Mythic employees shocked at Mark Jacobs' departure

by Tracey John on Jun 24th 2009 3:00PM

Fantasy, Interviews, MMO industry, Warhammer Online, Massively Interviews

Mythic employees were surprised by their boss' departure, sources told me today.

I spoke with a former employee, who asked to remain anonymous, about what they and their old co-workers thought regarding today's announcement that Mark Jacobs, the vice president and general manager of EA Mythic, will be leaving the company due to a new partnership with BioWare.

"People are shocked and in disbelief about Mark leaving," said the former staffer. "But they're also excited to be working with BioWare. I can't even fathom Mark leaving a company he loved so much, it was his life. Personally, I can't see that this is voluntary in any shape or form."

In the official announcement on the Warhammer Online website, it stated that Ray Muzyka, co-founder and general manager of BioWare will become the group general manager of EA's newly formed RPG/MMO studio group that includes both Mythic and BioWare.

Rob Denton, who co-founded Mythic with Jacobs in 1995, will move from his COO position to become Mythic's general manager reporting to Muzyka.

BioWare's other co-founder Greg Zeschuk will become the new RPG/MMO studio group's creative officer. However, it's unclear what this move means for Mythic's current creative director Paul Barnett, who was recently at E3 hyping up all of EA's games.

"Will he move up in the EA structure? That does raise some questions," my source said.

As for the rest of the staff at Mythic, the former employee had heard from within the company that they were told about the structural changes early this morning in small groups. They were assured that no one was losing their jobs and the studios were not converging. According to our source, the entire 300-person company is being taken out to a movie theater, something that Jacobs used to do several times a year, where Muzyka will address them this afternoon.

"Is anyone freaking out? Actually, no," they said. "I guess it was also because [Jacobs] has been on sabbatical for over a month. No one had seen him in a long time, so people already had it in their minds that he was probably going away."

The former employee wanted to clarify that they didn't have an ax to grind; they had left Mythic on amicable terms. And though they said that most employees had very little interaction with Jacobs, they thought that most people liked the guy.

"When they had to lay off all those people, Mark was visibly upset that he even had to let one person go," said my source. "I can't imagine anyone saying anything bad about Mark. He mostly stayed up on the eighth floor and did his own thing in his office, but he had a vision for the way [Warhammer Online] could be and he definitely follows his vision."

I asked if Jacobs' departure might have anything to do with Warhammer Online's subscriber numbers. EA announced that the game had 300,000 subscribers earlier this year. While the number is still impressive for a new MMO, the number was below EA's expectations and down from 500,000 at launch.

"The numbers aren't that bad, and last I heard the numbers were back on the rise," they revealed. "If you get half a million subscriptions out of it, you're making your money back. I know the game was making money."

In the end, my source thought this move would be the best for people working at both companies. "Bioware has a track record of really good launched titles, and Mythic has track record of MMO experience," they explained. "And I know there's a lot of people at Mythic that would really look forward to working on [BioWare's upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic]. People at Mythic have been working on MMOs for years and could add muscle to it, they could add really cool things to [BioWare's] MMO."

My source added, "I don't know how [Jacobs' leaving] affects the vision of the other projects they're working on, but Mythic will continue to go on without their fearless leader is probably an accurate assessment."

Tags: bioware, electronic-arts, featured, mark-jacobs, mythic-entertainment

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 3:08PM Lethality said

Hopefully this does not negatively impact Bioware. Mythic is like a boat anchor.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 3:36PM (Unverified) said

So true - Mythic can make games that never get anywhere for years and years and years. Hopefully getting rid of this guy keeps Bioware from following the pattern.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 3:47PM Keen and Graev said

Maybe you're not old enough to remember one of the best faction based PvP games ever made: Dark Age of Camelot.

That game went places for years and years. Yes, it saw development mistakes. Yes, it's like 7 years old and fading out. But get a clue if you think Mythic neverm ade a game that went places. They defined a very clear part of this industry with that game.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 4:34PM CCon99 said

I think that was one of the biggest downfalls of WAR's failures, many people expected WAR to be a next gen DAoC set in the Warhammer Universe. Clearly people wanted it to be a huge hit, but what they wound up delivering was RvR that was a large step backward from DAoC and a game that was closer in resembling WoW, then something new and innovative.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 4:43PM Lethality said

Keen - guaranteed I'm older than you. Guaranteed I have more industry experience than you.

The success of DAoC was by accident, not design. Similar to musical one-hit wonders, sometimes things come together with the right chemistry at the right time. But you don't have enough talent or intelligence to do it again (see: Steve Wozniak).

Mark Jacobs is the same way. Dumb luck fumbled him into success. The rest is history, and now it really is.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 10:55PM Keen and Graev said

Let's not get into a pissing match - one in which you would lose. I wasn't even speaking to you, but to the comment above mine addressing the single statement that Mythic makes games that never get anywhere. That statement is simply ignorant and false.

If you're defending such a statement with "it was luck", then you're grasping at straws. By such standards anyone who is successful is lucky. Yeah, okay. How about no? How about DAOC was designed very well and it showed.

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 7:34AM Jediblues said

Sure DAoC was moderately successful.

But let's be honest here. Imperator never saw the light of day, years of time and money doen the toilet. Warhammer was a buggy, unfinished, unpolished game.

One moderate hit and 2 giant misses is not my idea of a successful MMO team.

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 4:16PM Crode said

Lethality you are incorrect about DAoC being all luck. It has better 'meaningful' PvP than nearly every game out there. If DAoC was all luck then I guess WoW was all luck too.

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 12:38PM (Unverified) said

Could be worse, MJ could've stayed and decided to share his ideas with the TOR team...

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 3:31PM (Unverified) said

I'm surprised anyone is surprised.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 3:49PM Triskelion said

Please, don't let anyone from Mythic even come within 100 feet of SWtOR.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 3:49PM mjemirzian2 said

On US servers, none of them reach high, and only 2-3 reach medium often. The subs must be extremely disappointing, far lower than 300k at this point.

Inflating the numbers with asian 'F2P' launches is not going to cover up the stench and magnitude of this failure.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 3:52PM jwoelich said

Shame he didn't take Paul Barnett along for the failboat ride into the sunset.

Posted: Jun 24th 2009 3:55PM Triskelion said

If they put Barnett on youtube with videos hyping SWtOR I'm going to vomit blood.

/em Barnett waving his arms in front of a Star Wars logo: It's Star Wars, and light sabers, swoosh, swoosh, stabby, stabby......and droids; beep plop beep plop...