Elracor Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 (edited) Personally, I think the most likeliest thing is that they've moved to work on SWTOR and formed a new department, either to create new content separate from the other teams or a new expansion. Given how they had to pull the plug on Shadow Realms,... ...Like you say, them working on a Mass Effect/Dragonage game is also unlikely if they stay in Austin and don't move to another city. Except Dragon Age work could be just like your SWTOR example of working on seperate content as the DAI work is 'enhancements' rather than a unreleased game like ME4. What 'enhancements' exactly consists of is not described, but surely tasks like adding new weapons/armor/mounts/areas for coming DLCs and/or fixing bugs would be doable as a seperate unit? I highly doubt the upper management will so quickly give them permission to start working on another brand new IP... Why not? Surely they won't be throwing tons of people into new IPs, but a few (lead) writers/gameplay designers to flesh out general storyline and gameplay concepts (to see if there's potential for a decent game) wouldn't be unthinkable? Edited February 14, 2015 by MFollin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Projawa Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 (edited) It's possible they told the Shadowrealms team that those of you who want to move to the other offices can work on ME4 or Dragon Age. Otherwise you'll have to quit. I notice William Wallace and Dallas Dickinson are no longer at BW. Who knows how many others quit. There was no mention in Hickman's post of merging any Shadowrealms members back into the TOR team. Edited February 14, 2015 by Projawa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerba Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 (edited) Now Movember.com is the last place I'd expect to find news for Shadow Realms/Bioware, but take a look at this. Looks like there was a company event at EA where they encouraged their employees to take part in Movember (#eamovember): EA AUSTIN: DOMAINEA AUSTIN - PARMER This is direct confirmation that Bioware Austin has two studio locations, with separate teams working at each location. Obviously, Domain stands for The Domain, a shopping center in Austin, and is close to the location of the original studio where SWTOR gets developed, note how Musco and Tait are part of this team. Parmer is a modern business center in Austin; it would make sense that their new building is located there: probably fast Internet, cheap rent and a newly built house with all modern technologies. Interestingly enough, Gabe Amatangelo, a developer who switched from SWTOR to Shadow Realms, is part of the old Domain team. Either he still has a lot of connections to that team, or he got switched back to SWTOR. I can't find any recent information whether he is still working for Bioware, so hard to tell. Also check out the Twitter account from this developer on the Parmer team: https://twitter.com/sn0weater/with_replies Always nice to see people in the company spirit and actually playing games in their free time. But anyway, we are not supposed to stalk developers, so I'm going to stop here, but this explains a lot to me, gonna have to think about it for a while though. Edited February 16, 2015 by Jerba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerba Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 (edited) I still can't get over the fact that this news was out there for months and I never found it until today... Google Maps probably also had it for quite a while. Anyway, now Bioware Austin shines in a whole new light of course. To the best of my knowledge, the SWTOR studio is an old warehouse that they purchased and refitted for game development. On the livestreams, they constantly complained about the building, like how long they have to walk because it is just a stretched out building with no floors/staircases, that most rooms don't have a window and how loud it gets when it rains. It now must be 5 to 8 years since they moved in, so it will probably show some wear and things start to break as well. The new studio is seven minutes away by car, and is very likely rented. From the livestreams, we know that they don't have a canteen and always have to drive somewhere else to eat during lunch break, so they are certainly not glued to their workplace and it is plausible that cross-game teams like the Community Team would also just drive to the other studio in the middle of the day whenever something comes up. Given that they could suddenly work in a very modern building must also have played some part why some developers moved to Shadow Realms, who wouldn't say no to such an opportunity? What remains to be seen is what happens to the Parmer team. If what we guessed is true and they were indeed let go, it would be a shame financial-wise. To save money, they probably picked a long-running rent that can't be terminated at a month's notice, so they'd lose money if they just stopped using that building. Unless of course their contract expired just this month, which would have been the perfect reason to shut down Shadow Realms at the same time. Otherwise, it may even happen that the SWTOR team moves into the new building and they sell off the old warehouse. Of course, we know too little about their studio to assess how much it takes to move their studio to a new location, but I guess it would be possible if they think it is worth it. Anyway, just my two cents because I really like figuring this stuff out. Let's see what the future holds. Edited February 16, 2015 by Jerba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeNaCe-NZ Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 You could just go knock on the door and ask for a tour? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TX_Angel Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 You could just go knock on the door and ask for a tour? I've actually debated that, but it is a 3 hour drive to their office... and they likely would say no, so a waste of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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