BioWare

Type	Division of Electronic Arts
Industry	Computer and video games Interactive entertainment
Founded	Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (1995)
Headquarters	Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Key people	Casey Hudson, Director David Gaider, Writer Ray Muzyka, CEO Greg Zeschuk, Vice-President
Products	Video games (See complete products listing)
Owner(s)	Electronic Arts
Employees	~800 (2010)[1]
Parent	Electronic Arts
Website	bioware.com

BioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts. BioWare specializes in role-playing video games, and became famous for launching highly praised and successful licensed franchises, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. They proceeded to make several other successful games based on original IP: Jade Empire, the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age series. In 2011, BioWare launched their first MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

As of October 2011^[update], the BioWare group consists of six studios: BioWare Edmonton, BioWare Austin, BioWare Mythic, BioWare Montreal, BioWare Ireland,^[2] and BioWare San Francisco (formerly EA2D).^[3] It comprises the RPG/MMO Group within Electronic Arts, with Muzyka, EA Senior VP and the Group General Manager and Zeschuk EA VP and Group Creative Officer of the BioWare Group; co-founder/Doctor Yip left in early 1997 to return to medicine.

Company history[link]

BioWare was established in February 1995 by Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip, who had graduated together from medical school at the University of Alberta.^[4] Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip used video games for recreation and eventually came to the decision of making video games.^[5] Their success in the medical field provided them with the funding they needed to launch their own video game company. To make their first game, they pooled their resources which resulted in capital of $100,000.^[5]

Their first game, Shattered Steel, began its life as a proof-of-concept demo, similar to the MechWarrior games. This demo was submitted to ten publishers, seven of whom returned to Muzyka, Zeschuk, and Yip with an offer. A publishing deal for Shattered Steel was eventually signed with Interplay Entertainment. Pyrotek Studios was contracted to help see the project to completion. BioWare's first game was released the following year. Shattered Steel's release was described by IGN as a "modest success" with "decent sales". Two noteworthy points were the deformable terrain (player weapon damage caused craters in the environment) and zone damage (well-placed gunfire could shoot mounted weapons off enemies). A sequel to Shattered Steel was planned for 1998 but never realized.^[5]

BioWare's founders and staff were keenly interested in both computerized and pen-and-paper variants of role-playing games.Their next development project, therefore, was determined to be an RPG. When Interplay financed "exploratory development", BioWare presented the publishers with a demo called Battleground: Infinity. Interplay suggested that the demonstrated gameplay engine would be well-suited to the Dungeons & Dragons license which it had acquired from SSI. Accordingly, Infinity was reworked in line with the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset.^[5]

This resulted in Baldur's Gate, which witnessed a development cycle of three years. During this time, the three doctors continued to practice medicine. However, in the final years of the project, the demands of development prompted Muzyka and Zeschuck to leave medicine and move into full-time development. Augustine Yip decided to continue with his medical practice. Baldur's Gate sold more than two million copies after its release, nearly matching the sales of Diablo. Following the success of Baldur's Gate, the Infinity Engine was used for the games Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series. The success of Baldur's Gate was followed by an expansion pack for the game: Tales of the Sword Coast.^[6]

At this point, BioWare decided to return to the action genre. The company's initial thought was to develop a sequel to Shattered Steel, but eventually a sequel to MDK from Shiny Entertainment was chosen for development.^[5] MDK 2 was released on PC, Dreamcast, and eventually PlayStation 2, offering BioWare their first taste of developing games for consoles.^[6] MDK 2 drew the same level of praise as its predecessor but, despite the success, BioWare returned to the Baldur's Gate series for their next project.^[5]

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn was released in 2000,^[6] two years after the release of Baldur's Gate.^[5] Baldur's Gate II sold two million copies, matching the sales of the first game in the series. However, the success of both Baldur's Gate II and MDK 2 were not enough to stabilize Interplay financially. The company experienced multiple failures, which eventually led to bankruptcy.^[5] Following Interplay's bankruptcy, BioWare began to work with Infogrames, which was later renamed to Atari.^[6] Neverwinter Nights was originally to be published by Interplay, but the company lost the license of the game to Atari and part of their Dungeons & Dragons license, to BioWare. After selling their D&D license to Atari, BioWare developed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. It had publishing relationships with Interplay Entertainment, Infogrames/Atari, LucasArts, and Microsoft.

