"My son always says I look like a supervillain," James Ohlen says, laughing as he puffs his daily cigar on his porch in Austin, Texas, smoke twirling around his face.
"It's one of the many bad habits that I picked up when I was doing the job. I always told everybody I should never be the head of a studio because it'll kill me. And it nearly killed me. It was six years of nearly killing me."
Ohlen—a BioWare veteran who was the lead designer on Baldur's Gate 2, Knights of the Old Republic, and other beloved games before leaving in 2018—is describing his recent surprise departure from Archetype Entertainment, the studio he co-founded in 2019.
When he left Archetype he hinted at burnout in an X post. Now, he tells me that being both the head of the studio and the creative lead on its debut game, the sci-fi RPG Exodus, was simply too much. "I was running on fumes, and it was hurting my health, and my personal life, and everything. I just needed to step away," he says.
"As a creative you care about everything so much, and then as the head of the studio, you have to be cutting the baby in half all ...
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