Mythic Entertainment Drops the B-Word

[Andy Chalk]

Mythic Entertainment Drops the B-Word

BioWare Mythic is once again just Mythic Entertainment.

Interworld Productions begat Mythic Entertainment, which begat EA Mythic, which begat BioWare Mythic. And now we're right back where we started (almost) as BioWare Mythic has dropped the prefix and is once again known as Mythic Entertainment.

"In the wake of a new focus our studio has recently changed its name from BioWare Mythic to Mythic," Community Manager Kai Schober announced. "Everything else stays the same - our passionate teams will continue to support and develop our existing titles as well as working on some new and exciting projects."

Schober didn't get into what the studio is now focusing on, but the August [http://mythicentertainment.com/] that the company was "pivoting a little bit harder towards mobile."

It probably doesn't mean anything from a practical perspective, but doomsayers may also see the change as further diminishing of the BioWare brand. The one-time king of the RPG hill has suffered numerous setbacks over the past year, including some ugly fan responses to Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 and the loss of numerous key executives, including co-founders [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119650-BioWare-Co-Founders-Retire] Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka.

Source: Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning [http://ageofreckoning.warhammeronline.com/article/BioWare-Mythic-now-known-Mythic]


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[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Well it looks like EA is getting bored of playing with Bioware's corpse and is finally getting around to picking up the pieces.

Seriously it was only two years ago they got the branded Bioware and now they are dumping it?

(Yes, I'm one of those doom-sayers. I wish I wasn't but things don't look good.)

 

[Fappy]

Bioware as a brand has been beaten into the ground recently. Distancing themselves from that was a smart move.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I'm fairly certain (as one can be looking in from the outside) that this represents Bioware losing influence within EA, likely as a direct result of the Doctors leaving. Not really sure that I care anymore. Obsidian has finally decided to stop playing with other companies' leavings and make their own IP, so I'm good either way.

EDIT: well there was Alpha Protocol... maybe I should say that they are getting the chance to prove one way or another whether or not they can put out a polished product when they don't have a publisher hamstringing them.

 

[GoddyofAus]

This is the slippery slope. Not wanting to be associated with the name "Bioware" can only mean bad news.

 

[Starke]

I guess we're back to being able to glibly say that Bioware never worked on an MMO before TOR...

 

[Sylveria]

Not surprising since Bioware as a brand name is about as cancerous as Square Enix is these days.

 

[Fell]

Maybe they shouldnt have whored it out then.

 

[Extragorey]

All I see on this thread is "BioWare has been taking a lot of flak recently, so dropping their name from a title must mean the company wants to distance themselves from BioWare." (In slightly different words)

It's the obvious conclusion, true. But I hate obvious conclusions. I think it's just as likely that Mythic Entertainment (who I've never even heard of before, for the record) decided they wanted to make a name for themselves instead of siphoning off the fame of another company.

 

[Azuaron]

Every time I see Bioware in the news anymore I just get depressed.

I mean, no one writes as well as Bioware can.* And now the co-founders have left and they keep talking about how "big" Dragon Age III is going to be. Know how well "big" games are usually written? Terribly.

While I know I'm in the minority on this, Dragon Age II was a better game than Origins because it was better written. Yes, the combat was less tactical. Yes, that you're repeating the same areas over and over again gets stale immediately (though, it is kind of interesting to think about those areas as Varrick saying, "Then we entered some caves and killed some stuff. Moving on..." But the story and characters were way, way better than Origins, and Origins was already great.

And now they're yelling "Bigger!" as if a larger territory to cover is going to make people like it more. In the end, I think they're going to end up diluting the writing and continuing to make the same mistakes with combat and environments that they did in DAII.

I hope I'm wrong.

*As well as Bioware can. Bioware can also write some terrible crap, but they usually write better than anyone else.

 

[Artemis923]

So we've gone from Baldur's Gate to this.