The next few years saw a number of changes in BioWare's corporate status. In November 2005, it was announced that BioWare and Pandemic Studios (itself founded by former Activision employees) would be joining forces, with private equity fund Elevation Partners investing in the partnership. On October 11, 2007, however, it was announced that this new partnership (organized as VG Holding Corp) had been bought by Electronic Arts.^[7] BioWare therefore became a unit of EA, but retained its own branding.

In 2007, BioWare released the science fiction RPG Mass Effect. The following year, BioWare released Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood on the Nintendo DS, its first title for a handheld game console. Near the end of 2009, BioWare released the fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Origins, and in January 2010, Mass Effect 2. Recently, EA announced that BioWare would be merged with Mythic Entertainment, another division of EA, so that they could have all of their RPG development in one business unit.

BioWare worked on three more projects. The MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic is based on BioWare's previous contribution to the Star Wars franchise,^[8] and was announced on 21 October 2008, although BioWare had first mentioned an unspecified new collaboration with LucasArts in October the previous year.^[9] The other projects were Dragon Age II, the sequel to Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 3. BioWare is currently working on Dragon Age III, along with an additional project about which no details have yet been revealed.^[10][11][12]

The growth of the RPG/MMO Group as part of Electronic Arts in 2008+ has resulted in three additional studios being added to the BioWare Group outside BioWare's original home base in Edmonton. The first, located in Austin, Texas and headed by industry veterans Gordon Walton and Richard Vogel, was created to work on the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG project. Both the studio and the project were announced on March 13, 2006. On March 2, 2009, BioWare announced it had opened a new studio in Montreal, Quebec to assist with existing projects as necessary.^[13] In 2009 Mythic Entertainment, based in Fairfax, Virginia, became part of the RPG/MMO Group, later being renamed BioWare Mythic in early 2010.

Electronic Arts announced on June 24, 2009, that they are restructuring their RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic Entertainment and BioWare. This newly formed team (now called the BioWare Group) will be led by Ray Muzyka, co-founder and General Manager of BioWare. With this change, Muzyka becomes Group General Manager of the new RPG/MMO studio group. BioWare's other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk, will become Group Creative Officer for the new RPG/MMO studio group. Rob Denton will step up as General Manager of Mythic and report to Muzyka, later becoming Group Operations Officer of the new Group. BioWare's studios remain unchanged and continue to report to Muzyka.^[14]

The company announced that it would be opening up a new customer service office in Galway, Ireland, in 2011.^[15]

The company was also a starting place for other Albertan game developers, such as being the former employer of the HermitWorks Entertainment staff. The group developed the well-received genre mixing game Space Trader, which was developed under an art grant from the Canadian government.

Games[link]

Engines[link]

BioWare created the Infinity Engine, which was used as a core component for development of 2D role-playing video games based on Dungeons & Dragons, such as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. For their game Neverwinter Nights, launched in 2002, BioWare developed the Aurora Engine, the basis for a number of successful 3D RPGs thereafter.

Neverwinter Nights shipped with a number of tools allowing users to create their own role-playing adventures for single and multiplayer online. The tools, using the Aurora Engine, have been adapted to many forms of gameplay and storytelling, with thousands of amateur and professional modules available on various web sites; some released for sale as premium content. Neverwinter Nights was a pioneering example of user-created game content commercially supported and distributed over the internet.

The Odyssey Engine was developed for the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which was based on the Aurora Engine. BioWare has recently developed the Eclipse Engine (a next generation RPG engine) for the game Dragon Age: Origins.

