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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. The company 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.
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 the company with an offer. A
publishing deal for Shattered Steel was eventually signed with Interplay
Entertainment. Brent Oster and Trent Oster left BioWare at that time to form
Pyrotek Studios, which continued developing Shattered Steel but broke up a year
later, with Oster returning to BioWare to finish the game. 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.3
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.3
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.4
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.3 MDK 2 was released on
PC, Dreamcast, and eventually PlayStation 2, offering BioWare their first taste
of developing games for consoles.4 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.On September 18, 2012, the next day after the
official announcement of the third Dragon Age title,17 both Ray Muzyka and Greg
Zeschuk, two of the remaining co-founders of BioWare, simultaneously announced
they will be retiring from the gaming industry.1819 After almost a year without
a formal head, EA appointed Matthew Bromberg the group general manager of the
BioWare label on September 9, 2013. Former CEO and president of Major League
Gaming, Bromberg worked as the general manager of BioWare Austin since 2012;
after his promotion, Jeff Hickman took over as the general manager in Austin.
Aaryn Flynn remains in charge of BioWare Canada (Edmonton and Montreal) and Jon
Van Caneghem, the head of Victory Games and Waystone Studio (also parts of the
BioWare label).
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