You Have to Start Somewhere: Developer Origin Stories
Industry executives recall getting their start in videogames.
5/12/2009 6:59 PM | 4 Comments | Page 3 of 3
John Keefer
Status: Reading da Crispy content and playin' games.
Ray Muzyka
General Manager/CEO, BioWare
General Manager/Vice President, EA
Greg Zeschuk
Vice President, Entertainment/Miscellaneous, BioWare
Ray: It's fair to say that we didn't really know much of anything about the business of games (or business, for that matter) when we started BioWare back in 1992-93 (incorporating formally in 1995). Rather, we were and are passionate fans of videogames, so we set out -- rather naively in retrospect -- to make a great games company. We succeeded in this goal entirely thanks to the great people who joined us all those years ago and since. As it turns out, working as medical doctors was probably less work than starting and running BioWare.
We started in Greg's basement, and decided to move to a real office once I (a fairly tall fellow) knocked myself out on the low ceiling one too many times (once is enough when it comes to concussions, I like to say).
Greg: We also did some designing, programming, animating and writing on those early games before 1998. Of course, we weren't nearly as talented as the people we subsequently hired, but back that long ago you could potentially learn an area afresh and produce actual content. An interesting comparison is that the new iPhone and Flash development experiences aren't significantly different than how things were when we started.
Ken Levine
President/Creative Director, 2K Boston
I didn't know anybody. I applied for a job from the back of
Next Gen magazine. I caught a huge break, plain and simple. It would spit in the eye of the fates to claim anything else. I think they hired me (at Looking Glass) because I had worked as a screenwriter in Los Angeles. This was during the mid-90s when all the FMV games were around. Maybe they figured I knew some people in Hollywood. I didn't.
For more from these developers, read their advice on getting into the game industry in the Crispy blog.
