Dr. Greg Zeschuk, co-founder Bioware.

My guess today is the co-founder of BioWare. While a medical student at the University of Alberta, he told his future wife that if he could, he'd make video games for a living. After he graduated, the dream came true. In 1995, he and two friends found it BioWare in his basement. The following year, the trio released Shattered Steel, and two years after that, Baldur's Gate, which revolutionised the world of computer role-playing games. In the years that followed, BioWare released a string of blockbuster hits, including Mass Effect and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. In 2007, just 12 years after its founding, the company was sold to Electronic Arts as part of a deal worth $860 million. In recent years, my guests have started a brewing company, Blind Enthusiasm, and today runs two micro-brewries and a restaurant in Edmonton, where he has spent most of his life. Welcome, Greg Zestchuk. Hey, thank you for the pleasure to be here. Yeah, so nice to meet you, Greg. So yeah, can you take me into this scene? You're studying to become a doctor. You've got your career as a valuable contributing member of society all mapped out. And then you and two of your friends decide to abandon all that and make video games. Do you remember where you were when you made that decision? Yeah, I think the interesting thing is it kind of evolved. So what I would say is that we originally were doing some medical education software. So we were doing sort of like transposing medical scenarios on the computer. We were actually experiencing extremely poor medical education software and we were playing games at the time. So we're like, well, we can do better. And actually, literally that's what we did. So we built some medical education software. Then along the way, people said, "Ah, there's no money in medical medicine or education or medical education or training." And then we decided to get into games. And then one day Ray and I were sitting literally having lunch and there was this napkin of where he still raised the napkin, he claims, which I'm part of sure he does, that we kind of discussed with this idea for a company as yet unnamed. And that's what we decided. We were still, I think we were kind of like right at the end of medical school or beginning as interns, but we kind of had the stream and started pursuing it. So the name BioWare was that what you were calling your medical software or did that come afterwards? I think that sort of came with the medical software. You know, very hasty. It's like 30 something years ago now. So yeah, I think we had named a BioWare by that point. And you know, it was funny because BioWare was sort of a combination of things. It was like software for humans. There was a sort of a medical connotation that we were doctors. And then I think there's a game called Shadow Run where BioWare, it's a pen and paper game from ages ago that BioWare was sort of like, you know, like cyber technology you can certain to your brain. So it was sort of like, it was sort of a combination of all these things and we thought, originally we called it ascended BioWare then decided that was much too elaborate and decided to go just with BioWare. So what's he drawing on the napkin? I'm trying to remember. I think it's just like, hey, we'll kind of make a company and we'll do some stuff. Like it was pretty, I think it was like literally just a couple notes, like, you know, like, like, raise a very thorough guy. And so make video games, question mark profit. Yeah. We've had fun. I think probably more than to have profit. Okay. But yeah. And what was the reaction of, you know, those around you, you know, you, it's not easy to get a medical degree and all three of you had done that. So was there a sense of skepticism at this choice you were making or were they pleased for you? I think I think it's just another phase. You know, I go through a lot of random phases as a person. And so I think from my parents perspective, people around me, because I just another one of his funny phases. And, you know, this will like all two things in the past. This will also pass. But I think I sort of stuck. And obviously we were pretty good at it. And it's fun. I mean, like, I think for us, like, a lot of it was like, define creative satisfaction. I think medicine is not really very creative career. I always joke that no one really likes a creative doctor. And that's in fact, you know, being, you know, and I've kind of learned since then making and building is what my passion personally is, like making things, building things, creating things. And I mean, medicine has limited opportunity for that. Like that's, it's more of a service business, which, you know, hate to call that, but that's kind of what it is. It's also a sales business where you're kind of selling to try and convince your patients to take them at the medicine. So it's, it's like, I kind of found what I wanted and pursuing it. Obviously it worked out. And we're going to get into the details of how and why it worked out. But when you look back now, as you say from a position of 30-odd years, does it feel like all this was inevitable or does it feel much more precarious? And, and like, there was a good chance she would never have, you know, ended up where you ended up? Oh, I think there was always a good chance. Like, I, you know, anyone who's ever succeeded in business has to ascribe an awful amount of luck and timing to their success. Like, well, you know, business leaders always like to see how great they are. The reality is, you got lucky, you timed it right. And you didn't actually even time it. Just kind of so