BioWare is laying off 50 people

Just saw Renata Cronin post on Twitter that she is among the 50.

I am not sure if she was still big in the DA Keep team, but she was my main form of contact when our beta group was working with them on the Keep.

More and more these days, I know so few people left at BioWare whom were cherished contacts for all the positive cupcake shenanigans.

Jeff Grubb claims to know more about the situation at BioWare and he'll be sharing tomorrow.



He's been pretty reliable for game leaks and industry news.

Wow. Bloody hell. I've seen my share of outright ridiculous corpo speak but this one may just take the cake. How a smaller team is more creative and productive is just beyond me. I guess it takes a special kind of person to write that level of garbage with a straight face.

And it's sad that they fired Mary Kirby and who knows who else. So many years of great contributions and this is what she gets. But who knows, maybe their new design direction doesn't need as much writing.

"We are confident that we’ll have the time needed to ensure Dreadwolf reaches its full potential."
Dude. Just say "delay". Two syllables. Ain't that hard.

Ehhh it's more of the old guard getting laid off rather than Bioware being "gone" but it's still sad to see. 

Nahh, this pulls them even further away from the team who made my favourite games. It's slowly losing what brought me here in the first place.

The new writing on Andromeda and Anthem was crap. If that's who's left then I have little hope going forward

That's a very positive way of looking at it.

So if your best friend turned into a zombie, would you say he's dead and gone or does he just treat you in a way you don't like now?

I'm sorry, I never mean to make anyone uncomfortable of course. I'll do my best to not reply with anything you might find unsettling in the future, but maybe it's just easier for you to put me on ignore.

No worries at all. In the end we all want to play good games and I sincerely hope BioWare will make something you'll enjoy.

Now specifics and context will vary from case to case and the long term effects of this case are probably not going to see the consequences of this particular decision for a long time to come. But the basics of the logic is still rather sound. Teams can still be too large and unwieldy. Too bloated. Too many indians and not enough chiefs as well as the vice versa. So large where effective decision making is made a lot more complicated and thus things get harder to do, harder to communicate these decisions through an entire team and then get feedback. Hell now that I'm thinking about it I think Mark made a video which at least touched on this subject. So a larger team can be just as much of a problem for these companies as having a small team, and corporate speak or no, a smaller team can be more responsive, reactive, and creative, as a larger one. 
I've never really thought that this overly melodramatic argument is especially effective or helpful to any debate. 

BioWare still exists and they will continue to do so for the forseable future. Indeed since the 'corporate speak' has reaffirmed their commitment to both Dragon Age and Mass Effect moving forward then this still means they have years still. As for the team there have been several people which have been there for years and reprsent the 'old guard'. Fewer and fewer, sure, but BioWare still has people in key leadership positions which have been with the company as long as Mary Kirby. Leadership which will continue to ensure some continuity as they train the next generation, hopefully, of BioWare devs and continue to ensure the companies standars remain. 

Which while it does suck for the specific people involved we were going to lose Mary Kirby eventually. People retire and people move on from companies all the time or are laid off. Mary Kirby isn't BioWare, BioWare is BioWare and given how much I enjoyed Andromeda and even Anthem having some BioWare staples in it I'm not that concerned by the loss of any one dev. At least not yet. Though a lot will depend on how much these people will be able to pass onto the next generation.

Ordinarily, over the course of a work day, I'd have time to process, think about, then over think this sort of thing. I'd probably have made many posts.

Now - after the day I've just had, I realise I haven't thought about it once since finding out it was happening. I still hope all the things for the people affected. Quick to find new work that brings them joy etc etc. But for Bioware generally? No one is successfully putting lipstick on this pig. You can't sugar coat or silver lining your way out of laying off 20-25% of your workforce.

Maybe this is all part of a grand plan to improve efficiency or quality or something else at Bioware *insert Dark Knight Joker meme here* but having a plan and having the plan be good are not mutually inclusive states. Obviously not necessarily exclusive, either, but Bioware are a long, long time without a win.  It is hard to see - at the moment - how this sets them up for one.

The wait continues.  Guess I should play some more Baldurs Gate 3.  I hear it's doing OK.

Does feel like Bioware's death isn't going to be swift end but more death by a thousand cuts. You've got to hope that Dreadwolf is far enough in that these losses won't damage it to much. It's future games including the supposed next Mass Effect that feel very shaky at this moment.