BioWare

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Organic goods

logo
legal form Division of Electronic Arts
founding 1995
Seat Edmonton , Alberta , CanadaCanadaCanada 
management Matthew Bromberg (General Group Manager)
Number of employees ~ 800
Branch Software development
Website www.bioware.com
Status: 2010

Co-founder Greg Zeschuk

BioWare is a Canadian game development company . It has belonged to the US game publisher Electronic Arts since 2007 .

history

Co-founder Ray Muzyka

The company was founded in February 1995 by Ray Muzyka , Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip in Edmonton , Alberta , Canada . The name of the studio is an allusion to both the medical degrees of all three founders and the company's goal of developing software for people. At the beginning, the company developed medical teaching software for the University of Alberta , all founders also worked as doctors on the side. The company's first product was the Gastroenterology Patient Simulator program, a program designed to teach medical students how to diagnose and treat gastrointestinal disorders. Eventually, the company turned to game development and in 1996 released its debut Shattered Steel through Interplay Entertainment . BioWare developed the Infinity engine , which was used to develop computer role-playing games based on the Dungeons & Dragons rules. Yip left the company in 1997 and turned back to medicine.

BioWare itself states that it wants to offer the "best narrative games in the world [...]".

In a $ 300 million merger, BioWare entered into a partnership with American developer Pandemic Studios in late 2005 . VG Holding Corp was founded with capital from the equity investment company Elevation Partners , and Pandemic and Bioware became its subsidiaries. Two years later, in October 2007, it was announced that publisher Electronic Arts had bought VG Holding Corp - and thus Pandemic and Bioware - for the amount of approximately 860 million US dollars. The acquisition was completed in January 2008.

Ray Muzyka told IGN in May 2008 that BioWare employs over 500 people in seven teams across BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Austin.

In March 2009, BioWare announced the establishment of a new studio in Montreal. In June EA announced a merger of BioWare and Mythic Entertainment ( Fairfax, Virginia ) into an RPG / MMO group within the EA group. BioWare founder Ray Muzyka was appointed head of this group, and Greg Zeschuk was appointed Group Creative Officer. At the same time, Mythic founder Mark Jacobs left the company, which is why the merger was seen as a subordination of the Mythic studio to BioWare. BioWare maintained a team for games in social networks (formerly EA2D) and a team for the care of the European community in Galway (Ireland) at the EA headquarters in Redwood City under the name BioWare San Francisco .

On December 1, 2011, Electronic Arts took over the developer Klicknation , which was then renamed BioWare Sacramento. From then on, the new studio founded the BioWare Social division together with BioWare San Francisco. As part of the SpikeTV's 2011 Video Game Awards , parent company Electronic Arts announced on December 10, 2011 that the EA development studio Victory Games in Los Angeles would be working on a sequel to Command & Conquer: Generals under the name BioWare Victory . Since then, BioWare has increasingly acted as its own label within the games group.

On September 18, 2012, the two remaining founders, Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, announced that they were leaving the company. On the same day it was announced that BioWare Ireland would be expanded into EA's central customer center for Europe and would therefore no longer operate under the BioWare label in the future. In November 2012 it became known that BioWare Mythic and BioWare Victory no longer operate under the BioWare name and were renamed Mythic and Victory Games, respectively. In March 2013, it was also announced that BioWare San Francisco (formerly EA2D) had been closed. In June 2013, BioWare Sacramento was finally renamed EA Capital Games.

In September 2013, Matthew Bromberg, up to then General Manager of the Austin studio, was appointed Group General Manager, succeeding BioWare founders Zeschuk and Muzyka. Bromberg's successor as Austin General Manager was Jeff Hickman, but the studio continued to run in Bromberg's hands. He also got control of the Canadian studios in Edmonton and Montreal under the direction of the local general manager Aaryn Flynn, as well as the studios Victory Games and Waystone Games under Jon Van Caneghem .

In July 2017 it was announced that the development studio in Montreal had been closed and the employees have been employed at EA Motive since then . Bioware Montreal developed the action role-playing game Mass Effect: Andromeda , which was released on March 23, 2017. Bioware Montreal has been criticized for the title of the same name and its technical problems.

