BioWare
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry |
Computer and video games Interactive entertainment |
| Founded | February 1995 |
| Founder |
Ray Muzyka (retired in 2012) Greg Zeschuk (retired in 2012) Augustine Yip (retired in 1997) |
| Headquarters | Edmonton, Alberta, Canada |
|
Key people
|
Matthew Bromberg, GGM Aaryn Flynn, GM Canada Jeff Hickman, GM Austin |
| Products |
Mass Effect series Dragon Age series Baldur's Gate series Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series (See complete products listing) |
|
Number of employees
|
800 (2010) |
| Parent | Electronic Arts (2007–present) |
| Divisions | See § Structure |
| Website | www |
BioWare is a video game developer located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was 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 intellectual property: Jade Empire, the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age series. In 2011, BioWare launched their first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Star Wars: The Old Republic.
BioWare was established in February 1995 by Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, Trent Oster, Brent Oster, Marcel Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. The three doctors (Muzyka, Zeschuk, Yip) had recently graduated together from medical school at the University of Alberta; they had done some programming for use in med school and played video games for recreation, eventually deciding to develop their own. Their success in the medical field provided them with the funding they needed to launch a video game company. To make their first game, they pooled their resources, which resulted in capital of $100,000.
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.
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Wikipedia