Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk are the founders of BioWare, a company known for its highly praised role-playing adventures, including Baldur's Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Drs. Muzyka and Zeschuk have been part of a much larger entity sinceElectronic Arts acquired the Canadian developer in 2008, yet they remain committed to delivering the high level of quality that BioWare is known for. The doctors were kind enough to spend some time with me at GDC discussing their roles within EA, the future of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, and the latest in digital distribution and streaming games.

 

GameSpy: How has your day-to-day involvement with BioWare changed since the EA acquisition?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Nothing much has really changed on a formal level. We have more studios now, so I manage four studios within the BioWare group. There's BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Austin and BioWare Montreal, which is a new studio, and BioWare Mythic, which is a studio that got added last year, to the group. So all told there are about 800 folks in the group, and they're all making different kinds of RPGs and MMOs -- different kinds of games that deliver emotionally engaging gameplay.

I guess we still try and finish every game that our group ships. We have a great group creative officer, there's a group marketing officer, group operations officer, there's GMs at every location as well, and we try to work together as a team to make sure that everything we ship meets the BioWare standard of quality, and delivers really good value to the fans.

There are a lot more products going on, so every studio actually has multiple things going on. Austin is really focused on Star Wars: The Old Republic; the other studios are contributing to that too, but the other studios have a lot of projects going on. There's the Dragon Age universe, Mass Effect, Mythic is working on Dark Age of Camelot, of course, and Ultima Online, Warhammer Online. Plus some brand-new stuff that we haven't announced yet. Montreal is doing some new stuff. I guess it's just more. But because we have great teams, it's really very similar to what we've done before. We delegate a lot of stuff to them, and they're great people who work really hard and they're passionate about great quality.

GameSpy: Can you still be counted on to submit the most bug reports?

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: We're not in that realm anymore...

Dr. Ray Muzyka: We still finish the games multiple times, and we submit a lot of bugs, but the days when we would submit a double-digit percentage of the bugs for something, for me that was way back in the Baldur's Gate days.

I think Baldur's Gate was the only one where I probably had... 11 or 12 percent of the total bug database. But I was producer on that, so I was really involved in that game. Since then, I mean, we now submit hundreds and hundreds of bugs each, but there's thousands and thousands of bugs that are submitted by our great team, we have great QA, everybody in the whole group...

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: It's not just bugs, though. It's a higher level of feedback. I know we both gravitate more towards describing... Because we have goals for all the experiences, and we sit down with the teams and trust them to pursue the goals and follow them.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: And test the games in detail.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yeah. So what we're really involved in is actually, in a sense, a very high-level play test. The benefit we also bring is we're not super-close to it. We're not working on any one project every day, because there are so many things that we're involved in. There are all these gaps, and so when we're seeing things in the games, it's always quite fresh, so we can lend a pretty objective opinion. That's one of the big values that we can bring now. And again, supporting the teams, like Ray said, we don't worry about any of them making great games. I think we try to just see what we can do to help and support them and maybe even make them better.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: And also do things on a business level, like make sure they have a great work environment, feel supported, have clear values, know that we're making decisions based on the quality of the products, quality of the workplace, entrepreneurship, all in balance. Trying to be humble as a studio group, listen to feeback, try and maintain high integrity and be honest with the employees and business partners and press and fans. Just never losing sight of those values as we move forward, even as part of a larger organization. For us, that's critical to our cultural success.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yeah. So what we're really involved in is actually, in a sense, a very high-level play test. The benefit we also bring is we're not super-close to it. We're not working on any one project every day, because there are so many things that we're involved in. There are all these gaps, and so when we're seeing things in the games, it's always quite fresh, so we can lend a pretty objective opinion. That's one of the big values that we can bring now. And again, supporting the teams, like Ray said, we don't worry about any of them making great games. I think we try to just see what we can do to help and support them and maybe even make them better.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: And also do things on a business level, like make sure they have a great work environment, feel supported, have clear values, know that we're making decisions based on the quality of the products, quality of the workplace, entrepreneurship, all in balance. Trying to be humble as a studio group, listen to feeback, try and maintain high integrity and be honest with the employees and business partners and press and fans. Just never losing sight of those values as we move forward, even as part of a larger organization. For us, that's critical to our cultural success.

