GDC Lifetime Award Goes to BioWare Founders

[Cognimancer]

GDC Lifetime Award Goes to BioWare Founders

The BioWare Doctors will soon have something else to display next to their degrees.

Each year, the Game Developers Choice Awards honors an outstanding individual who has made a great impact on games and game development with its Lifetime Achievement Award. In previous years, recipients have included Warren Spector, Hideo Kojima, and Shigeru Miyamoto. For the 2013 award, however, it seems the judges just couldn't settle on one person. Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, co-founders of BioWare, will be the joint recipients of the award at the Game Developers Conference next month.

Doctors Muzyka and Zeschuk, better known as "the BioWare Doctors" among their peers, founded BioWare after meeting in medical school at the University of Alberta. After earning their degrees, they developed games while working double as doctors until they could work on their games full-time. Their first major success came in 1998 with Baldur's Gate, which paved the way for a series of critically acclaimed releases including Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age.

"The BioWare Doctors are truly a unique breed," says Meggan Scavio, General Manager of GDC events. "Not only have they created some of the most emotionally-engaging and beloved games ever made, they are two of the most passionate, engaging, just all-around nice guys anyone could be fortunate enough to meet. Anyone, be they a longtime colleague or a fan who's met them only once at an event like GDC can tell you they treat everyone like a friend, and I am so pleased we can show them our deep appreciation this year with this award ... There's no denying the deep footprint Ray and Greg have made, and how much their dedication and leadership will be missed in our industry."

The Doctors will formally receive their accolades at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony at GDC 2013 in San Francisco this March. Though retired from game development, both Muzyka and Zeschuk have big plans for the future: Muzyka plans to start mentoring and investing in technology, new media, medical innovation and social entrepreneurs, and Zeschuk is working on a series of web documentaries titled "The Beer Diaries."

Looking back at their track record, these two visionaries have certainly had a good run. Say what you will about the company's recent endeavors, but at least its founders will be getting an ending that doesn't suck.

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[Therumancer]

Well, it's hard not to roll your eyes at this in response to the recent endeavors of the company. If you had asked me if these guys deserved it a few years ago the answer would have been "yes", however right now I think recent events with Bioware have simply created too much divided sentiment for them to be receiving any kind of "achievement" award especially seeing as it can be argued that a lot of the recent debacles that have devided their followers have been so extreme that they have arguably destroyed a lot of the work these guys would be being praised for, in the eyes of the fans.

The timing of the entire thing is bad, they should have picked someone else whose work is under less contrevery and scrutiny.

To me it's like a famous artist creating world celebrated works of art in painting and sculpture, before going through a fecephille period where he feels the need to not only create work celebrating poo, but to take it to the extent where he needs to have it retroactively touch on all of his previous works. He goes around with a brush, hammer, and chisel and adds steaming piles to his previous work, which he cannot fail to leaving untouched by his later life revelations. His followers become divided, some continue to worship his work because to them he can do no ill and is a god, his real cult of personality. Others who were fans go "ewww, this is kind of gross... another artist went mad, at least he didn't cut off his ears". Giving him an award based on what his work WAS before he kind of ruined it in the hear and now isn't really appropriate. Maybe with some counseling and meds he can get back on track, redeem himself, fix his body of work, and reunite his fan base, and then he'd deserve an award, but he kind of fell to the point where he shouldn't have received one while he was running around creating poo as art.

Just my thoughts, many people think there is nothing wrong with Bioware nowadays, I am not one of them. I wish they would get back on track and redeem themselves though.

I get what's being said in the last paragraph of the article, but I kind of feel that when it comes to awards current events need to be considered, as they can very much undo a body of work before them. I certainly do not seem to be alone in feeling that Mass Effect 3 did not just have a bad ending, but actually managed to diminish the rest of the series and it's accomplishments simply by the ending existing, and then there is Dragon Age 2, which I won't even get into right now.

 

[ResonanceSD]

The timing of the entire thing is bad, they should have picked someone else whose work is under less contrevery and scrutiny.

To me it's like a famous artist creating world celebrated works of art in painting and sculpture, before going through a fecephille period where he feels the need to not only create work celebrating poo, but to take it to the extent where he needs to have it retroactively touch on all of his previous works. He goes around with a brush, hammer, and chisel and adds steaming piles to his previous work, which he cannot fail to leaving untouched by his later life revelations.



