A great deal has changed in the ten years since BioWare started to make world-class games. The games industry has become a big, big business, and the process of developing quality games for the increasingly savvy consumer has forced game companies to evolve to meet those demands. BioWare has changed to meet the requirements of today's game player, the games business, and the changing needs of the talented people at BioWare who make the games themselves. We spoke with some of the original members of the BioWare team about the early days of BioWare, their decade of experience, and where the games industry might be headed. This week, Joint-CEOs Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, Director of Design James Ohlen, and Producer/Project Director Scott Greig share their experiences.

Ray Muzyka: Joint-CEO of BioWare

For you, when did BioWare become an official 'game developer'?

Ray: We keep striving to make each game we release better than the previous, so last I checked, we're hoping to become "official" sometime in the near future :) Our core values are quality in our products and quality in our workplace, in a context of humility and integrity, and we always try to think of ways we can improve on what we've done in the past.

In many ways, I still have trouble believing that I'm actually working at my dream job making video games. I often reflect on how lucky I am to work with such smart, creative, hardworking, and passionate people at BioWare, and to be able to travel to conferences like DICE, E3, TGS, and GDC, and meet my idols in the video game industry.

When did work on Baldur's Gate start and how did you jump from Shattered Steel to a hardcore roleplaying game?

Ray: We started work on Baldur's Gate in late 1995, mid-way through Shattered Steel (which released in October, 1996). Greg and I had always been huge fans of roleplaying games - we played them all through medical school - and Baldur's Gate emerged from the idea of a game that was originally called Battleground: Infinity, which was an idea we developed with a bunch of people at BioWare. We pitched the idea of Battleground: Infinity to a number of publishers, including Interplay, and they liked our demo so much they suggested we consider the AD&D license and make the first D&D RPG in quite a few years. We eagerly accepted, and Baldur's Gate was the result. It was a lot of fun to develop this monster RPG (over 100 hours in length), and one interesting anecdote from Baldur's Gate is that no one who worked on that game (peak team size was something like 60 people) had ever before made a video game of any kind before! Another anecdote from Baldur's Gate: the reason the engine for the game was called the BioWare Infinity Engine was (you guessed it!) because of Battleground: Infinity....

What was the scariest part of moving from the medical field to game development?

Ray: To be honest, it wasn't scary, mainly because we didn't really think about the transition very much. Greg and I just decided one day at lunch in late 1994 to form BioWare, and our decision to form the company and change careers from medical doctors to entrepreneurs took the course of about an hour! After a bit of research and planning, we incorporated the company in February 1995 (our third founding partner at BioWare, Aug Yip, left the company to return to medical practice in mid-1997; we also had support on our first game, Shattered Steel, from a bunch of great folks at a partner company called Pyroteck). Video games have always been the main hobby for both Greg and me, as well as most of the employees at BioWare. Video games are something we're pretty passionate about as a company, so it's easy to focus on how we can improve in the future and put aside the unknowns.

How has game development changed in the last ten years and where do you see it going?

Ray: Video game development has changed a lot over the past ten years as our industry continues to mature. Part of this maturation relates to the increasing sophistication of our fans. They demand quality in their games and we are continually striving to improve our art form at BioWare to meet our fans' needs. Another factor in the maturation of the industry relates to increasingly complex content in our games, which has resulted in larger teams and requires developers and publishers to develop increasingly sophisticated processes to manage the larger content requirements and team sizes. For example, the team on BioWare's next title, the martial arts action-RPG Jade Empire, is over 105 people, and BioWare as a whole is now close to 230 people and still growing!

Finally, most likely the industry will not continue to grow at the rate it has grown for the last 25 years. As the number of consumers playing video games starts to reach a steady state in the next few years, the market becomes more 'saturated' and the need for communities of like-minded fans such as the BioWare community (now 2.4 million strong as of February 2005) become more and more important to developers like BioWare as we launch initiatives like the BioWare store. For BioWare, our core vision is one where we strive to deliver the best story-driven games in the world, with memorable stories and characters driving the flow of our games, in a context of our core values - quality in our products and quality of our workplace - while always remaining humble and acting with integrity to our customers and fans, business partners, and employees.

Greg Zeschuk: Joint-CEO of BioWare

There are rumors that the company started in your basement. Is this true and what was that like?

Greg: It is true that BioWare did have its origins in the basement of my house. I probably look back more fondly on the time spent in my basement than Ray as there were a few places in which he could easily knock his head against the ceiling (happily I have about a half-inch of clearance). I can't say that we did a lot of major strategic planning in our basement lair, but we did learn a fair amount about the business and development in general.

Is the BioWare of today what you imagined ten years ago?

Greg: We really didn't have a specific plan on how BioWare would grow as a company; we simply wanted to make good games and have a lot of fun doing it. Our company values of quality in our products and quality in the workplace in a context of humility and integrity have remained the same, but the company has certainly grown and changed over the last decade. If you told us ten years ago that we would be making some of the biggest and best games of the industry we'd be flabbergasted! In fact, at that time, if you told us we'd even be able to successfully build one game we would have been surprised! We've been very fortunate to attract an exceptionally talented group of people here that have really driven BioWare's success.

