your innovative ideas, Chris. EA isn’t about making good games. EA is about making money for its investors and at the end of the day we ought to thank EA because without them, we wouldn’t have an audience to make games for…
…and I have that straight from the mouth of an EA Veep, Dr. John Buchanan.
Seriously though, I’m sorry to hear this has had a direct impact on you. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying about the future of any innovative RPG concepts you’ve blogged about, I’m very sorry for the rest of us as well.
October 12th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I couldn’t possible comment on something that may or may not violate NDA. I can however shake my fist at the sky and seethe…
October 12th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I would never expect the former and I’ll join you in the latter.
October 12th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
I feel very badly for you, Chris. As I was discussing this with Corvus yesterday, I felt a sense of weariness about the industry as a whole. I can’t help but be cynical in thinking Bioware and Pandemic were combined to make them more attractive for takeover.
This is all very sad.
October 16th, 2007 at 2:03 am
This is worrisome and disappointing to me. Bioware are my hometown team. I’ve watched them grow up from a little development into a full blown competitor. For years my dream job has been to make games at Bioware. And now… I don’t know what to think. It seems so very out of character for them. They fought so hard to get where they are, to be independent and own their own IPs. They proved that a small studio could do good work, and grow, away from the mainstream money and power of the games development world. It’s kind of sad to see them fall into the money trap like everybody else.