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BioWare Founders On 2003, Future Prospects
Thanks to C+VG for their interview with BioWare founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, discussing "their thoughts on the videogames of the past year [and] potential future developments" for their own company. They lament that "one of the most unfortunate things happening in the industry today is the demise of the small independent developer", and note they're "working on three new games, all set in BioWare-created intellectual properties, right now" (lending credence to the previous rumor that the BioWare-affiliated Obsidian Entertainment may be creating the sequel to Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, which sports an external IP.) The internal BioWare projects include the already-announced Xbox action-RPG Jade Empire, as well as "a PC RPG inspired by our own past work on both the Baldur's Gate series and Neverwinter Nights."
Good to see some attention to this topic!
The latest Slashdot meme.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is growing
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Windows community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has risen yet again, now up to more than 30 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has gained more market share , this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is sending other OSes into complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by topping the charts in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Daemon to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a long and prosperous future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Windows Server because *BSD is growing. Things are looking very good for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to gain market share. Red ink flows from Redmond like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most loved of them all, having gained 93% more core developers. The sudden and pleasant release of the long developed 5.0 only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is growing.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 70000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 70000/5 = 14000 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 7000 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (70000+14000+7000)*4 = 364000 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the release of OSX, cool new technologies and so on, FreeBSD is expanding into more desktops than ever. FreeBSD has become more than the sum of its parts.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily gained in market share. *BSD is very powerful and its long term survival prospects are very bright. If Windows is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to improve. The progress achieved is nothing short of a miracle. For all practical purposes, *BSD is alive and kicking.
Fact: *BSD will kick your ass
Okay so Bioware has just announced they're making sequel games to KOTOR and NWN, though I understand that KOTOR is built from a lot of the same code base that NWN used (certainly some elements of the look and feel for the games are the same).
This really doesn't seem like news, "Games company making sequels based on reasonably popular games".
At least they're making some nice roleplaying games, unlike Interplay who are too busy knifing some of their best development studios.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
i'm a huge fan of the work bioware does - especially the baldur's gate series - since imho they pretty much revived a dying genre. baldur's gate 1 was a nostalgia trip for me to the days of the bard's tale and ultimas and ultima underworlds and all the classic epic RPGs. sure there were a few gems here and there throughout the years, like eye of the beholder, the fallouts, planescape torment, system shock 1&2, but i don't think the RPG genre was as popular as it is these days. i'm not one to point fingers or anything but bioware gets a pointing from me for putting out quality, timeless games that made people look twice.
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Is it just me, or does anyone else find BioWare EXTREMELY overated? I guess it would be safe to say I fell into the hype of SW:KOTOR this summer when it was released, and sadly it was one of the primary reasons I went out and purchased an XBOX. Well, I bought the game new days after it was released, and to this day I have never gotten any further into it than maybe 6 or 8 hours. It just hasn't grabbed me. People rave about the open-endedness and the impact your character choices have on the game, but I've found the character development to be incredibly limited and the story incredibly boring. Take a game like Fallout (1&2). Brilliant games. The difference it seems is that between a game like Fallout and SW:KOTOR is that in KOTOR, a character that you choose to develop as a "Thief" is more of a cosmetic gameplay mechanic than anything else. In the end, KOTOR comes down to how strong your character is in battle. In Fallout, if you wanted to play as a "thief" you could, and nothing was stopping you from stealing anything and everything you wanted, sneaking around wherenever and whenever, etc. A game like KOTOR only encourages those possibilities to a certain degree, then brings you crashing back down to earth when it is time to progress the story ...Here we go, another battle that is going to be unbelievably hard unless you have a party full of "fighters"...
I don't mean to say that BioWare is a bad developer; I've enjoyed many of their games over the past years, but I honestly have to say I'm not very impressed with their most recent releases (NWN and KOTOR) and I just think they are received WAY TOO MUCH credit; much more than they deserve. It just seems like in the end its all just boiling down to hack and slash. Eh, maybe that's all people want and I'm just missing the point entirely.
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Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
all i want is a good xbox fantasy rpg. something like kotor, but in a fantasy setting. and morrowind just didn't do it for me. (a little -too- open-ended. the main story didn't pull me in whatsoever). and i'm beginning to doubt fable actually exists.
that jade empire thing... meh, i like my fantasy a little more generic. i know, i'm not hardcore, something must be wrong with me, etc, etc. but i don't care to 'explore' a world that tries to deviate from the tolkien-archetypes for no reason.
If the story demands an eastern setting, that'd be fine. but i get the sinking suspicion that, like every 'oriental adventures' rpg before it, the story will have little eastern feel. it'll be a new setting for its own sake, and that's nauseating.
just touch up the kotor engine, switch 'force' to 'magic', 'blasters' to 'crossbows' and give me a good story.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Forgotten Realms, I'll be happy. NWN and Baulder's Gate were and still are cool games, and from what they said in the interview there will be another Forgotten Realms game(they said based on NWN and Baulder's Gate), hopefully they will put out a Linux port for it too.
The Baldur's Gate series are some of my favorite games, so I'm thrilled at the mere rumor of a sequel coming out of BioWare. However, recently Slashdot mourned the passing of Black Isle Studios. At the time, I got the impression that no more Black Isle meant no more Baldur's Gate. Apparently, I was wrong. I think this is because I've never really understood the relationship between Black Isle and BioWare. Could someone enlighten me as to who was responsible for what?