EA, you sure know how to kill a dream.

 

[Fat Hippo]

All I see on this thread is "BioWare has been taking a lot of flak recently, so dropping their name from a title must mean the company wants to distance themselves from BioWare." (In slightly different words)

It's the obvious conclusion, true. But I hate obvious conclusions. I think it's just as likely that Mythic Entertainment (who I've never even heard of before, for the record) decided they wanted to make a name for themselves instead of siphoning off the fame of another company.

I very much doubt this has anything to do with what anyone at Mythic wanted. This comes straight from the great EA overlords, who are apparently losing trust in the name "Bioware" as an automatic game seller. That's one theory, anyway, but we can speculate till the cows come home.

On another note: why does anyone still sell their company to EA? It's the same story, every damn time. They've already killed Origin, Bullfrog, Westwood and Pandemic! What's one more developer on their list?

 

[LiquidGrape]

Yawn. Same old "BioWare is little more than a glorified shell of its former self" whinging.

I vehemently stick to my guns and say DA2 was their most creative title since Jade Empire. Looking forward to the next game.

 

[Stopdoor]

I find this interesting, because if anyone remembers when the new Command & Conquer was announced last year, it was by "Bioware Victory", a "new Bioware studio". Pretty much being the most nonsensical branding ever.

And I notice now they're just referred to as Victory Games. So this isn't just a single case, EA seems to be backtracking on their Bioware exploitation.

 

[WabbitTwacks]

Every time I see Bioware in the news anymore I just get depressed.

I mean, no one writes as well as Bioware can.* And now the co-founders have left and they keep talking about how "big" Dragon Age III is going to be. Know how well "big" games are usually written? Terribly.

While I know I'm in the minority on this, Dragon Age II was a better game than Origins because it was better written. Yes, the combat was less tactical. Yes, that you're repeating the same areas over and over again gets stale immediately (though, it is kind of interesting to think about those areas as Varrick saying, "Then we entered some caves and killed some stuff. Moving on..." But the story and characters were way, way better than Origins, and Origins was already great.

And now they're yelling "Bigger!" as if a larger territory to cover is going to make people like it more. In the end, I think they're going to end up diluting the writing and continuing to make the same mistakes with combat and environments that they did in DAII.

I hope I'm wrong.

*As well as Bioware can. Bioware can also write some terrible crap, but they usually write better than anyone else.

The combat was not less tactical if you played on higher difficulties. You had to use combos a lot. But I agree if you are talking about the easy/normal (whichever that was) difficulty, where you could just control your character and let the AI do everything else with your team.
I also think that DA2 was better story-wise and mechanics-wise than origins. Let's forget about the reused dungeons and the ending that just proved that all mages are just abominations (why did I try to help them anyway? Not gonna trust a single mage in DA universe again). Ignoring that it was pretty good (I guess all you need is just one or to mistakes and the whole game is considered bad no matter how good the rest of it was, but well...). I actually liked the more personal story a lot better than the usual chosen-one-has-to-save-the-world-from-dragon-or-something story.

 

[4RM3D]

B-Word...?

Bastard? *****?

Oh, it's Bioware...

 

[gardian06]

Was I the only one who thought that the tittle "Mythic Entertainment Drops the B-Word" was going to be talking about "hey see this _____ studio over here well they ended up calling somebody a *****, and now we are calling them out on it"?

either way it is still just a matter of time until Bioware becomes just a name on a box. I am going to bet 8 months. When does Mass Effect 4, or Dragon Age 3 come out because I might want to change it to 2 months past the first one of those releases.

I still weep every so often for Westwood. EA just stop using the name to remind us what Command and Conquer used to be.

 

[T'Generalissimo]

The optimistic way of looking at this is that EA finally realised that branding unrelated studios with the name of their flagship studio is fucking retarded. It's not the realistic way of looking at it unfortunately, but it's there if you want to try to put a postive spin on this.