EA2D Becomes Bioware San Francisco

To Gamasutra, EA confirmed Friday that their 2D studio, EA2D, has been renamed Bioware San Francisco. The studio has developed titles such as Dragon Age Journeys and Dragon Age Legends, flash games that were released in the pre-launch days of Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 respectively. Despite its fairly humble history in game-making, the studio managed to attract Soren Johnson, formerly with Firaxis, who worked on Legends.

This was confirmed just a day after EA announced major organizational changes at the company, as several high ranking executives received new positions, and Bioware became it’s own label, after having been a part of the EA label ever since the company was acquired in 2007. In addition, casual game developer, PopCap (Peggle), will be a part of the EA Interactive business, joining other casual and mobile game developers such as Playfish.

With the announcement of Bioware San Francisco it smells like EA is planning a greater move into the casual, and most importantly, Facebook market, with John Riccitiello stating that “We’re focusing on building our intellectual properties/franchises into year-round business”. And who can really blame them for doing so? In a gaming world where marketing and branding becomes increasingly important, it is of the essence that you build up some hype around it. Releasing Facebook games and the likes which promise bonuses in the full game is one way of doing so.

Dragon Age Legends