GameSpy: Could you give me an example of something like, say, Casey Hudson might say, "Ray, Greg, can you help me out with something?" What kind of support would you give in that case, when he's leading a project like Mass Effect?

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I think we can be specific. When Mass 2 was being made, we'd play it and say, "Hey, I don't understand this part of the research system," or "It was really hard for me to find the panel where I would assign or choose what I was going to research. I knew it was here, but it needs to be clearer." It ends up being very much accessibility and usability, or sometimes, certainly less on Mass 2, but maybe more on Mass 1, there were times where the story just didn't click, there were points where I didn't really understand who this character was and what they were trying to get across. So the thing we're keeping, for us, also, it's not proscriptive, it's not "Change this in this way." It's very much like, "Hey, as a user, I didn't understand this part."

Dr. Ray Muzyka: And we let the team decide...

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yeah, they can figure it out.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: We provide gameplay feedback, but the team makes the final call on how they implement that. We try and help integrate with the larger organization as well; one of my jobs is to integrate with the rest of EA, the label, the sales and marketing organization. We have some marketing embedded in our group as well, but marketing teams are also within the larger company. And a variety of other central groups, like QA; there's QA within the BioWare group, there's QA centrally, and in other groups as well, like the online services groups. We have a lot of people, a lot of partners now that we can lean on, not just within our group but within the larger company. So that's really good too, we have a lot of support from our parent company.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yeah. Another job is probably pulling good things from other parts of the overall company. If we see something that worked really well, it gets raised up, and we pull it into BioWare so we can educate folks on how to use that. It's a pretty big range. It's different, and it's fun, because it's more like being an influencer than bossing people around. But that was never our style anyway.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Influence, evangelize, promote, and engage...

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Edumacate! [laughter]

Dr. Ray Muzyka: We're trying to inspire the teams, to show them our vision of the group, show how great they are and how the different studio missions all fit into that, and work with the GMs to help deploy that. It's really working through the great teams.

GameSpy: It just seems like your scope has really expanded since the days when it was just BioWare. Now you've got your hats in so many different rings. So when it's announced that you're going to be collaborating on Curt Schilling's 38 Studios game [ed. note: developed by Big Huge Games], what does that entail? Is that saying, let's have a talk over dinner? Or is that, "let's work on your game and really try to bring it up to BioWare quality?"

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I think it was the Big Huge Games title, so it's the one that Ken Rolston and those guys are working on. That was right from the beginning, we worked with the EAP [EA Partners] guys, we looked at the game, because they wanted an opinion, what we think of it. Then the next phase would be, as it's getting made, maybe giving the same, similar type of feedback. Talking to them. We actually know Tim Train and those guys... You're poker buddies with him, right?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Yeah, I chatted with him for an hour at DICE, good folks. But it's necessarily, it's a level removed from the products that are within our own group. But yeah, it's a product distributed by EA, and we're trying to help them out, trying to give them feedback. It's a little more infrequent, we might fly out there periodically, every few months or something, just chat with them. It would be that level of feedback, and ultimately they're the ones building it. We're not building the game or anything.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: There's also folks in EA that will send us stuff to look at, outside our group, just asking what we think of it.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Yeah, we do the same, too. It's great to have partners that you can bounce ideas off. We're really good friends with the leader of D.I.C.E., Patrick Soderlund, and so we often talk about Battlefield and other things they're doing. We have a lot of respect for his organization, the driving and the shooting stuff that his team's doing.

GameSpy: Are you enjoying Bad Company 2? Like, "We could use some shooting like this in our games!"