Development studios

  • BioWare Edmonton, founding studio
  • BioWare Austin (since 2006)

Former studios

  • BioWare Mythic (formerly Mythic Entertainment, incorporated in 2009, outsourced in 2012)
  • BioWare Ireland (founded 2011, spun off as EA Ireland 2012)
  • BioWare Victory (Victory Games, incorporated in 2011, outsourced in 2012)
  • BioWare Sacramento (formerly Klicknation, takeover and integration under BioWare Social 2011, spun off as EA Capital Games in 2013)
  • BioWare San Francisco (formerly EA2D, incorporated under BioWare Social 2011, closed in 2012)
  • BioWare Montreal (2009-2017)

Games

Technologies

In order to implement its own games, BioWare developed graphic engines that were also licensed by other studios:

  • Aurora Engine ( Neverwinter Nights ; licensed for The Witcher , among others )
  • Eclipse Engine ( Dragon Age: Origins )
  • Infinity Engine ( Baldur's Gate series; licensed for Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series)
  • Lycium Engine ( Dragon Age 2 )
  • Odyssey Engine ( Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic )

literature

Web links

Commons : BioWare  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Brightman: BioWare on RPG Success, Old Republic, Natal and More . industrygamers.com. June 4, 2010. Archived from the original on July 13, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 12, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.industrygamers.com
  2. ↑ Alexander Sliwinski: What's in a Name: BioWare ( English ) In: Joystiq . AOL . February 13, 2011. Retrieved March 7, 2012: “ The three founders, Greg, myself and [Augustine Yip] our third partner, we were all medical doctors by training, so it was a tongue-in-cheek reference to us being medical doctors. It was also a reference to software for humans. "
  3. ↑ Young Entrepreneurs Awards: 10th anniversary Archived from the original on January 10, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Online view) In: Maclean’s . November 3, 1997. Retrieved January 14, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / business.highbeam.com
  4. ↑ http://pc.ign.com/articles/106/1062743p1.html
  5. ↑ "story-driven". Same as source 3. Translation and italics from Wikipedia.
  6. ↑ a b GameSpot : EA buying BioWare / Pandemic for $ 860M . October 11, 2007.
  7. ↑ Charles Onyett: Interview: BioWare's Ray Muzyka - On Mass Effect PC, Dragon Age, and more. In: IGN Entertainment . May 15, 2008, accessed May 20, 2008 .
  8. ↑ Tor Thorsen: BioWare Mass-ing Montreal devs . In: GameSpot . CNET . March 2, 2009. Retrieved August 13, 2011.
  9. ↑ Mike Fahey: EA Combines Mythic And BioWare Into A Giant RPG Robot . In: Kotaku . June 24th, 2009. Archived from the original on September 29th, 2011. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 13, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kotaku.com
  10. ↑ Kyle Orland: EA Confirms EA2D Is Now BioWare San Francisco ( English ) In: Gamasutra . UBM plc. August 5, 2011. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  11. ↑ Careers page on BioWare.com , accessed August 13, 2011.
  12. ↑ Electronic Arts to create 200 jobs in Galway ( English ) In: Insideireland.ie . May 26, 2010. Archived from the original on March 13, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 7, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / insideireland.ie
  13. ↑ Tom Curtis: EA Kickstarts BioWare Social Division With KlickNation Acquisition ( English ) In: Gamasutra . UBM plc. December 1, 2011. Retrieved December 11, 2011.
  14. ↑ http://www.gamersglobal.de/news/46630
  15. ↑ Brendan Sinclair, Tom Magrino: BioWare story invades Command & Conquer ( English ) In: GameSpot . CNET . December 10, 2011. Retrieved December 11, 2011: “ When BioWare became its own label within EA, one of the biggest opportunities we had was to carefully consider ways to expand our portfolio. "
  16. ↑ http://www.joystiq.com/2012/09/18/bioware-co-founders-greg-zeschuk-ray-muzyka-retiring-from-indus/
  17. ↑ http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177858/EA_creates_300_more_jobs_at_its_Irish_support_center.php#.US-RcDf56YF
  18. ↑ Jim Reilly: Mythic, Victory Drop 'BioWare' label . In: Game Informer . November 8, 2012. Retrieved December 21, 2012.
  19. ^ Andre Linken: BioWare studio in San Francisco closed, up to 30 employees laid off . In: GameStar . March 5, 2013. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
  20. ↑ http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/08/this-may-be-as-close-as-well-get-to-a-cgi-zelda-movie/
  21. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from September 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mcvuk.com
  22. ↑ http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/09/ea-names-new-chief-of-bioware-label-exclusive/
  23. ↑ Tobias Ritter: Mass Effect: Andromeda - development studio dissolved, DLCs probably excluded. July 31, 2017, accessed July 31, 2017 .
  24. ↑ David Hinkle: Dragon Age 2 preview: A shot of adrenaline . In: Joystiq , AOL , February 8, 2011. Retrieved February 24, 2011. "While it might appear to run on a new engine, Dragon Age 2 employs an evolved version of Origins' Eclipse engine (now called the Lycium engine internally) . "