happened because I was kind of go back to the time when Bioware was formed is also formed is like, you know, the same year that like, like when we were competing for game of the year with Polish gate wants some half life wants some, you know, and so, and the same time and Sonya started around the same time that Epic started like we were this golden generation of game companies where I think all these, all the conditions in the, of the world kind of combined to give us this opportunity to succeed. And those of us that managed to were lucky. But there's a lot of hard work, but there's a lot of fortunate things. So I always, I was joked that my fallback career was as a doctor. So I wasn't so bad if I failed. Oh, I could, I could jump with great great confidence if I failed. You know, the legacy of your work is really clear. We only have to look at the success of Baldur's Gate 3 from 2023 to see how, you know, the contemporary industry is just built on some of the foundations that you laid down at that time. But, but it's also changed a lot. And a lot of the major publishers are, their main products are kind of live service games these days. And they function a bit more like social media platforms and they're giving players lots and lots of to-do lists that cycle around or rewards to be collected, et cetera, et cetera, which is sort of a shift away from discrete storytelling, which is what I associate with your work and the games that you made. Are you, are you concerned about that, about the direction that the industry is taking? No, I did. I mean, I did it long enough to see the cycles, oh, PCs, Doom, consoles will rain forever. You know, single players doomed like events suddenly, like, you know, while a game like Baldur's Gate 3 can be done co-op, I mean, it's still a, that's hard. A single player game and, and I think you know, something like elder rain, both massive sellers. It's, it's, it's just inevitable. There's cycles. People, people like one thing, they like something else. I know I personally, I still play games very avidly. I'll flip between co-opper or competitive and then flip back to single player. I just think I don't think there it's, it's all alarmism in my opinion. And how much you pay attention to the industry in this, right? I mean, you say there that you still play games. Are you, are you deep in it on the forums? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know I'm pretty, I kind of, after I quit the business in 2012, I was, I spent two years, I'd say, recovering. That's probably super burnt out. And after about a 20 something year career, I was just really burned out and didn't play for two years. Then got back into it. I think actually the first game that got back into funny, I was, um, Dragon Age Inquisition. So that, and that was like really delightful for me to play a biore game that I didn't work on. Um, and then, yeah, I play, I kind of, you know, it's inevitable. Like so many of my friends are in the business. Like, I had colleagues and like, a lot of my social structures built around friends who, who are in the business. I mean, if you were to ask me what the current state of the business, that's a whole other thing. It's, it's actually incredibly sobering and worrying for me, particularly because I think it's just that we're going through a massive restructuring of just how I think it's going to work going forward, which is, which will be hard for people. But, um, I think also fan expectations are just so, so incredibly high. Like it's, you know, I finished, I finished, you know, Dragon Age The Veil Guard, like two weeks ago. I had a lot of fun with it. I had, it was a, for me, it was like, I don't, like, you know, I guess I, I'm not like the fans who waited 10 years with Bated Breath for the next installment. I'm just like, I take it as it is. It is, it is, as a fresh, fresh piece of content. And I really had a fun time with it. I really, really, there's so many good things I liked about that game. But then, you know, the feedback was, was pretty tough. Like, I think there's been, it's been very mixed, which I find, I feel makes me sad because I think at the heart of it, it's still a really great game. But like, man, like, it's, it's, it's tough. I mean, it's tough being in the game's business, I would say. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to bring that up because yes, that is definitely all going on at the moment. But that was also heartening when you were, when you were making games. So I think back to Mass Effect 3's end then, that was certainly, you know, that made headlines for a good few months and had a massive outcry from fans, you know, looking back, how do you feel about that specific incident? You know, do you know, I think intentions are good. Like, I, you can never do everything perfectly. And I think that that's one of the challenges as a game developers. To some degree, especially when there's high expectations, you think of a series like Mass Effect, like, absolutely beloved, an incredible overall experience. And then to maybe not reach the players expectations of the agency and, and, and decision making at the very final step when providing a more. new on-standing. Yeah, it's complicated. I mean, I was speaking fully, honestly. I was a slight bystander in it because I was really working on Star Wars, the older public. That was the online game, service-based game. Of course, the one I was responsible for and launched. So I was in the mix, but not in the firing line, if that made sense, but I really felt for the team because I understood with the purpose. But yeah, I think the thing is, whether your dream scenario is release