Head SW-TOR-team leaves BioWare

Daniel Erickson, lead designer of Star Wars: The Old Republic, has left BioWare. He has no reason for his departure, but is still looking for a new job. His departure follows that of the two directors.

Erickson makes his departure from BioWare on Twitter. He was at the studio, serving as lead designer and was in charge of the team behind the mmog Star Wars: The Old Republic. Via Twitter search Erickson for a new job. “As part of my leaving BioWare to start an official Twitter account for job hunt and design ideas to post”. A reason for his departure, does he not. Erickson gets less than a month later on than Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, the duo that, in 1995, the studio founded. The two leave the games industry.

Star Wars: The Old Republic was not the success that BioWare and Electronic Arts, parent company of the studio, had hoped. The mmog was published in december 2011, and EA sold over 2 million copies. The number of paying players dropped quickly. In August had the publisher to disclose that the number of paying players to well under a million was down. As a result of the decrease, the publisher has decided the game is free to play to make a change in november takes effect.

Erickson via his Twitter account not in on the plan with SW-TOR, and also the design ideas are still far to search. He gives commentary on the games industry, and has criticized the tendency of publishers and developers to all use the same plans to develop. “If 90% of the sector exactly says the same thing (social, mobile, F2P), a large number of people race to lose.”