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Examiner Explainer: The new EA MMO/RPG group
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There seem to be a few people confused by the announcement out of EA yesterday, in terms of what this "MMO/RPG" group was all about. This despite everyone getting the same boilerplate for their announcement.
It is not a merger. I understand how it got reported that way, though. Mainly it has to do with people being lazy, with a bonus side effect of "reporters" writing "stories" from "sources" who don't work at the company and didn't know any of the principle characters if/when they did work at the company.
EA is a company that is fond of having a cleanly delineated hierarchy. Compared to EA, the military has no respect for the chain of command. They want all similar things grouped into one division, and have that division headed up by someone who has the Responsibility for all of the products and people so grouped.
If EA sold fruit, they would have a Vice President of Citrus, and bananas would have their own VP. If the fruit selling version of EA acquired a studio that sold kumquats, that studio would be assigned to the VP of Citrus, even though there is room for debate as to whether or not kumquats are "citrus" or something else entirely. At EA, they are darn well close enough to citrus and until there's been a billion sold, they aren't going to get to be their own division.
At any rate, as many of you know, I worked at Mythic when Mythic was acquired by EA. When that acquisition was complete, all of the MMO products (UO, Sims Online) at EA were put into a group with Mythic's products, with Mythic's studio head (Mark Jacobs) in charge of them all.
When Bioware was acquired, they were not put under Mythic's umbrella. ("Two houses, both alike in dignity.")
It was a matter of time before EA wanted all the citrus fruits, AND the kumquats, under one person's leadership. But Bioware and Mythic have not merged.
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