a game, no one's ever heard of and do it really well because as soon as the expectations are there, it's just tough. It's like, it's like, right. I mean, yeah, I'm not suggesting that, this is the tension right through when you make things successful. It's like, you have a vision as a creative person and as a team that they want to make something and put it into the world, but they also have got all of this noise from fans. And you don't want to alienate them because that's your audience. But at the same time, if the fans take control of the wheel, like that's never going to end well either. So it's because you're trying to find that balance only between taking on feedback, but also kind of going, I don't care what you think. Like this is what I'm making, right? - 100% and I think then the other unfortunate, extreme pressure on the outside of that, you know, if you separate that from pure art, it's like you got these giant business conglomerate that are pushing for certain release dates or release times. And I think at Bioware, when Ray and I ran, our most effective thing was actually pushing for the dates that made the most sense to get the best possible product and make the best possible game. Like, you know, we would play something and declare, you know, with lots of research that was already and then like make it happen at a later date. And I think it's very hard. Like I look at a game like Anthem, like, oh man, like there was such a great core to that game. - booth. - But I mean, yeah, it needs a bake for another year. Like I, like, it's, I mean, I say this like I'm a funny, I'm a, I'm a, as a game developer, I'm a very technical is the wrong word, but mechanical, I can kind of like play a game and know where it is and kind of understand where you can get it to the end. And that was my skill set. Both Ray and I actually played everything incessantly. Him always a little more than me. I was always, he always had a few more hours somehow than the games. He played the Star Wars game even more than I did, like the older public. I don't know how, but that guy, he plays a lot of games. But yeah, we just were always really good at like, ensuring like we were pushing for the best possible outcome for the game, which also was the best outcome for the fans, the players. And I think, and I think that like that's lost in the industry 'cause like Ray and I had a reputation where we could like fight with executives. Didn't happen very often, but like we could. And we did and we, when we, we always won because it's like there wasn't a choice 'cause I think the better games resulted, you know? So I think for us that was like the sort of, some of the nuance of what we did in the business that we just made sure the games were good. We know what game good games are. You know, we play lots and lots of stuff. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, we're gonna get into all of that because you know, keeping that, some of that identity and those cool values is difficult when you sell your company to a big company, but let's talk about that a bit later. So we better. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - No, we gotta go back into that. - Yeah, we're gonna go back into that. Before we do that though, let's come to the premise of the podcast. So I've asked you to pick the five video games. You wanna put on your fictional games machine. You've picked games from the start of the industry all the way through to a recent, recent one. So we're going back to 1980 for your first one and Atari 2600 game. Tell us Greg, what's the game and why'd you love it? Atari Adventure. - You are on one side of a large deep chasm. The heavy white mist rising up from below obscures all view of the far side. A southwest path leads away from the chasm into a winding corridor. A rickety wooden bridge extends across the chasm vanishing into the mist. A sign posted on the bridge reads, stop, pay troll. A burly troll stands by the bridge and insists you throw him a treasure before you make cross. - It's just the simplest goofiest thing. It's like you're a little block and there's these three dragons. I think, I'm trying to remember, I think red, blue, yellow, but they didn't look like dragons. They looked like ducks. They walked upright. They looked like these ducks and they would chase you around and you had to get like the key to open the door to get the crown to put, like it was almost like a puzzle game, but there was just enough RPG elements where you had this little sword and you could kill the dragons with the sword and there's this really funny nuance of like, 'cause you were a square, you could actually attach the sword to different parts of your body and look at it as like pick up drop is super simple mechanic. And if you got it just right, you could like, you could be right out straight in front of you, so you could charge the dragons but or you could put it behind. It's like this kind of thing where it's so stupidly simple but it's sort of brilliant. And then I played it so much. Me and a friend of mine just played it. Like it was an hour long but I'm gonna play it for a year and I don't know what it was like about. Like I think for me, games always transported me somewhere different and like and you know, I'm not complaining at all. I've been pretty fortunate in my life but you know, I'm not trying to get away from anything but like man, getting away to these magical places and playing these games was always such a thrill. So silly but like it was just so much fun. - Was this one of the first games you played? - Yeah, I mean the very first game I played was like kind of a sort of a pong clone. I