How did BioWare become involved with the MDK series?

Greg: We were looking at doing another action-oriented game after Shattered Steel, and Brian Fargo from Interplay mentioned to Ray that a sequel to MDK might be available. We were all big fans of the game and thought it might be a lot of fun to work on, as well as being a good technical challenge as it would lead on the Dreamcast (BioWare's first console game). The rest is history!

What has changed in the last ten years in terms of how a game goes from concept to completion?

Greg: Both the scale of development and the amount of pre-planning required to make a game has increased exponentially in the last ten years. The whole complexion of the industry has also changed from a very niche industry with a lot of informal relationships to a very high profile big business with a lot of really big players.

James Ohlen: Director of Design for BioWare

What was the first project you worked on at BioWare?

James: While I did provide some writing and testing for Shattered Steel, the work only amounted to a couple of weeks of effort. Baldur's Gate was the first project that I worked on full time.

What are some key things you have learned for making great games in your years in the game industry?

James: If you want to make a great game you need to have good people. BioWare has some of the best writers and designers in the industry and because of that my job is pretty easy.

As the Director of Design for BioWare, what part of your work remains a constant challenge despite long experience and proven success?

James: Coming up with cool non-linear stories is always going to be difficult. Not only do you have to worry about creating a story that the player will find immersive and surprising, but you also have to worry about giving him enough choices so that he feels that he has control.

What the heck does "Squid Lips" refer to?

James: Greg Zeschuk loves to give nicknames that make no sense whatsoever. You'll have to ask him.

Scott Greig: Producer/Project Director of BioWare's Next PC Roleplaying Epic, Dragon Age

You're listed as 'Programming Guru and Advisor' for Shattered Steel. What was your role and how did you get involved with BioWare originally?

Scott: Actually, I wasn't hired to work on Shattered Steel at all. At the time when Shattered Steel was a year from ship, BioWare decided that they needed to start up a new team to work on what would eventually become Baldur's Gate. I was hired as that team's lead programmer but, as Shattered Steel neared completion, everyone in the company pitched in to make sure it was ready on time. The "Programming Guru and Advisor" title just sounded better than "Guy who did miscellaneous art and programming bits while the core team worked on the important stuff."

Can you name some highlights of your long career in game development?

Scott: Have I had a 'long' career in game development? Let's see, I have been working at BioWare for nearly ten years, which works out to be nearly a quarter of my life. And that doesn't include all the years I tinkered around making games on my own. Yep, I feel old now, thanks. Being the lead programmer on both Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights are certainly high marks, but I am also proud of the small contributions that I have made to all of our games. One of the things that I love about BioWare is that everyone in the company is invited to be involved and give feedback on all of our games. This is just one of the things that I think makes both BioWare and its games special.

Has the nature of being a programmer in the games business changed since you began?

Scott: Again, with the age thing! Well back in my day, we didn't have fancy keyboards and monitors. We chiseled our code onto rock tablets.... Ok, seriously, when I started, the industry was just beginning to get away from the "hacker in basement" mentality. Over the last decade, professionalism and software engineering techniques have gone from being rarities to the common practice. The other big change is the specialization of roles. Baldur's Gate had for its time, a huge programming team: seven. Now, programming teams of thirty are common with really large teams having over eighty. By its very nature, this forces a level of specialization that was unheard of when I started.

You are the Producer of BioWare's next PC roleplaying game Dragon Age. What lessons have you learned from previous project Producers such as Ray, Greg, and Trent to help you manage such a large project?

Scott: I can't begin to touch on the amount of knowledge and experience that I have learned, not just from Ray, Greg and Trent, but from all of the BioWare employees that I have worked with. Trent and I shared an office for what seemed like years, and we got to the point where we were finishing each other's sentences. That was really weird, but it does indicate how BioWare projects are more of a group effort, rather vision of a single individual. When I was the lead programmer on both Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, I was, as were all the leads, heavily involved in all aspects of the game. Now that I am the Project Director on Dragon Age, my role hasn't changed so much as being rebalanced. I do more production work, but the actual management still requires the support of the project's very talented leads.

What challenges will game developers face in the next ten years?

Scott: There are two really. First is content. Our technology allows us to create more and more detailed content. The players love this, but it is costing ever-increasing time to create. Balancing the need for more content with the rising costs of creating this content is the primary challenge of the next decade. The second issue is the changing audience. This is not a new issue as the audience now is dramatically different from the one ten years ago. We just have to keep in mind that the audience will continue to change and we as developers have to change with them.

Read part 2 that features chats with Project Director of the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) and Neverwinter Nights Producer Trent Oster, Senior Artist Mike Sass, Director of Art David Hibbeln, Dragon Age Art Director Dean Anderson, and Designer John Winski.

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