BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip. Since 2007, the company has been owned by American publisher Electronic Arts.
Neverwinter Nights is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare. Interplay Entertainment was originally set to publish the game, but financial difficulties led to it being taken over by Infogrames, who released the game under their Atari range of titles. It is the first installment in the Neverwinter Nights series and was released for Microsoft Windows on June 18, 2002. BioWare later released a Linux client in June 2003, requiring a purchased copy of the game to play. MacSoft released a Mac OS X port in August 2003.
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Interplay Entertainment. It is the sequel to 1998's Baldur's Gate and was released for Windows in September 2000. Following its predecessor, the game takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a fantasy campaign setting, and is based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition rules. Powered by BioWare's Infinity Engine, Baldur's Gate II uses an isometric perspective and pausable real-time gameplay. The player controls a party of up to six characters, one of whom is the player-created protagonist; the others are certain characters recruited from the game world.
Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Irvine, California and part of Xbox Game Studios. It was founded in June 2003, shortly before the closure of Black Isle Studios, by ex-Black Isle employees Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, and Chris Jones.
Dragon Age: Origins is a 2009 role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. It is the first game in the Dragon Age franchise. Set in the fictional kingdom of Ferelden during a period of civil strife, the game puts the player in the role of a warrior, mage, or rogue coming from an elven, human, or dwarven background. The player character is recruited into the Grey Wardens, an ancient order that stands against monstrous forces known as "Darkspawn", and is tasked with defeating the Archdemon that commands them and ending their invasion. The game is played from a third-person perspective that can be shifted to a top-down perspective. Throughout the game, players encounter various companions, who play major roles in the game's plot and gameplay.
Minsc is a fictional character in the Baldur's Gate series of Dungeons & Dragons role-playing video games developed by BioWare and Larian Studios. He originated from the pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons sessions held by the lead designer of Baldur's Gate, James Ohlen, and was expanded upon by the game's lead writer, Lukas Kristjanson. His video game debut was in Baldur's Gate as a companion character who can join the player's party. He also appears in the sequel, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, the expansion, Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, the 2015 game Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, the 2023 game Baldur's Gate 3, as well as in promotions relating to the titles. Minsc is voiced by Jim Cummings in his original video game appearances, and by Matt Mercer in Baldur's Gate 3.
Neverwinter Nights 2 is a role-playing video game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Atari Interactive. It is the second installment in the Neverwinter Nights series and is the sequel to BioWare's Neverwinter Nights, based on the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy tabletop role-playing game. Neverwinter Nights 2 utilizes an adaptation of the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition rules. Players create player characters to represent themselves in the game, using the same character creation rules as found in the Dungeons & Dragons game. They may gain the assistance of additional party members, and they eventually acquire a keep that can be used as a base of operations. Neverwinter Nights 2 is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting—in and around the city of Neverwinter. The story is mostly unrelated to Neverwinter Nights and follows the journey of an orphaned adventurer investigating a group of mysterious artifacts known as "silver shards" and their connection to an ancient, evil spirit known as the King of Shadows.
Raymond Alexander Muzyka is a Canadian investor, entrepreneur and physician. Originally trained as a medical doctor and practicing as an emergency department and family physician after graduation, he is the co-founder of video game developer BioWare, and was CEO, senior vice president, and general manager of the BioWare label of Electronic Arts. In October 2012 he announced that he was embarking on a 'third career' mentoring and angel investing in technology, new media, medical and social entrepreneurs, and impact investing at ThresholdImpact.
Baldur's Gate is a role-playing video game that was developed by BioWare and published in 1998 by Interplay Entertainment. It is the first game in the Baldur's Gate series and takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a high fantasy campaign setting, using a modified version of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) 2nd edition rules. It was the first game to use the Infinity Engine for its graphics, with Interplay using the engine for other Forgotten Realms-licensed games, including the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment. The game's story focuses on a player-made character who travels across the Sword Coast alongside a party of companions.
Drew Karpyshyn is a Canadian video game scenario writer, scriptwriter and novelist of Ukrainian descent. He served as a senior writer on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for BioWare and lead writer for the first two Mass Effect video games. He left BioWare in 2012 to focus on his Chaos Born novels, and returned to it three years later in 2015. On March 9, 2018, he announced he was leaving BioWare once again to pursue his independent work.
James Ohlen is a video game designer. He was Senior Creative Director of BioWare where he worked for 22 years prior to starting the publishing company Arcanum Worlds in 2018. In 2019, Ohlen became the lead of a new internal development studio Archetype Entertainment under Wizards of the Coast to develop new intellectual property and video games for the company.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir is an expansion pack for the role-playing video game Neverwinter Nights 2, developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Atari Interactive. It was released in late 2008 in North America, Europe, and Australia. Like previous entries in the Neverwinter Nights series, Storm of Zehir is based on the paper and pencil fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and uses the game's 3.5 edition ruleset.
Darkness over Daggerford is a premium module for BioWare's Neverwinter Nights role-playing video game. It was released for digital distribution on August 16, 2006. Considered a user-made mod, the game was created by Canadian company Ossian Studios, headed by former BioWare employee Alan Miranda. It was remastered and released as an official premium module on June 1, 2018.
Alan Miranda is a computer game designer.
Casey Hudson is a Canadian video game developer, known for his work on several of BioWare's video games, and mainly the Mass Effect trilogy as game director.
David Gaider is a Canadian narrative designer and writer. He was the lead writer and creator of the setting for the role-playing video game series Dragon Age.
Western role-playing video games are role-playing video games developed in the Western world, including the Americas and Europe. They originated on mainframe university computer systems in the 1970s, were later popularized by titles such as Ultima and Wizardry in the early- to mid-1980s, and continue to be produced for modern home computer and video game console systems. The genre's "Golden Age" occurred in the mid- to late-1980s, and its popularity suffered a downturn in the mid-1990s as developers struggled to keep up with changing fashion, hardware evolution and increasing development costs. A later series of isometric role-playing games, published by Interplay Productions and Blizzard Entertainment, was developed over a longer time period and set new standards of production quality.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an action role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. The fourth major game in the Dragon Age franchise, The Veilguard is the sequel to Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014). Set ten years after Inquisition, the game features new locations in the fictional world of Thedas for the player to explore. The story follows a player character known as Rook, who attempts to stop Solas, also known as the elven trickster god Fen'Harel, from destroying the Veil that imprisons amoral elven gods. Rook accidentally unleashes two of the gods, who wreak havoc across Thedas in an attempt to conquer the world; supported by companions and various factions, Rook sets out to stop them. Players control Rook from a third-person perspective and travel to various zones via magical portals known as Eluvians. Veilguard utilizes a "hub-and-spoke" world design unlike its predecessor's open world.
The D.I.C.E. Award for Role-Playing Game of the Year is an award presented annually by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences during the D.I.C.E. Awards. "This award honors a title, single-player or multi-player, where an individual assumes the role of one or more characters and develops those characters in terms of abilities, statistics, and/or traits as the game progresses. Gameplay involves exploring, acquiring resources, solving puzzles, and interacting with player or non-player characters in the persistent world. Through the player's actions, his/her virtual characters' statistics or traits demonstrably evolve throughout the game". All active creative/technical, business, and affiliate members of the Academy are qualified to vote for this category. The award initially had separate awards for console games and computer games at the 1st Annual Interactive Achievement Awards in 1998, with the first winners being Final Fantasy VII for console and Dungeon Keeper for computer. Throughout the history of this category, there have been numerous mergers and changes for role-playing related games. The current version was established at the 21st Annual D.I.C.E. Awards in 2018, which was awarded to Nier: Automata.