think Coleco did one. Like this is like, and it's funny 'cause I thought like, like it's probably the late 70s and I would have been, I would have been like, sub 10 years old or 10ish years old and my cousin's up in like North, I'm in Central Canada, so Northern Canada had this on their TV and this was back in the day when like any game system would burn into a TV so you could play for like an hour. So we would drive for five hours north to the frozen wasteland. We're not on the frozen way. That's the frozen wasteland and play this game for an hour and come back home after a weekend and I'd go, "Hey, when we going to visit my cousins again, I want to play that game." And it's just like, and it was pong, you know? And then it was like, what are we came back with, came with combat, the 2600. So that was like the little tank game and it was like super fun and I played a lot of these like early early, and then you know, I had the Atari, my friend had the Intellivision. So between the two of us, we played all this stuff. So yeah, really, really, I was really early, early console, North American console, 'cause it was interesting 'cause console and PC between the UK, Europe, like they discovered a diverseness of what was available, right? And then I flipped to PC pretty early, like Apple 2 Plus was the first computer I had and I was very fortunate. I had two parents that were teachers and so they kind of always thought, "Oh, these are educational devices." And that was our story, right? And yeah, but we were actually, they were really gaming platforms. - Yeah, so tell me about the, what it was like when you were growing up. Edmonton, I grew up here. It's a great little city. I mean, we're around a million people now. It's probably half a million where I grew up. - Yeah, just a deal with you in the city or in the suburbs. - Yeah, in the city, in the city, it's sort of suburb, kind of, like it was all suburb at that point. Like Edmonton is one giant suburb. There's a very small central, 'cause we all limited space. Like you know, where some cities have like a restriction of growth, we, it's actually kind of a problem with the city 'cause there's perpetual growth in every direction. So we have like a footprint larger than London with like one 10th of the population, right? So it's like, so the problem is we have, it's like super duper spread out. It continues to spread out, but back then it was nice. Like we could take the bus for 15 minutes to the library and rent a game and take it home. And you know, it was a, it was a, you know, a deal little childhood, like you know, went to the neighborhood school and you know, you could ride your bike or walk and parents were great, kids were great friends. We had a pretty good, pretty good cadre of view game obsessed people. Like, you know, all of us were kind of crazy about them at that time. I still was like, I played a lot of sports too. So I had sports and view games, or by mean interests. So I did both. I was kind of one of those, I wasn't like a quiet nerdy kid. I kind of was a little bit, but I was also very sports oriented too. So yeah, what's supposed to be play hockey, soccer, football, baseball. And it's interesting, I blew up my knee playing hockey when I was 16, then tore three of the four ligaments in it and that led to me reading lots of fantasy books, which is really funny 'cause I just like lay in bed and read books, so like lots of the D&D novels. And yeah, everything, I read tons of science fiction. I was young and I still read it a little bit now. Like E&M Banks and Alster Reynolds and a few of these really great, sort of interesting. I mean, it's funny 'cause a lot of like the AI oriented books are becoming quite relevant. Like the sort of stuff that E&M Banks wrote or E&M Banks. I can't remember which one is, is like real. He had one pen name which was like his horror real world stuff and then his E&M Banks. I can't remember. He wrote it all, really cool books, yeah. Anyway, so yeah, so yeah, just lots of red tons of stuff and then yeah, I got into D&D and then that was the gigantic downfall, like with sideways at that point. - Yes, I think we go you into D&D then. - I think we did it ourselves. We figured it out. We got the basic set. I can remember how we got it. I think there's like a hobby store and like they had this D&D, the basic set, because like the basic set was like kind of post like the advanced dungeon and drag us. It was almost like the sort of consumer, the more consumer friendly one. But then very quickly we flipped to the AD&D. And yeah, we would get together and play like just, you know, we would take turns being the DM. We'd spend tons of time creating cities and worlds and drawing maps and I mean, it's funny, tretoster. from Bean Dog, it was also on the original guys that buy where it was him and my cousin and him, and we'd play together D&D when we were kids. And it's just like, it was such a huge thing. And again, it was funny, like instead of going out to play sports all summer, we made a giant city on a ping pong table, just met maps and drew everything and wrote everything and just kind of created and created and created. And it didn't go anywhere. I would never even play the scenario. It just barely-- - Right. - Yeah, I don't know where you, 'cause I'm sure it's the garbage now, but we just spent a lot of time making and playing and building. - You mentioned Ray earlier, your co-founder by when, or Augustine as well, were they, did you know that when you were kids, or did you meet them when you got to uni? - Uni, Ray in undergrad and Og, the three of us for medical school together, that's when we really got to know each