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BioWare

BioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts. The company specializes in role-playing video games, and became famous for launching highly praised and successful licensed franchises, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. They proceeded to make several other successful games based on original IP: Jade Empire, the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age series. In 2011, BioWare launched their first MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Their first game, Shattered Steel, began its life as a proof-of-concept demo, similar to the MechWarrior games. This demo was submitted to ten publishers, seven of whom returned to the company with an offer. A publishing deal for Shattered Steel was eventually signed with Interplay Entertainment. Brent Oster and Trent Oster left BioWare at that time to form Pyrotek Studios, which continued developing Shattered Steel but broke up a year later, with Oster returning to BioWare to finish the game. BioWare's first game was released the following year. Shattered Steel's release was described by IGN as a "modest success" with "decent sales". Two noteworthy points were the deformable terrain (player weapon damage caused craters in the environment) and zone damage (well-placed gunfire could shoot mounted weapons off enemies). A sequel to Shattered Steel was planned for 1998 but never realized.3
BioWare's founders and staff were keenly interested in both computerized and pen-and-paper variants of role-playing games.Their next development project, therefore, was determined to be an RPG. When Interplay financed "exploratory development", BioWare presented the publishers with a demo called Battleground: Infinity. Interplay suggested that the demonstrated gameplay engine would be well-suited to the Dungeons & Dragons license which it had acquired from SSI. Accordingly, Infinity was reworked in line with the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset.3
This resulted in Baldur's Gate, which witnessed a development cycle of three years. During this time, the three doctors continued to practice medicine. However, in the final years of the project, the demands of development prompted Muzyka and Zeschuck to leave medicine and move into full-time development. Augustine Yip decided to continue with his medical practice. Baldur's Gate sold more than two million copies after its release, nearly matching the sales of Diablo. Following the success of Baldur's Gate, the Infinity Engine was used for the games Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series. The success of Baldur's Gate was followed by an expansion pack for the game: Tales of the Sword Coast.4
At this point, BioWare decided to return to the action genre. The company's initial thought was to develop a sequel to Shattered Steel, but eventually a sequel to MDK from Shiny Entertainment was chosen for development.3 MDK 2 was released on PC, Dreamcast, and eventually PlayStation 2, offering BioWare their first taste of developing games for consoles.4 MDK 2 drew the same level of praise as its predecessor but, despite the success, BioWare returned to the Baldur's Gate series for their next project.On September 18, 2012, the next day after the official announcement of the third Dragon Age title,17 both Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, two of the remaining co-founders of BioWare, simultaneously announced they will be retiring from the gaming industry.1819 After almost a year without a formal head, EA appointed Matthew Bromberg the group general manager of the BioWare label on September 9, 2013. Former CEO and president of Major League Gaming, Bromberg worked as the general manager of BioWare Austin since 2012; after his promotion, Jeff Hickman took over as the general manager in Austin. Aaryn Flynn remains in charge of BioWare Canada (Edmonton and Montreal) and Jon Van Caneghem, the head of Victory Games and Waystone Studio (also parts of the BioWare label).
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