BioWare: BioWare Development Through the Ages

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BioWare Celebrates 10 Years of Game Development

"BioWare's vision is to deliver the best story-driven
games in the world."
- Greg Zeschuk & Ray Muzyka
Joint CEO's BioWare

BioWare Development Through the Ages - A (Very Brief) Synopsis

Moore's Law is a phrase coined by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that describes how computer technology tends to double in capability about every 18 months. Imagine being able to read twice as fast every couple of years, or to be double-quick with the joystick every few months! This observation has proven mostly true with the graphic and storage technologies used for our games. The figures below describe how amazingly fast technology has evolved for the games we've developed over the past 10 years.

1996: Shattered Steel
Small development team, under 15 people at peak Average model was under 100 polygons Fit on one CD
1998: Baldur's Gate
Larger team - peaked at close to 60 people Another transition, from 32 bit DOS to Windows 95 Native Windows 95 app Massive amounts of voice-over recording and dialogue
2000: MDK2
Moderate-sized team of around 20 people, peaked at over 30 Sega Dreamcast and PC co-development Average model was 700 polygons Powerful particle and effects system
2002: Neverwinter Nights
Larger team of 75 people at peak Part-based characters composed of thousands of component parts, yielding billions of possible character combinations Needed three CDs
2003: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Large team peaking at around 80 people Xbox and PC co-development Average character 2000 polygons Integrated lip-synch system
2005: Jade Empire
Team peaked at over 100 people (105 currently) Developed for Xbox Average character 6000 polygons Motion capture used for all animation

BioWare Development Through the Ages - A (Very Brief) Synopsis

1996: Shattered Steel

1998: Baldur's Gate

2000: MDK2

2002: Neverwinter Nights

2003: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

2005: Jade Empire