other. We kind of, our came from a separate school, but Ray and I were undergrad together, just kind of like in passing, but then got to be good friends and somehow bonded over the Fuzball table where we sort of selected, self-selected into Fuzball teams where I was the attacker and Ray was the defender. And we were one of the, there are three or four really good duos in the class that would battle it out for the title in med school, right? So med school instead of going to class, we play Fuzball. We go to class two, but then study, but like there's a lot of Fuzball in arcade games. We had this little kind of place called the Fishball where the game is the key to the kingdom so we could bring in one of our arcade games we wanted and then we built a repair at a Fuzball table and that was, yeah, we were pretty a bunch of us. I mean, the seniors had it and then kind of started falling apart and we took over, rebuilt it. And yeah, that was our center of operations where maybe we dreamed of gaming over the Fuzball table, Ray and I. So yeah, how did you get to becoming a med student because from the size of things, you're running around playing sports, to video games, to D&D, and you want to get down that path? I think I was a pretty good student. I was just kind of, I was a good enough student. And one massive qualifier I make, which is kind of funny is that in today's world, I would never have gotten into medical school. I wouldn't have been a good enough student because it's way harder. It's just much more difficult. And so I think it was easier when we got in, like when I got in. So I just kind of, I kind of always wanted to be a doctor. I think it was like, okay, on top of this, I want to be a doctor because I think that's something I want to help people and do stuff. And then I did it and I was like, you know, it was okay. I kind of like, I was actually already, when I had graduating from medical school, I'd already enrolled in computer engineering. Like I was already realized that I was going to, like leave the medical practicing side and go into technology. But I didn't know, like I literally was accepted in the computer engineering. I was going to work for the summer as a doctor, like a locomotive. I was finished by training. I was finished family medicine. I was going to spend two months working, making up my, to sort of survive for the year as engineering student, computers. So, and then we started by wearing it, just like kind of like, I don't even do this school stuff. And it's just kept on doing that. - Yeah, man. - So I kind of like, I kind of like did it and then realized early on. But then I worked for five years, like I worked as a doctor. And I enjoyed it. It was very enjoyable. I really enjoyed, like I like working with people. I like people a lot. And I enjoyed helping people. But you know, for me, it wasn't the career that I could see very early on. It wouldn't satisfy. I didn't know what the itch I had was at that point. So I just, I just knew I wouldn't satisfy it. And so I kind of shifted gears and it kind of like fell into, by-aware with Ray and Og, and it just kind of happened. In a good way, you know? - In a good way, yeah. All right, then, great. Let's come to your second game. So this is also from 1980, I believe. And yeah, although it wouldn't have been for the Atari, I'm guessing. But tell us about this one. - Yeah, that was on the PC. So I think the Winsardry, the Proving Ground's Matt Overlord was the first Winsardry install. And with that later, went to console quite a bit later, actually. Initially, it was on the Apple, let me just Apple 2 Plus. (soft music) - It was a dungeon stepper. And I mean, it's interesting too, 'cause if you asked me like, how old were you when you played, that's how you'd venture in how old were you and played Winsardry, I'd say, oh, it'd be like at least five years apart. But then I looked at the dates, I'm like, oh my God, it was only probably a couple of years. - Yeah. - And so I think it was an indicative of how fast things were changing. The first game I played, this little block, the next game, it was like this 3D wireframe dungeon, you're like very rudimentary by today's standard and bitmaps and like sort of sound effects, like you could hear footsteps, like it was like, and you know, like that one was just insane. Like, 'cause there was lots of like, back in those days, you couldn't, there was no map, like so like, you know, if these players coddle, there's maps, right? Like you have to go every map, I can see everything, there's the clears that I would say, no, no, you had to do your own maps. So it had like piles of graph paper and drew your own files and piles of every ultimate dungeon. Like Ray and I, like we both, like tons of like, all those adries, I just every dungeon mapped out and like drew all this stuff. Like, and like, there's only secret rooms and little secret stuff and like, there's like, like in dark areas that if you kind of traced every wall of it, you'd find a secret door and like, just that, again, that, that amazing, like for me exploration is often one of the biggest triggers, which is so ironic since like, Bioware Games weren't exploration focused, but for me that was like, I was wondering like, why we never did an open world game of that sort of story. But I never really clicked in that to be on that one. But yeah, like it's just like, again, I've just taken away and you know, you'd battle it out and it was cool then. It was like a little bit like ultra hardcore modes today. Like if you died in the dungeon, your players would be lost in the dungeon. You'd have to get your brand new party. You'd have to go