BioWare is one of the most respected developers in the videogame industry. From Baldur's Gate to Mass Effect, BioWare has consistently dictated taste rather than react to it. Its pioneering sense has not just lead to admiration, but also to a catalog of million-plus sellers, which is precisely why publishing giant Electronic Arts scooped it up in an expensive 2007 acquisition. Thanks to its groundbreaking PC and console role-playing games, BioWare has both elevated the genre and established Canada as a world power in the gaming industry. With their biggest game -- Mass Effect 2 -- now arriving, and their fifteenth anniversary just weeks away, it's safe to say that BioWare is just getting started.

Videogame development can be among the most daunting fields to break into, but there are many paths to take. BioWare's founders met at the University of Alberta, where they were studying medicine. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuck first worked together programming educational software for the Faculty of Medicine. The duo was soon joined by Augustine Yip, who collaborated with them on a medical simulation program. Their work may have been satisfying in the sense that it helped to make people healthy, but there was a creative itch left unscratched.Muzyka, Zeschuck and Yip relaxed by playing computer games and after a few years they realized that this was where their passion was. The medical field was satisfying and lucrative, but it was time for the group to move on. And it was precisely their success in medicine that afforded them the resources needed to start their next venture – a videogame company. They pooled together $100,000 and set out to make their first game.They developed a proof-of-concept demo for what would eventually become Shattered Steel. Rooted in the tradition of MechWarrior, it featured an impressive high-res 3D engine with smooth, rolling hills reminiscent of NovaLogic's voxel-powered games. They submitted their demo to ten publishers, and to their surprise and delight, seven were willing to put an offer on the table.They signed with Interplay , a move that would pay dividends in the near future. The deal paid off their initial investment and gave them access to Interplay's vast development resources. Calgary-based Pyrotek Game Studios were contracted to aid BioWare in finishing the freshman effort. BioWare was so happy with the collaboration, they would later hire away some of Pyrotek's veterans.Shattered Steel was a modest success, receiving positive reviews and seeing decent sales. Of particular note was the detailed deformable terrain that allowed players to blast craters in the sides of hills, and zone damage that allowed strategic-minded sharpshooters to take out weapons mounted on enemies. Interplay was pleased with the game, too, and a sequel was planned for 1998. It would never come to pass, as BioWare's second game was about to completely eclipse anything Shattered Steel could have hoped for and define the company's direction to this day.BioWare's founders have admitted they didn't expect much when they started their company, but this didn't stop them from thinking ahead. Even as their first game was only halfway through production, they were hard at work on a very different sort of project, of a much broader scope. BioWare's founders and staff were passionate fans of role-playing games – both the computerized sort and their pen-and-paper ancestors – and they wanted to try their hand at a large-scale RPG of their own.Interplay financed some exploratory development, and BioWare returned with a demo called Battleground: Infinity. Their choice of partner proved to be quite fortunate indeed. Upon seeing the demo, the publisher suggested it might be a good fit for the Dungeons & Dragons license, which it had just snatched away from SSI. Infinity was recast in the world of Forgotten Realms.The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons license would prove to be a bigger boon to the title than branding alone would suggest. To BioWare, this was not just a mythology and a logo on the box, but a game they had a great deal of passion for, and whose rule book was not to be tampered with. Virtually every RPG owes a debt to D&D, and Baldur's Gate was in some ways an effort to take the genre back to its roots, but in a very modern package.The decision to make a multi-player, real-time game based on AD&D rules was controversial at the time, drawing skepticism and even mockery from hardcore RPG fans. Dungeons & Dragons had a rich tradition in computer gaming, strengthened during the days of SSI's "Gold Box" series, and fans had a set concept of how its rules should be interpreted for the digital realm. BioWare's more modernized take proved, however, to be more in line with the mass audience's tastes, particularly after Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo brought Western RPGs to a new breed of gamer.But Baldur's Gate was no Diablo. While Blizzard's game was something of a modernized version of Rogue , BioWare's creation put the focus on role-playing in the classic sense. Every aspect of the game was designed around allowing the player to explore a deep story on his own terms, with his own character, and with plenty of room for individuals to have unique experiences. This fresh approach may be owed to a certain naiveté on the part if the team. Aside from BioWare's founders, who had worked on Shattered Steel, no one on BioWare's Baldur's Gate team had ever worked full-time on a game before.The development carried on for three long years, as both Diablo and Fallout primed the market for Western RPGs, and Final Fantasy VII brought role-playing to the largest audience yet. It also saw BioWare's founders finally face a career crossroads. For most of Baldur's Gate's development, the three doctors continued to practice medicine by day, but by the project's final year, the realities of game development became too demanding. Muzyka and Zeschuck left the medical field and remain at the helm of BioWare, where they remain today. Yip decided to leave to practice medicine full-time.Baldur's Gate set the tone for the rest of BioWare's career. While there may not be any one particular element that was revolutionary, it struck a unique balance of depth and accessibility. It went on to sell more than two million copies, nearly matching Diablo's numbers, making it the most successful Dungeons & Dragons title up to that point. Others soon followed in BioWare's footsteps, as the Infinity Engine was used for Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series, making BioWare a leader in the computer RPG genre.