BioWare Corporation
Overview
BioWare Corp. is a game development studio founded by medical doctors
Ray Muzyka and
Greg Zeschuk in February 1995. It is based Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. BioWare specializes in RPGs (role-playing games) and only released two products in other genres, their first game
Shattered Steel (1996) and
MDK 2 (2000).
Their most important franchises are the
Baldur's Gate series and the
Neverwinter Nights series. They also created the
Star Wars-inspired RPG
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) and the
Jade Empire games.
The company often has been working together with
Black Isle Studios for Baldur's Gate games.
Obsidian Entertainment, where most of the former Black Isle employees move on to, also created the sequel to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Their in-house developed engines (
Aurora,
Infinity,
Odyssey) have often been used for third party games.
On 3rd November 2005 the company formed an alliance with
Pandemic Studios, backed financially by Elevation Partners. Through the operation, a holding company called BioWare/Pandemic Studios was created. BioWare's two co-founders and Pandemic's two co-founders,
Andrew Goldman and
Josh Resnick become shareholders and senior executives.
John Riccitiello from Elevation became the company's CEO.
On 19th September 2006 BioWare announced the formation of a handheld development group, led by project director
Dan Tudge. Earlier, on 13rd March 2006 they opened an additional studio in Austin, Texas, headed by
Gordon Walton and
Richard Vogel.
In November 2007 the company released the action RPG
Mass Effect.
Currently, the company has two games in development:
Dragon Age and an untitled
Sonic RPG.
Contributed by
Indra Depari of 'da Clan Depari 
(13163) on Jun 25, 2003. [
revised by :
Sciere (117909)].
