BioWare/Pandemic Acquisition Reactions

FiringSquad has kicked up a two-page article that provides an overview of Electronic Arts’ acquisition of BioWare and how the company’s employees felt about it.

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.

And if you’re looking for more community (negative) reactions, you can also check out this thread in BioWare’s forums. The thread is growing quickly and has already spawned subsequent threads.