Mass Effect writer Drew Karpyshyn has announced that he recently left Bioware. In his long and varied career, this is actually the second time that he has quit the game developer. Karpyshyn revealed the news via a post on his official site. He initially joined Bioware almost two decades ago, back in the year 2000. He wrote a lot of backstory and dialogue for Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic, as well as being the lead writers for Jade Empire, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.
He then left the company in 2012 to focus on his the Chaos Born trilogy of novels for the next few years. He re-joined Bioware in 2015 to work on the post-release development of Star Wars The Old Republic and the upcoming Anthem. Karpyshyn said that the purpose of leaving Bioware this time is to “pursue a number of other projects, including more original novels, an original sci-fi graphic novel I’m co-creating, and freelance gaming work.”
Fans need not worry as Karpyshyn confirms that he will remain in the games industry. He has joined Fogbank Entertainment and FoxNext Games. FoxNext Games is a games publisher, recently known for releasing the Crisis on the Planet of the Apes VR game and purchasing Cold Iron Studios.
Fogbank Entertainment will be made up of games industry veterans, with whom Karpyshyn mentions that he has worked with in the past. VentureBeat reported that the new developer’s very first game project will be “an episodic narrative game, which will draw from story, character, and location elements based on acclaimed Fox intellectual property as well as original content.” It could possibly be something based on Avatar (with the blue aliens) or even something to do with the Planet of the Apes franchise.
If anyone’s hoping for an inside scoop or secrets from within Bioware or EA now that he’s not associated with them anymore, here’s what Karpyshyn has to say on the subject: “And please don’t ask about any BioWare projects I’ve been working on – just because I’ve left BioWare doesn’t mean I’m going to start blabbing all their secrets.”
Karpyshyn has a lot of great stuff planned for the future. Head on over to his site for more updates on what he’s going to do next.