His followers become divided, some continue to worship his work because to them he can do no ill and is a god, his real cult of personality. Others who were fans go "ewww, this is kind of gross... another artist went mad, at least he didn't cut off his ears". Giving him an award based on what his work WAS before he kind of ruined it in the hear and now isn't really appropriate. Maybe with some counseling and meds he can get back on track, redeem himself, fix his body of work, and reunite his fan base, and then he'd deserve an award, but he kind of fell to the point where he shouldn't have received one while he was running around creating poo as art.

Dude what the heck even is this? If you want to say that recent events have damaged BioWare as a brand, then go ahead. But try to be coherent.

However, you should probably be told that these two haven't been associated with BioWare for quite a while. EA bought it, then it went down the tubes.

Or, in deference to your earlier post, the "poo-chute".

 

[Therumancer]

The timing of the entire thing is bad, they should have picked someone else whose work is under less contrevery and scrutiny.

To me it's like a famous artist creating world celebrated works of art in painting and sculpture, before going through a fecephille period where he feels the need to not only create work celebrating poo, but to take it to the extent where he needs to have it retroactively touch on all of his previous works. He goes around with a brush, hammer, and chisel and adds steaming piles to his previous work, which he cannot fail to leaving untouched by his later life revelations.



His followers become divided, some continue to worship his work because to them he can do no ill and is a god, his real cult of personality. Others who were fans go "ewww, this is kind of gross... another artist went mad, at least he didn't cut off his ears". Giving him an award based on what his work WAS before he kind of ruined it in the hear and now isn't really appropriate. Maybe with some counseling and meds he can get back on track, redeem himself, fix his body of work, and reunite his fan base, and then he'd deserve an award, but he kind of fell to the point where he shouldn't have received one while he was running around creating poo as art.

Dude what the heck even is this? If you want to say that recent events have damaged BioWare as a brand, then go ahead. But try to be coherent.

However, you should probably be told that these two haven't been associated with BioWare for quite a while. EA bought it, then it went down the tubes.

Or, in deference to your earlier post, the "poo-chute".

Alright, I'll concede the point. I admit I missed a few details. Apologies.

Hopefully people won't jump all over me for saying that.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Alright, I'll concede the point. I admit I missed a few details. Apologies.

Hopefully people won't jump all over me for saying that.

You missed the central premise of this article, and decided to jump on the founders of BioWare for what EA has done.


Anyway, we're all much more likely to jump on you for pretending you know what the issues are in a discussion about Australian game pricing when in reality, you think we're stuck in the 1980s.

 

[Therumancer]

Alright, I'll concede the point. I admit I missed a few details. Apologies.

Hopefully people won't jump all over me for saying that.

You missed the central premise of this article, and decided to jump on the founders of BioWare for what EA has done.


Anyway, we're all much more likely to jump on you for pretending you know what the issues are in a discussion about Australian game pricing when in reality, you think we're stuck in the 1980s.

Not really, it's more of a general thing, stemming from various political debates.

For the record I don't "pretend" to know anything, while I do make mistakes and occasionally jump the gun on things, I typically don't speak without a degree of certainy. While I get that some Aussies are unhappy with what I have to say, I think it mostly comes down to not being what they want to hear. While on some levels I hope I'm wrong, I think time and the final results might very well vindicate what I've been saying, even if it takes a couple of years. I've been in that position more than once on other, similar, subjects. This is massively off topic though.

 

[Strazdas]

folks, this is not about australia. Now be happy i got actually work to do at work or i would go troll the debate you are having.

those guys did deserve the award in my opinion so all is fine and well here.

 

[Furism]

One way to look at it is the evolution of their games. Have their games become better or worse over the years? Many of the early fans will tell you "worse." Many people still cite Baldur's Gates as one of the best RPG ever made, much less so for Dragon Age Origin, and even less for DA2. For the ME franchise, the gameplay itself might have been adjusted (or improved, depending on your opinion), but one can't ignore the whole ME3 ending debacle.

So if we just look at that, I don't think they really deserve an award. That'd be rewarding somebody becoming less and less good at what he does.