News broke this week that another game studio was shutting down. The victim of private equity this time was the storied BioWare, the studio behind Knights of The Old Republic and Mass Effect. This is truly gutting news. I love KOTOR – it’s an exceptional Star Wars story and an excellent rpg. The Mass Effect games, meanwhile, rank among my favorite games of all times. They’re great pieces of science fiction (with a fantastically realized world) and the party members are great characters who I loved hanging out with in the game.
BioWare was once counted as one of the best when it came to western RPGs and for making games where players could carve out their own narratives. In recent years their output had become quite limited and there had been a couple missteps. But the luster was still there, and with it the hope for a new Mass Effect. Indeed, one had been teased for a few years and I was looking forward to finding out more about it.
But we exist in a capitalist hellscape and private equity means we can’t have nice things. A year ago, Saudi Arabia’s investment fund alongside an investment firm ran by Jared Kushner bought out Electronic Arts, the video game publisher that owns, among other studios, BioWare. Despondent, ironic humor started flying almost immediately. Would Mass Effect still allow for queer relationships? Could the player still choose for their galaxy-saving, ass-kicking hero to be a woman? Could the games’ undercurrent narrative of strength through unity and diversity still work?
Turns out, even those wry imaginations were too optimistic. Easier for a debt-riddled business deal to just, well, cut entire studio wholesale. From a point of pure, economical calculus, I suppose it makes sense – BioWare hadn’t had a proper hit in ages. But cold mathematics is an ignoble end for BioWare. Part of the closure speaks to the absolute mess the video game industry is in at the moment, with overlong development cycles meaning every game has to be a polished perfect hit and anything risky is discouraged. Yet still, I hoped that, hey, it’s BioWare, surely they weren’t at risk of closure.
And here we are.