Dr. Ray Muzyka: I think it's a really well-built game. I just started it, right before I left for GDC, so I haven't experienced a lot of it yet, but I played a little bit pre-release as well, to give them some feedback.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: We're also on the road a lot now, which makes it very hard... If these were handheld games, it'd be easy, but it's hard to haul your Xbox around to play these things.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: And a lot of time we spend, if we have free moments, it's usually playing our own studio's games. Like Star Wars: The Old Republic is a big focus. I play that every weekend now. It's very good. Or you play more during the week...

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Well, as things work out...

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Usually my free time is in the late evening, like midnight until two or three, and usually on Saturday or Sunday I have a little more time. But we play that every week now, in the test that we're doing. It's a lot of fun.

GameSpy: Is that a server that you all play on together, and you group up?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Well, we have external servers built, and we're adding more and more focus over time...

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: It's still internal to the group, so yeah. We'll group up and play together. It's interesting, because we've seen lots of games as they're developed, and this is another view. It's something that we've never seen, from day one to whichever day it is now, it's gone on a while. We're seeing how it unfolds, and how the development cycle unfolds, and at what point what kind of feedback makes sense. That's one of the fun things, it's very educational, I think we're both willing to learn new things and grow with the job, and it's been fun making this entirely different type of game from what we're familiar with. Seeing it first-hand has been really cool.

GameSpy: Is The Old Republic your most important project right now? Just looking at what World of Warcraft did for Blizzard, do you see it as the one with the biggest potential?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: We have a lot of important projects. Every franchise, every studio has projects that are important.

GameSpy: You have to love all your babies, right?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Sure, yeah. It's certainly one of the bigger priorities for us on the horizon. There's always a couple that kind of rise above the other, longer-term ones. I think we want to see all of them become very successful, to be frank; there are never any second-class citizens. They're all important in their own right, relative to the investment level that we're putting into them, the time we spend on them, the team size and things like that.

GameSpy: Mass Effect 2 just came out a while ago and Dragon Age wasn't out very long before it. Comparing results versus your expectations going into it, how did those games do? What were your expectations?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: I think they both overperformed, both critically and commercially, relative to our original targets, which were very high and ambitious. The teams just outdid themselves, I think in both cases, to make something really great. Dragon Age, I think, is an amazingly deep, rich experience. We built it intending to kind of go back, make a spiritual successor to some of the core RPGs of the past, but it's definitely reached beyond the core RPG audience, it's sold really well, and been critically acclaimed too. Post-release, the downloadable content has been really well-received, and we have a lot more of that planned. The expansion pack's planned, because we started out around the time we started to polish the game, before launch we were starting to build that out, and as a result we're able to launch that now, in the next week. The Awakening expansion.

Mass Effect 2 is the highest-rated game we've ever released. It went out with a bang. Some of the sales figures we heard, it's apparently the biggest January launch of all time; that's pretty cool.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: It was still on the charts in February, in the middle of the chart positions. It's still chugging along pretty well.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: And we have a lot more stuff planned throughout the year, to continue that long tail. Our games typically sell well for a long time. Especially when we support them, and we're really going to support our fans on both Dragon Age and Mass Effect as well.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: They have the richest follow-on content plans of anything we've done. I think we're getting to the point where with something like Dragon Age, over its lifetime, there may be more content available for sale than in the original game. People, of course, will make their decisions personally about what they want to buy, what they don't want to buy. But we've talked about this a lot before, the concept of the games as platforms. You really have to think beyond just the retail event. I think that the initial retail event is the start of the relationship, but then you really have to cultivate it in a meaningful way after that.

That's been one of the interesting challenges, because historically we've been in that sphere. Certainly with Neverwinter, that was in our thinking. But to really embrace it is a bit of a shift for your typical game developer. They want to put that game in the box and move on.

It's interesting seeing all the indie stuff and everything else, and of course all the free-to-play stuff happening. The world is just seeing this huge shift in what people are spending their money and their time on. So we have to adapt and continue to adapt, which is another reason why this is still pretty interesting and challenging.

