“I know someone who works at BioWare who decided with his wife to sell their house in Summerside and move downtown,” he says. Gaming giant Electronic Arts purchased BioWare in 2007 in a whopping $860 million US deal, but BioWare has continued to operate in Edmonton since being acquired by the California-based superdeveloper, maintaining its roots in the community and its identity.Īlthough Zeschuk left BioWare almost eight years ago, he’s glad that the company has chosen to reinvest in Edmonton, and downtown in particular. Its amenities are abundant: In addition to the traditional features, the new office boasts audio recording rooms, an arcade, quiet rooms for employees to take breaks, and a motion-capture studio. Aside from the ability to comfortably house its existing 300 employees, the space will allow the company to continue to expand in the coming years. Last fall, BioWare moved into a custom-built 75,000-square-foot space in the EPCOR Tower. Never did Zeschuk, who retired from the gaming industry at the end of 2012, think that the company he started out of his basement would one day occupy three stories in a downtown skyscraper. Over that time, it released some of the most successful games of all time, such as 1998’s Baldur’s Gate, a smash hit which was credited with saving the role-playing game genre, which later included BioWare games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and, more recently, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. There were about 20 of us at the time, and we all had to turn on our computers in a specific sequence to avoid blowing the circuit breaker for the whole building.”Īfter six months of frustration, BioWare moved to a location on Whyte Avenue for a few years, eventually landing in a building on Calgary Trail and 45th Avenue, where it remained for over 15 years. “There were only four plugs in the wall, so the power would go out all the time.
“It’s been renovated since, but at the time it was really run-down,” says Zeschuk, who now runs Blind Enthusiasm Brewing Company and Biera, both of which can be found in Ritchie Market, which he also owns. It was in that basement they started developing what would become their first game, Shattered Steel, which was created jointly with the Calgary-based Pyrotek Studios and released in 1996.īy that point, BioWare needed more room, so the company moved into the second floor of a building off 109th Street and 88th Avenue, out of which cycling company Redbike now operates on the ground level.
“But we had space, and we had power, so we made it work.” “The ceilings were so low, Ray would hit his head on a regular basis,” laughs Zeschuk. He and his co-founders, Ray Muzyka and Augustine Yip, were on a shoestring budget, so, when it came to finding space to work, the trio took the most pragmatic approach - they set up shop in a cramped room in the basement of Zeschuk’s home. See you next time.When BioWare started making computer games in 1995, Greg Zeschuk was a newly practising doctor. No doubt there’s many more I haven’t mentioned. 15 of the greatest games to play over the next 12 or so months. This will be out November 10th this year and as well as the regular edition, there is also a pipboy edition which comes with an exact replica of a pipboy, which you can put your smartphone in (check for compatibility first), and then wear on your wrist and use in game. From the E3 trailer, it appears that the game starts as the nukes start dropping and then you awaken, 200 years later, around the time the other Fallout games are set. Set in post-apocalyptic Boston, it is a free-roaming, choose-your-own-path adventure.
#New bioware games 2015 series
This time though, it is all next-gen, and is the most highly anticipated game in the series so far. If you’ve played Fallout 3, or Skyrim, or any other of Bethesda’s Fallout or Elder Scrolls games, you’ll know what to expect here.
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