Mythic, BioWare under one umbrella, Jacobs out

According to this Gamasutra story, Electronic Arts is consolidating its BioWare and Mythic Entertainment studios into a single group to be headed by BioWare’s founders. Mythic’s general manager and co-founder, Mark Jacobs, has reportedly left the company. BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka will serve as the new unit’s Group General Manager, while Greg Zeschuk has been named chief creative officer. Mythic co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Rob Denton has been named general manager.

According to the report, companies’ structures, development team and personnel will change as each team works on various projects including Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars The Old Republic. The only real change, apparently, is that studio heads will now report to Muzyka. What happens after these projects are complete is unknown, and how this changes development teams handling products like Warhammer Online and Ultima Online is also up in the air. One would assume the maintenance of these games would be the responsibility of Denton.

Mythic Gives Credit Where It Is Due

In a Develop Magazine article, Mythic Entertainment CEO Mark Jacobs responded to criticism by IGDA chairperson Jennifer MacLean over not giving credit to some developers in Warhammer Online and some of its past games. Jacobs announced a new crediting policy that will properly credit those past and present Mythic employees who may have been left out by putting them online in a database. Manual and game credits will still be reserved for launch teams, but Mythic says it will go out of its way to disseminate omitted credits to credit and history website and the IGDA.

Jacobs admits that this was the right thing to do, but points out on his blog that he had been working on and talking about this topic well before the IGDA chair sent out an action alert about it in the August IGDA newsletter. After learning of this, MacLean apologized for jumping the gun.
This new policy is a step in the right direction for Mythic, but it’s hard to understand why they can’t, in the future add these extra names in the in-game credits. It’s not like two or three more scrolling pages are going to make a difference. That point aside, good for Mythic to take this bull by the horns.
An interesting side note to this story is a comment left by an anonymous poster who hinted that he or she had once worked at EA Chertsey and was not properly credited for several games:

“maybe EA Chertsey will do the same - I should be on the credits for Shogun: Mongol Invasion, Harry Potter: Chamber of secrets and I was more involved in 007 Nightfire, the Sims and Medal Of Honor than some of the folk that are on the credits…I am on the roll for for F1-2002, but I didnt get to go on the jolly to Silverstone - my boss and the sysadmin blagged that one. If I had known then…aint hindsight wonderful?”

Perhaps Mythic can drop a note to corporate and let them know that this policy should be adopted company-wide.

Source: Develop Magazine