The reaction

Despite the heavy proportion of ex-EA employees in the company, the reaction was generally muted and contemplative. What might have been an otherwise depressing and angry day at BioWare was salvaged by the man at the heart of this story: John Riccitiello. Following the resignation of Larry Probst, John acted quickly and began implementing his vision, including the removal of a central design team that created jobs for itself by, for example, mandating a single interface for all of its team sports games that, while attractive, was a horrible interface.

John Riccitiello is also the man, who in his first interview since taking over of EA, said that ’sequels are boring’. Does that sound like a statement coming from the mouth of a traditional EA executive? I don’t think so, and apparently enough employees at BioWare agree enough to reserve any outcries of doom at least for a while.

The sober, thought-out feeling is that Riccitiello hitched his wagon to BioWare-Pandemic. They won’t be subject to the regular EA hierarchy, they won’t be given design ideas by EA, and they won’t be indulging in sequelitis (though as an aside, the Mass Effect 2 staff would love the opportunity for a sequel). In fact, the chain of communication will be John Riccitiello -> Frank Gibeau (President of EA Games) -> Greg Zeschuk & Ray Muzyka (BioWare co-founders). That’s it.

Our bet is that Riccitiello has done as much as he can at EA proper without bringing about a revolt against himself. The company is quite entrenched in its ways after a decade and a half of leadership from Larry Probst, and that is when it developed the reputation for buying a developer and milking its properties drier than a Sahara rock. Any further changes risk upsetting the shareholders and management who don’t see a creatively empty shell, but rather a highly profitable company that has found the formula for growing money off video game trees.

The BioWare-Pandemic buyout may be a bid to start EA on a new course, one already plotted by Activision: acquire a good developer, finance them, and permit them room to do their own thing, offer leadership and a kick in the ass only if necessary. Presumably the new EA CEO sees the disastrous long-term consequences of creative bankruptcy, and is seeking to remedy them by allowing BioWare and Pandemic the freedom and finances to do something spectacular on a regular basis. Specifically, during the conference John had stated that EA was impressed with BioWare’s Metacritic score, a rating in which EA has slipped in over the past few years, and a statistic which caused on analyst to say the EA brand has been tarnished

The downside, however, is that John has arguably bet his own personal political bank at EA on BioWare and Pandemic. Should they not deliver to expectations, their failure could be an excuse for traditional EA elements to remove Riccitiello and return to EA’s profitable-but-boring sequelitis ways. This, of course, will mean the doom of BioWare in the way that Westwood, Origin, Bullfrog, and Maxis were wiped out. With any change comes friction, and there is little doubt that by cutting into the bloat in EA and by bypassing the traditional EA power structure with BioWare-Pandemic, John Riccitiello has created enemies in the company. Like, say, people who think that a slow, unwieldly, but attractive interface in the name of the Almighty Brand is a good idea.

If John Riccitiello is for real, to which we’re giving a tentative nod, and if he can tame the EA Beast, it’s up to BioWare and Pandemic to see his vision through.

The challenge for BioWare will be calming all the ex-EA folk, most of whom are in Austin and left even before the days of the EA Spouse scandal which helped normalize work hours at the company. Then the company needs to work on its delivery schedule, notorious as they are for always being late.