GameSpy: Speaking of adapting, a lot of people at GDC are talking about new distribution models. Do you have any predictions or guesses as to whether these will be what we're going to see in the next few years?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Well, we're part of the OnLive announcement. [Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 will be available through OnLive when it launches this June.] So we're planning to look pretty closely at those and try our best to support that service. We'll see how it goes. It's about adapting to the needs of the customers. The content we build will adapt as well, but so will business models, how we sell things, how the fans view them and how they purchase them; how we distribute them will change too.

That's all good, it's all adapting to what the market needs. It's really part of our total group philosophy, where games are our service. We have to keep adapting what we build to what the fans want over time. And always strive for high quality, supporting them, a lot of customer support, a lot of continuous content delivery. Whether you're selling things to fans through subscription, or episodic delivery, or post-release content, frequent expansions and sequels, micro-transactions, these are all different models you can pursue. You can combine some of them, too. Any way you look at it, it's always a service, and that's different, it's a total shift in thinking from what was more common maybe five, 10 years ago.

A retail launch, you sort of fire-and-forget, you walk away from it. We've never really believed in that approach, we've always thought community was important, we've always been trying to invest in user-generated content and post-release content. Now, it seems like the market is really engaged in that, they really want that. We're totally there. We really believe in that. And everything across our group is pursuing that in different ways, like community-building, service orientation, lots of post-release content and subscription models. It's a very exciting time for us.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I think, going back to the initial question, too, I think the concept of OnLive and all the different services offered, it's really stunning. It has the chance to, in a sense, revolutionize the business. The idea that any television can probably have an embedded chip, it'll have my controller and it'll contact to the core server and set up the game; it's stunning. I think there's a lot to be figured out in terms of business model and picking up from the consumer end, comprehension about it, and belief. But once that's all working it's very exciting, because it allows us to do lots of cool things in terms of reaching more people and getting to different places.

Things like demos can literally be just the game with a clock that, you get 10 hours of play for a certain amount of money, or for free, and if you like it, you can continue. All kinds of interesting things become opened up. I think we're still sitting on the top of the mountain, kind of wondering what's going to happen when you start riding your bike down it. But it's going to be very interesting... It's really not a question of "if" anymore, it's a question of "when." When this becomes adopted by the consumers. For us, it opens up a whole new channel.

 

GameSpy: At least with our community, the initial backlash has been that gamers, especially in this economy, they don't want to double-dip. They don't want to pay a subscription fee and then on top of that pay for rentals or games. That seems like the big flaw in the plan. Consumers want to get something for their money, and if six months goes by and the company isn't around anymore, what did they get for that several-hundred-dollar investment?

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yeah, it's interesting, that's why I think the business model still... we'll see what consumers are willing to go with.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Yeah. Different services have different models, too. And that is a separate company from EA, of course, so they have their own philosophy around that. It may or may not be the same as EA's long-term, or other companies' long-term. But in any event, the technology is really interesting, and we're certainly supportive of it, trying to build some products for the launch of it.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I think it's going to get figured out, it's exciting, now that we're seeing this on the horizon, it's coming closer and closer.

GameSpy: I think it's inevitable that something like that becomes widely accepted...

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yeah.

GameSpy: ...because the brick-and-mortar store, its days are numbered as far as I'm concerned.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Well, the counter-argument to that is, there's no specific reason why multiple modes of distribution aren't a viable future as well. At least in the near- to mid-term. I'm saying "near- to mid-term" like five-plus years out. Beyond that, things could change again, but if consumers want to go to brick-and-mortar retail stores, pick up something physical, they want a manual or a cloth map or a pin or something like that in the box.

