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BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip, alongside Trent Oster, Brent Oster, and Marcel Zeschuk. Since 2007, the company has been owned by American publisher Electronic Arts. BioWare specializes in role-playing video games, and achieved recognition for developing 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 (MMORPG), Star Wars: The Old Republic. History Foundation BioWare was founded by Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, alongside Trent Oster, his brother Brent, Zeschuk's cousin Marcel, and Augustine Yip. Of the founding team, Muzyka, Zeschuk and Yip had recently graduated from medical school at the University of Alberta, and had a background in programming for use in school. Together with Yip, they had created a medical simulation programme. The three also 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. The company was incorporated on 1 February 1995, though formally launched on 22 May 1995. 1990s: Shattered Steel and Baldur's Gate 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 Trent 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-aimed gunfire could shoot mounted weapons off enemies). A sequel to Shattered Steel was planned for 1998 but never realized. 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 a role-playing game. 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 licence which it had acquired from Strategic Simulations. Accordingly, Infinity was reworked in line with the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset. The result was Baldur's Gate, with a development cycle of three years. During this time, the three doctors continued to practice medicine. The demands of development later 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. 2000s: EA Acquisition, Mass Effect & Dragon Age 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. MDK2 was released on PC, Dreamcast, and eventually PlayStation 2, offering BioWare their first taste of developing games for consoles. MDK2 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. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn was released in 2000, two years after the release of Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate II sold two million copies, matching the sales of the first game in the series. However, the success of both Baldur's Gate II and MDK2 was not enough to stabilize Interplay financially. Subsequently, BioWare began to work with Infogrames, which was later renamed to Atari. Neverwinter Nights was originally to be published by Interplay, but the company lost the licence of the game to Atari and part of their Dungeons & Dragons licence to BioWare. After selling their D&D licence to Atari, BioWare developed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. It had publishing relationships with Interplay Entertainment, Infogrames, under its new name Atari, LucasArts, and Microsoft. The next few years saw a number of changes in BioWare's corporate status. In November 2005, it was announced that BioWare and Pandemic Studios (itself founded by former Activision employees) would be joining forces (with each maintaining their own branding), with private equity fund Elevation Partners investing in the newly named VG Holding Corp. partnership. On 11 October 2007, it was announced that VG Holding Corp. had been bought by Electronic Arts for US$775 million (equivalent to $1.14 billion in 2023). BioWare therefore became a unit of EA, but still retained its own branding. In 2007, BioWare released the science fiction role-playing game Mass Effect. The following year, BioWare released Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood on the Nintendo DS, its first title for a handheld game console. Later, EA announced that BioWare would merge with Mythic Entertainment, another division of EA who would rename itself as BioWare Mythic after the deal. The growth of the MMORPG group as part of Electronic Arts in 2008 resulted in three additional studios being added to the BioWare group outside BioWare's original home base in Edmonton. The first, located in Austin, Texas, and headed by industry veterans Gordon Walton and Richard Vogel, was created to work on the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG project. Both the studio and the project were announced on 13 March 2006. On 2 March 2009, BioWare announced it had opened a new studio in Montreal, Quebec, to assist with existing projects as necessary. During the mid-2000s, BioWare staff developed a number of video game projects which were ultimately canceled. A handheld spin-off for Mass Effect franchise titled Mass Effect: Corsair, inspired by the gameplay of Star Control and played from a first-person perspective, was briefly explored as a potential project for the Nintendo .... Discover the Chris Schlerf popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Chris Schlerf books.