Tag: leaving

      Two of BioWare’s Founders Are Leaving the Company

      September 18, 2012 /

      Today Bioware Co-Founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka announced that they are leaving the company, and possibly video games in general.

      Both have made statements on their departure via their blogs, that basically express their interest in moving on to other ventures. Muzyka provides a vague idea of his interests moving forward saying:

      “I believe strongly in the power of free enterprise to enable sustainable change, so my next ‘chapter’ will likely focus on an entirely new industry, something exciting, different and frankly downright scary – investing in and mentoring new entrepreneurs, and more specifically, the field of social/impact investing.”

      Zeschuk provides a clearer idea of his life moving forward, as he expresses the usual interest of his desire to spend more time with his family along with the more specific desire to get into the craft beer industry:

      “The main project I will be working on is a web-based interview show called The Beer Diaries where I interview notable brewers and showcase their beers. If things go well, I’ll work on other beer-related shows, apps and projects.”

      The most telling, and somewhat disheartening, statement provided by either man would belong to Zeschuk who also said:

      “I’ve reached an unexpected point in my life where I no longer have the passion that I once did for the company, for the games, and for the challenge of creation.”

      Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka both got into the video game industry after graduating medical school at the University of Alberta. They worked on medical based computer programs before that same passion for gaming led them, and co-founder, Augustine Yip, to create their first title “Shattered Steel” for publisher Interplay. From that point they spearheaded a studio that’s game catalogue reads like the upper end of most best video games of all time lists. Bioware has revolutionized Western and PC RPGs with “Baldur’s Gate,” made one of the all time great cult classics in “MDK2,” crafted the greatest “Star Wars” game of all time (and one of the most important games period) in “Knights of the Old Republic,” and just recently have made two of the best series of this generation with “Dragon Age” and “Mass Effect.”

      More important than any individual contributions, however, are the greater ideas that Zeschuk and Muzyka promoted with Bioware. Through several generations, they helped run a studio that always advanced the RPG genre with each new entry (and gaming as a whole in most cases) and proved yet again that maintaining artistic integrity and achieving financial success are not mutually exclusive in the business. While the departure of Zeschuk and Mzyka doesn’t mean Bioware will no longer achieve those same goals, it is sad to realize that even such legends in the industry can simply lose their passion and walk away.

      Of course, like Neil Young said, “Sometimes it’s better to burn out, than to fade away.” Zeschuk and Muzyka leave behind an undisputed legacy that future generations of developers can only hope to duplicate, but should most certainly learn to appreciate. Here’s hoping them the best in the future.

      Also, Greg, I’ll buy a case of Baldur’s Beer, or Icewind Ale should they hit store shelves.

      News

      Riot to allow players to participate in the ban process

      January 17, 2011 /

      Tribunal.

      As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Renekton, it’s been a busy few days. I finally got to catch up on the forums a couple days back and found a strange post in the Announcements forums. The post gave us the first look at Riot’s newest disciplinary strategy: crowdsourcing.

      Here’s the gist from ByronicHero:

      Permit me to introduce the Tribunal, a revolutionary system by which you, the players, are empowered to evaluate cases of bad behavior. Soon, when you log into your account on the League of Legends website, you will be presented with the option to review random player reports. Bundled with each report will be supporting information relevant to the case, such as chat logs and game stats. With these materials at your disposal, you will be asked to vote to either punish or pardon the reported player. Once a case receives enough votes in either direction, the case will be resolved. In accordance with the verdict, the reported player will receive either a pardon or be subject to disciplinary action.

      So why should you take part in Tribunal? Well, for starters, you will have the opportunity to help clean up the League of Legends community by ensuring that reports of player harassment are handled in a quick and timely manner. But if civic virtue isn’t incentive enough, we’re going to throw in an IP reward for each case in which you’re part of the majority vote.

      This is a strange system, though I’m not quite ready to pass judgement. This is definitely the most direct way I’ve seen a company deal with the complaints about disciplinary panels. Has anyone played another game with this type of system?

      There are a couple potential problems. First, by rewarding IP for the majority vote, it doesn’t necessarily encourage people to act fairly, just to act in groups. Granted, the easiest way to do that would be to vote on the evidence, but it wouldn’t exactly be difficult to organize large groups of voters to farm up IP. If the reward is large enough, I could easily see people doing just that.

      Then there’s the simple fact that you can grief players you don’t like. I’m hoping there’s some sort of pseudonym system, whereby reported players are given an alias for the review. Without that, it seems like your’e really asking for people to abuse the system.

      Those problems aside, though, it might be a decent way to get things done. The ban process is notoriously long and seems a bit useless when the bans don’t happen for several weeks or even months. This could make a things much quicker, which means players feel the penalty for poor behavior close enough to the behavior that, hopefully, they’ll wise up.

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      Player with 500 alleged leaves finally gets a ban

      December 6, 2010 /

      Banhammer.This is dumbfounding, but there’s also a lot of missing evidence so please, take it with a grain of salt. There’s a post on the forums right now asking that Riot “Free RickoniX,” a player who, according to the post, was recently banned for his leaves. How many leaves? Again, according to the post, more than 500.

      From what little evidence can be gathered, it seems the account has been banned. There aren’t any games past November 23rd, and his ranked info has been deleted (I’m assuming. It also seems as though people know who he is, so this is either some highly forum troll work, or there’s some decent amount of truth to it.

      Let’s leave the 500 number out of it for now, though. What’s an acceptable number of leaves? I’ve personally seen people over 100. So why aren’t they immediately banned. Even if 100 games is less than 5 percent of your games, as it would be in my case, why aren’t you immediately served at least a month long ban. I’d say it’s more likely than not you’ve ruined or negatively impacted a good 75 percent of those, in most cases more, which is just way too many. It would be easy to have some sort of ‘leave decay’ so that, should you stop raging or learn to manage your team or even just get a better internet connection, you could get back to playing the game without immediate threat of a ban.

      To think that someone might be out there with several hundred leaves yet still playing the game is baffling.

      Editorial, league of legends

      © 2025 Fearless Gamer

      Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