Or maybe it's how they learn about games, they go there, they see a kiosk, they get to play it, just check it out. The salesperson may evangelize one or more games. Or maybe it's a place where they can meet their friends in person, talk about stuff. That's okay. If they get it on XBL or PSN, or on Steam or EA Store, that's okay too. There's maybe other modalities too, online, other streaming services, that's okay. They're all different distribution modalities. At the end it's about adapting to what the fan behavior is, what they want, and their preferences.

I like having a physical disc, I like getting collector's editions. I enjoy buying those for my favorite games. I always want to buy that version, the loaded edition, give me some extra content, give me something cool that I can put on a desk. I've got a whole bunch of collector's edition stuff, kind of my "Hall of Favorite Games" in my study. You know, the bobblehead from Fallout, all kinds of maps from our games in the past, signed copies from my favorite developers when I've had the pleasure of meeting them; I've gotten them to sign boxes like a fanboy. I do that pretty often. For me, I just love doing that, and I think there are a lot of fans who enjoy having physical copies. I also enjoy downloading games, I also try to play online, I think it's really cool, streaming games. I think all of them are viable paths.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I think there's another interesting dimension, too, that at least right now, we haven't been able to reliably prove, like a retail event, the hype event, as much as a retail launch. That seems to still be the vehicle by which you launch a successful game. Maybe there's always going to be a segment which is in the retail store, if anything just to let people know that it's there. Obviously, online ads and everything else should be just as effective, but up until now, it's still been that retail event, that launch in the store, the flyers that go up...

Dr. Ray Muzyka: People lining up down the block to get their copy...

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yeah. It becomes a physical event. That's, I think, for me, I actually believe that stores are sticking around practically indefinitely. They may actually be different from the stores we conceive of now, in the sense that, back to your point, they may be a place where you hang out and you chat about games and then maybe put your card in a kiosk and get something on there and bring it home.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Or maybe get a card that you take a code in, get some cool items for having bought it at the store. There's a variety of ways this could work.

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yeah. I don't think that the store event is going to go away, because we still actually need it. It's still beneficial to us collectively. So it's very interesting, because I think, obviously so much stuff is going to be free to play, micro-transactions, we're very interested in that, looking at that very closely as well. It's such a tumultous time right now, but it's very interesting in that opportunities are huge.

Dr. Ray Muzyka: We view the launch of our games sort of as a platform, by which we engage a community long-term and then launch that service idea. So how are we going to launch the platform? It could be digitally, or through streaming, or through a retail store. So long as you get that relationship built with the consumer, with the fans, and try to release something that's really good. That relationship is one that's built on trust, built on high brand values and quality. That's a positive, win-win kind of thing long term.

GameSpy: Greg, I believe you recently commented on the future of the Dragon Age franchise lying in a new engine...

Dr. Greg Zeschuk: No, no, I think we're always evolving our technology. I think it's fair to say that future Dragon Age stuff will be considerably stronger, visually and everything else.

It's interesting, there's two parts to that story. Obviously we're going to work on our technology, we have been working on our tech, it's getting a lot of serious refinement. But the other side of that whole coin is actually knowing how to use your tools. I think typically, especially in a game as expansive as Dragon Age, it's hard to bring everything... By the time you finish a game, you typically know how everything works, how your tools work, how your lighting works, how you tweak everything. And then you have to go back and say, "Oh, man, how are we going to bring all this up to the level we now know we can reach?"

So I don't think there are specifically new engine plans, so much as, let's make the technology better. There are always new things you can add. I think the great thing about the way we built our engine is how we can pop the modules in and out and improve them. And secondarily, take that knowledge and link it up really tightly with the art direction and the technical art, and make stuff that's much stronger visually. I think there's a lot of stuff we can do to improve on it, so it's really just that life cycle of continuous improvement. 

You look at the progress from Mass 1 to Mass 2... We actually redid the lighting system in that, and it's a very different, dramatic lighting, both in combat and also particularly in conversations. So it's just a natural evolution. Building a project as big as the ones we do, you learn a lot of things. The great thing about sequels is that's where you can apply it. The follow-on product is where you take what you've learned and actually put that in.