The History of BioWare

It seems somehow appropriate, given the day, to link over to a historical perspective on the developer BioWare. Eurogamer took a look back at the house the doctors built to give us some insight on where the company came from, and where it's going. "The modding community had always rallied around Baldur's Gate, so Neverwinter Nights wisely shipped with the game's toolset available and ready for use by fans. Improved quests were soon blooming all over the internet, like so much role-playing lichen. BioWare also supported the game with their own official expansion packs, and later through smaller downloadable modules, while the game brushed seductively alongside the world of the MMORPG with a hefty multiplayer component that enabled players to join up across the internet to tackle the main story."

Comments

Post-Mortem: Bioware

[moderatorrater]

Fitting, since Mass Effect was the last game they'll release without the taint of the beast. I still have some hopes for them, but I've seen EA shit all over too many good games and studios to be truly optimistic.

Re:Post-Mortem: Bioware

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. R.I.P. Westwood :(.

Re:Post-Mortem: Bioware

[bigstrat2003]

I don't know, C&C 3 was damn good. Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly holding my breath here, but not all hope is lost. Someone at EA might have the fragment of a brain it takes to realize that Bioware is best left alone, as they'll make excellent games which EA will then make massive amounts of money from.

Re:Post-Mortem: Bioware

[Cadallin]

As long as Mass Effect sells well, I suspect Bioware will be left more or less intact for a couple of years. I may be wrong, but usually its taken EA at least a couple of years to completely digest and destroy a newly acquired development house.

Re:Post-Mortem: Bioware

[RogueyWon]

Indeed. To my mind, C&C3 was the best installment in the series since the ground-breaking original (which wasn't a better game per-se, but did basically introduce the drag-click interface that defines the modern RTS). After the turgid, obsolete-before-it-was-released Red Alert 2 and the why-does-this-even-have-the-C&C-name-on-it Generals, C&C3 was fantastic. Very fast paced and very demanding in terms of both reflexes and tactics, with superb production values (yay FMV cutscenes). I'd been expecting Supreme Commander to be the RTS for me this year, but C&C3 was just so much more fun.

I know that EA-bashing is in vogue right now, but they do still put out some excellent games and there are faint but plausible signs of a change in their attitude towards studios they absorb.

Re:Post-Mortem: Bioware

[jfodale]

Couldn't agree more. I think a lot of people are dominated by nostalgia.

What a shitty article

[Anonymous Coward]

Intro: Three guys want to make a game company.

Next paragraph: They made a game! Next paragraph: They made another game! Rinse, repeat.

This is merely a listing of each game they've made, not much of a "history" at all. How did they start they company? Who were the early employees? How did they come to work with Pyroteck? How did they raise the capital to start a company? How did they learn the basics of computer programming? What were their early influences? What was the role of each founder? What was their first office like? How did it change as they grew? What was/is the corporate culture like?

Simply list all the Bioware games, write a quick summary review of each game, and you have this article. History, my ass. Slashdot, why are you wasting my time with this crap? I have better article downstairs in my cat's litter box. Nice pick, there, Zonk.

Re:BioWare No Big Loss For Microsoft

[RamblinLonghorn]

Sources on these bug reports and reviews? Metacritic score is a very respectable 93. And what does Microsoft have to do with Bioware? They developed 2 games for the xbox. Also for all the people bemoaning EA's acquisition of Bioware, remember that Bioware games were published by Interplay, and they sure as hell outlived that disaster (and came out stronger for it).

Re:BioWare No Big Loss For Microsoft

[k_187]

Microsoft is publishing Mass Effect.

Re:thats sexy....i guess.....

[__aaclcg7560]

wow....i used to talk in code about sex but this is ridiculous!

The days of assembly language are long gone, my son. You need to speak plainly of object interfaces and naughty bits for youngsters to understand you. :P

Re:thats sexy....i guess.....

[l33tlamer]

ah-sam-bow-lee? Is that for programming robots that assemble ikea tables?