After years of working with licensed content, particularly from the D&D world, BioWare began efforts to develop their own original, independent universes and franchises. Jade Empire was a step in this direction, as are their current projects: the RPG series Mass Effect for Xbox 360 and PC, which utilizes the third version of the Unreal Engine.

BioWare maintained a limited oversight on Obsidian Entertainment's development of Neverwinter Nights 2 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords.

Aurora Engine[link]

The Aurora Engine was the 3D successor to BioWare's earlier, 2D game engine, called the Infinity Engine.^[22] The engine allows for real-time lighting and shadows, as well as surround sound.^[22] The first game released using the Aurora Engine was Neverwinter Nights, and included an accompanying "Aurora toolset" for users to create their own content. The sequel, Neverwinter Nights 2, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, features an updated version of BioWare's engine named the Electron engine. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (from Obsidian Entertainment) use an updated version of the Aurora Engine called the Odyssey Engine. Aurora was also used by CD Projekt RED in their game The Witcher, although the rendering engine was written from scratch.

Third party games using BioWare engines[link]

Infinity Engine:

• Planescape: Torment (1999)
• Icewind Dale (2000)
  • Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter (2001)
  • Icewind Dale: Trials of the Luremaster (2001)
• Icewind Dale II (2002)

Odyssey Engine:

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords (2004)

Electron toolset (based on Aurora Engine):

• Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006)
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (2007)
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (2008)
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate (2009)

Aurora Engine:

• The Witcher (2007)

Controversy[link]

A widely-reported^{[citation needed]} incident involved a player unable to activate his purchased copy of Dragon Age 2, due to being banned from the BioWare forums. BioWare's Stanley Woo replied to the user in support of the ban by pointing to sections 9 and 11 of EA's terms of service, which permits EA to terminate users' access to its online services.^[23] Woo clearly acknowledged that the forum ban can affect access to game content, adding that players should "consider it an added incentive to follow the rules you say you're going to follow."^[24] Technology news website Ars Technica called the incident a "potentially dangerous precedent, where saying something inflammatory about a developer or publisher could result in the company revoking the player's right to play a game he or she lawfully acquired."^[23] When the story was later picked-up by several news websites, EA's Andrew Wong said the entire incident was actually an unforeseen glitch, and that the player's account had been reactivated.^[25]

Awards[link]

In addition to numerous game awards, the company has been awarded with a number of business related awards:

• Profit 100 – Canada's Fastest Growing Companies 2005 (Rank 81)
• In October 2008, BioWare was named one of Alberta's Top Employers by Mediacorp Canada Inc., which was announced by the Calgary Herald^[26] and the Edmonton Journal.^[27][28]

The full list of awards can be found on their web site.^[29]

• Spike TV's 2010 Video Game Awards: Studio Of The Year (2010)
• Hall of Fame induction (2010)^[30]

See also[link]

• Black Isle Studios
• Obsidian Entertainment

References[link]

External links[link]

• BioWare
• BioWare at MobyGames

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Career[link]

Hudson started his career as a technical artist, developing art for video games at Bioware, on many games, including Baldur's Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. He became game director on Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire.

After almost 7 years at Bioware, Casey and his team started working on an all-new IP: Mass Effect. On GameInformer^[1], he stated that after doing some licensed projects, his employer should make some brand new content for its fans. He then became Executive Producer on this new franchise. The Mass Effect series became a critical and commercial success, however the ending of the series caused a controversy as many fans felt the end product did not live up to its many promises. Many fans were angry over "lack of closure" to the series' story, and soon after the game's launch, Hudson announced an "Extended Cut" DLC to be released in Summer 2012.

Games[link]

• MDK 2 (2000)
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
• Neverwinter Nights (2002)
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003)
• Jade Empire (2005)
• Mass Effect (2007)
• Mass Effect 2 (2010)
• Mass Effect 3 (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Casey Hudson