BioWare's Design Docs

An Interview with founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk
3/19/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 5

Muzyka: We've both always been huge fans of role-playing games -- we played them all while growing up and all through medical school. Baldur's Gate actually came out of an idea for a game that was originally called Battleground: Infinity -- it was an idea developed at BioWare.

We pitched the concept for Battleground: Infinity to a bunch of publishers, including Interplay, and they liked our demo so much that they suggested we consider the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) license and make the first D&D RPG in quite a few years. Since we were big fans of the license and thought it would be successful as a foundation for a game, we jumped at the chance, and Baldur's Gate was the result.

We named the engine for Baldur's Gate the BioWare Infinity Engine, after Battleground: Infinity. Like all of our games, the reason we were able to develop it and have it become successful was that we had such great employees at BioWare (and this continues today) -- smart, creative and passionate -- they really care about crafting amazing story-driven, emotionally powerful experiences.

Crispy Gamer: From Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic to Jade Empire and now Mass Effect for Xbox 360 and its upcoming PC version, how do you continue to produce such consistently superior results?

Muzyka: BioWare is based on the core values of quality in the workplace, quality in our products and entrepreneurship, in a context of humility and integrity. We really believe that our best assets are the people who work on our games and at our company, so we strive to make BioWare the best place in the world to work.

Zeschuk: Everyone at BioWare is really passionate about games, and they have truly high standards of quality for our games, which is what our fans deserve. It's a lot of hard work, but the games speak for themselves, and both Ray and I feel very honored to be working with such a dedicated team.

Crispy Gamer: What is it that BioWare seems to get about fantasy, sci-fi and role-playing titles that other companies seem to miss?

Muzyka: There are a lot of terrific games out there, but we approach our own games with a priority on great stories and memorable characters. What we want to do is make the best story-driven games in the world, which have a powerful emotional impact on our players, so our focus is on crafting an amazing adventure that makes players feel like they really are the star of an epic movie full of interesting places to explore, exciting creatures to fight, and strong emotional moments. We try to give them the ability to create and customize their character as much as they want, so it really does become their personal story with as much freedom of choice as possible.

Crispy Gamer: Why (apart from a juicy check) did you choose to merge with Pandemic, and what sort of benefits has it brought to the overall organization? What kind of challenges? How exactly are the company that made Mercenaries and Full Spectrum Warrior and the company that made Neverwinter Nights a good fit?

Zeschuk: We were already huge fans of Pandemic and their games, so we were excited at the opportunity to partner with such a respected leader in action/adventure titles. The cash infusion from Elevation Partners, the private equity firm that created BioWare/Pandemic Studios, allowed us to focus on taking our games to reach their maximum potential. We believe videogames are an art form, so the new resources gained from the creation of BioWare/Pandemic gave us the freedom and creative discretion to make the right decisions for our products.