Interview by: Todd Brakke

How long has Bioware been around?

Ray Muzyka: We incorporated in February 1995. We were doing some stuff before that too, probably ’90 and ’91 we were doing stuff and then we did Shattered Steel in ’93/’94. So, about 15, 20 years now.

So over that time –it has been awhile- as you were starting out, what were your expectations and hopes for the company?

RM: When we formed the company I don’t think we had a clear sense of where it was going to go other than we wanted to do really high-quality games as a founding principle. We wanted to make games with rich storylines and you can see that from the early games. Even Shattered Steel had a good story for the time, if you read the manual. Baldur’s Gate had those great characters and story and, you know, we were trying to make games that we found reminiscent of what we grew up playing and that we loved when we were kids.

Now it’s evolved into more of a defined mission statement and vision for the studio and now we’re part of a larger group as well that I’m the general manager of and Greg’s the creative officer of the RPG/MMO group. But for Bioware specifically our vision is this concept of genuine emotion, genuine emotional engagement in our games. We want people to be able to feel something really deep, whatever that might be. Love for the characters, or hatred, or feel fear in combat, or feel a sense of pride in customization/progression, or a sense of awe at being an explorer in this deep rich world, say, in the Dragon Age universe. Stories are the core of it for Bioware, just really high quality in our products and our workplace. We want to make a great workplace for our employees. We really value them and they’re very important.

[At this point Greg Zeschuk finishes a call and sits down with us.]