BioWare Online Store Interview

By Jay Watamaniuk November 10, 2004

The doors opened November 10th to BioWare's Online Store! This is a huge new initiative for BioWare that comes from our commitment to this gaming community. Sporting fresh new adventures for Neverwinter Nights fans to explore is only the beginning of what fans can expect! We caught up with BioWare joint CEO Ray Muzyka, Marketing Director Craig Priddle, Live Team Lead Designer Rob Bartel, Client Care Specialist Jason Barlow, and yours truly to answer a few questions about the BioWare Online Store.

Why did you want to start an online store?

Ray: We've been building the online community at BioWare since 1996-1997 when we were talking with fans online about Baldur's Gate. The online community at BioWare began in earnest in 2000-2001 with Neverwinter Nights and has built steadily since then until now, with close to 2.2 million registered user accounts online. We see the online store as a natural extension of the online community work we've been doing for close to a decade now. By offering premium modules and other products in the future, we're offering our fans the opportunity to get great story and character-based games right from the source, BioWare, at store.bioware.com.

How do BioWare's publishers and retail partners factor into all of this? Are they involved?

Ray: Definitely. We plan to continue supporting our retail partners and publishers by distributing our games via the retail channels - this is a critical part of our business and many of our fans like to buy their games from stores. As we start our store this month, we're simply providing an alternative for our fans to quickly obtain high quality content - we'll continue to expand the types, size, and variety of content we sell online as we learn what kinds of content our fans in the BioWare Community at www.bioware.com want to purchase.

Atari, the publisher of Neverwinter Nights, is fully supportive of our efforts to sell Neverwinter content online, and our other publishing partners are very interested in this distribution channel as well - we've heard from multiple publishers that they very much admire our community efforts and the resulting size and focused nature of the BioWare Community. We're trying to add value for our fans, and for our publishers in every case.

Our retail partners are very important to us and we're definitely working closely with them as we develop this initiative - that's a critical step to the initiative succeeding since we plan to continue to offer our games through traditional retail channels as well!

What is the long term vision for the BioWare Online Store? Any plans you care to share?

Ray: We definitely have a long term vision and plan for the BioWare Community and its online store. We plan to continue to roll out new products online, ranging from smaller expansion type content all the way to full sized products. Having 2.2 million fans that enjoy story, exploration, character interaction, and character progression provides a lot of opportunities to reach them with a variety of different kinds of products in the future!

Additionally, in the future, we'll be offering physical goods like shirts, mugs, caps, etc. to our fans. And as well as the digitally distributed games, like the NWN modules we're offering at launch, we plan to expand the type, size, and variety of digitally distributed products sold on the BioWare Store - more information to come soon on this! We're really excited to see how our fans like the content we're offering, and we plan to respond to their suggestions by offering more varieties of content in the future!

What kinds of things can I buy at the BioWare Online Store?

Craig: BioWare is excited to launch the BioWare Online Store with three premium Neverwinter Nights modules. We have had strong feedback from our community of more than 2 million Neverwinter Nights fans that they would like more Neverwinter Nights content. BioWare is already hard at work developing additional modules that will be made available through the BioWare Online Store.

Aren't there 4000+ Neverwinter Nights modules created by the community available for free? What sets your modules apart?

Rob Bartel: We're extremely proud of what the BioWare community has been able to accomplish with Neverwinter Nights. There are some amazing modules available out there and we encourage everyone to play them. When you purchase a BioWare premium module, however, you're purchasing a level of quality and polish that is simply unattainable for a free module. What if, when you were building your Neverwinter module, you had the ability to request new scripting functions or game functionality from the original programmers? What if you were able to rely not only on the kindness of the community when identifying bugs but also the bug-hunting talents of a professional Quality Assurance lab? What if you could run your story and design ideas by the writers of Baldur's Gate, Hordes of the Underdark, and Knights of the Old Republic? What if you could hire a wide range of professional voice actors to bring your characters to life?

With BioWare premium modules, whether they're developed internally by BioWare staff or externally by the cream of the community crop, all this and more is possible. Better yet, your purchase helps fund the BioWare Community Live Team so we can continue to support and enhance Neverwinter Nights well into the future, keeping the community strong and vibrant as we move toward the release of future products like Jade Empire and Dragon Age.

Will BioWare begin to sell full games at their online store? Will I be able to buy classic BioWare games like Baldur's Gate and MDK2?

Craig: We are considering many options for items to sell through the BioWare Online Store. Full products are certainly a possibility in the future, as are physical goods such as Jade Empire, Dragon Age, or other BioWare-branded merchandise.

I want BioWare swag! Will I see things like t-shirts, coffee mugs, and even boxed versions of games being sold?

Craig: Absolutely! BioWare receives regular requests from our fans for BioWare swag, and our online store is the perfect place for us to make these available. We will be offering a range of cool BioWare products, along with swag for our upcoming games: Jade Empire (to be published by Microsoft for Xbox in March 2005), and Dragon Age (BioWare's next PC high fantasy roleplaying game).

If I'm a little freaked out buying something online, can I read more about how the store works?

Jason: When making a purchase from the BioWare Online Store you can rest assured that we are keeping your personal and financial information secure and private. To facilitate this we use 128 bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption for browsing and performing transactions at the BioWare Online Store. These standards encrypt or scramble the purchase information you send over the Internet, ensuring the security of your transaction. We use other private secure services and hardware to monitor and protect our secure databases where any information is stored.

For more information on Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption, visit the Webopedia.

For more information on Visa's "Zero Liability" program, visit the Visa web site.

For more information on MasterCard's "Zero Liability" program, visit Mastercard's web site.

Will I need a credit card to make purchases?

Jason: Yes, we are currently only accepting Visa and MasterCard as payment.