EA Cliche

[dintech]

The next Bioware game will add the following:

1) Warning message at the start "It's really not safe to use swords, leave it to the professionals (dude)!"
2) A menu system that whooshes and bangs through a million options with vibrating screen effects and explosions. That's just for configuring 'invert thumbstick'...
3) A tutorial system using the voice of an actor/actress from Nickelodeon. Surprised no-one released a fantasy roleplaying game that sounds like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie yet?
4) An attention deficit pop music sound track that alternates every 5 seconds from hip-hop to teenie-bopper punk depending on menu depth. Orcs dig Jay-Z!
5) Unlock radical new shields, armor and helmets to make your characters uber cool.

This is the furthest I've ever got through an EA game before I removed the DVD from the console and stomped all over it in fury. So I can't think of any more examples yet...

Re:EA Cliche

[RogueyWon]

Funny, I don't remember any of those in... say... Battle for Middle Earth, C&C3 or Crysis, to name but a few.

Of course, had Bioware been bought out by Nintendo, we could have expected to see:

1) "Lovable" mascot characters running all over every game from the moment the first intro screen flashes up.
2) Menus that look and feel like they were designed in 1980, with sound effects that appear to have been produced on a cheap keyboard synthesiser of a similar vintage.
3) Voice acting? What voice acting? All you need is a bunch of random squeaks and twitters. Surprised nobody yet released an epic science-fiction RPG that sounds like the Teletubbies?
4) A soundtrack that might, just might, have been passable on the SNES.
5) Mass Effect: Red and Mass Effect: Blue. If you want to see the entire game, make sure you buy both versions!

Re:EA Cliche

[StarvingSE]

You forgot the annoying EA logo blaring everytime you load up the game... god I hope they include an option to turn the intro movies off. I always thought of Bioware (and Black Isle) as making "gamer's games." They were what people who really were into computer gaming were playing. Now that they have the whole EA thing going, it just seems so mainstream even if the games stay at the level of quality that they're currently at.

Re:EA Cliche

[Clock Nova]

Not that there isn't a certain amount of truth in some of what you say, buy I have to ask:

Played Metroid lately?

Re:EA Cliche

[RogueyWon]

Yeah, Metroid, I will admit, is a welcome step forward for Nintendo in terms of production values, an area in which they've lagged way behind the field for the better part of a decade. It's not a fantastic game, but it is solid enough and compensates for some of the most serious defects of earlier installments.

My point with my post was more about how ridiculous it is to tar all the works of a single publisher - especially one as vast as EA - with a single brush. Of course EA put out dire shovelware, most publishers do. Genuinely bad games are more or less a thing of the past, existing now only in isolated incidents on straight-to-budget PC and DS/GBA ranges, but hundreds of mediocre and boring games hit the shelves every year from many different directions. My point was that EA put out a good number of games that do not fit easily into the established slashdot stereotype of their output.

Re:EA Cliche

[dintech]

"EA Games. Market Everything"

Re:BioWare No Big Loss For Microsoft

[Das Modell]

There is a mass of dialog that you end up just plowing your way through with effectively no impact on the actual outcome of the game.

You seriously expect every bit of dialogue to have an impact on the outcome of the game? In what alternate reality do you think BioWare, or any developer, has the magic wand to make that happen?

Re:thats sexy....i guess.....

[charlesbakerharris]

Oh, I don't know. Every now and then there's a throwback girl who wears tie-dyed shirts and is ready to JMP you for talking code.

Have they gotten better?

[popo]

This isn't a troll per se, but I can't help thinking that BioWare has only gotten worse over the years.

IMHO all their cred comes from Baldur's Gate II. And that cred is well deserved. BG2 is still (imho) one of the best games (let alone best RPG's) ever made.

Neverwinter Nights OTOH, never made anyone's top 10 list. And KOTOR was fun, but the criticisms of "too easy", "too boring", "too limited" were all too frequent to make it a real contender for longevity -- although I did enjoy the hell out of it.

I have high hopes for Mass Effect -- but I can't say that I'm a fan of BioWare's evolution. To me they'll always be the guys that made some beyond-perfect AD&D games a few years back. Since then they've pushed out in new directions that may have scored big points with the console crowd -- but haven't really impressed the hardcore gaming set.

Re:BioWare No Big Loss For Microsoft

[Xel'Naga]

The tagline of Neverwinter 2 "Everything you do has a meaning" or something like that (Too busy to look it up). We never thought Bioware could actually implement that, but they shouldn't lie on the box and claim that they could.

Re:BioWare No Big Loss For Microsoft

[Xel'Naga]

Yeah, my bad.