down and if it took too long, like they could be lost forever or they'd be like, like infected, like it was really funny. I guess such a cool mechanic. Like it was a, the brinksmanship involved and was really was just so terrifying. And you know, you'd pop a door and you didn't know what you're gonna get then. If you hear these three beeps and it says the Milithic, it was like this demon lord and you're like, oh my God, I might die. And if I die everyone's gonna like, you know, and if you win, you get like a legendary equipment. Like it's, it's like, it was the precursor to like what we all play now and what we all design in a sense. And it was like, it was what 44 years ago. Like it's insane. Like it's basically, it's the culmination of the pen and paper stuff into like, like you know, it's really taken the pen and paper and putting it in a rudimentary way into graphics. So that was, I was obsessed. - Yeah, and in your life, which came first and playing pen and paper judges of dragons or wizardry? - Oh. - I think pen and paper started first. And then wizardry came and I think what happened for me is computer games took me away from pen and paper for a long time. So when I was a little younger, I was a lot of pen and paper. And then I stopped playing as much pen and paper 'cause games were just easier. You know, like it's, you didn't need to get a group of friends together. You didn't need to kind of like create a bunch of stuff. Like I was still, it was funny. I'd still read all the manuals for everything. I'd buy all the, but I just read them. I wouldn't like actually play. I've like hundreds of modules I never played. - Really. - I just, yeah, I just, it was like content. I just read it. - Yeah, and then, yeah, what's it started really getting going? And I kind of, yeah, I just sort of like games, you know, like pool of, when the D&D games really came out like pool of radiance and stuff like that. It was just crazy. And I got super obsessed. My wife got super mad at me. My, not then, my wife. 'Cause I always get, like I always do these multiple battles. Like you get into a battle, "Oh, I tell her, hey, I'll come over here, pick you up in an hour." And then another battle goes, "Oh my God, I'm gonna be late by another hour." So it would kind of string big battles with each other. So I, yeah, she learned very early that I was a problem player. (laughing) - That you were coming over to the finished request. - Yeah, it had to be done. I couldn't, that was my priority in my life. (soft music) - All right, well, let's come back to your story. So yeah, we left you, you've done five years as a practicing doctor and then you're doing this software company. And yeah, so I said in the intro, you set up in your basement and you have to, is that true or is that law known? - No, no, it's true. It's absolutely 100% true. And the other funny thing about it is I had this house. So that was after I came back from, I was in the Ohio for a year and they came back. Like I trained for one year in Ohio and came back to Edmonton. And then we set up my basement. And the basement was really, like raised really tall. He's like six foot five or six. And the basement was like six feet foot one. So my hair would just brush it, it was perfect. However, he literally hit his head on this with ballcat a couple times. And we had like a little skunk works making the original game shatters to deal down there for a bit. And we would, like our first person we hired into Bioware, like they show up in my house to like, what's, is this a software company? I was like, yeah, we're gonna make a software company. And they're like, okay. And so like we'll pay you, we're doctors, we can afford to pay you. And like literally in this kind of Scott Greg, so Scott was our first hire. And I guess we were pretty good sales with that type of work. Because he left a real job for us in this. And then, but then about that time, we were like, okay, we gotta get serious and get like a rent, rent an office for Bioware. And it's funny, 'cause it's, it's, it's an Edenton, there's this like little, little restaurant called Sugar Bowl. It's right around there, the red bike. And the place, when the time we go to tell him there's all people, the power couldn't handle it. And so we turn on the computers of the sequence. Like you'd have to each, like it's almost like a starting sequence on the spaceship. You go, okay, Russ, you're turned. Dan, you pull it and then all right, Ray, it's you. And now it's me. Because if you did it wrong, it would flip the breaker. And so I don't know how it worked. Like I never did good engineering schools. When you shut down the restaurant. Oh, we shut down all building. Yeah, we'd be like a disaster. So we'd like, we can't stay here. We got a, so we found another place. So it was a funny, funny early time. That employee that turned up must have felt like it was a prank or something. Yeah, with three doctors, we're making games. Well, you're honestly. Oh, yeah, no, he was kind of perplexed at first. Yeah, he stuck with us for years and years and years and years. A really good guy. Yeah. But yeah, he used our head of programming for quite a while. But yeah, it was really funny. Yeah, I just, and I think we just, we just kind of just did it. You know, like I think we had this, it's funny. I called my brewery blind enthusiasm. And it's a blind enthusiasm that like let us to that creating a game property when we shouldn't have. Like it's that sort of like foolishness of youth and not worrying about the consequences and just tell us to do it. And we got super lucky. And you mentioned, you know, your first game was Shatter Steel, which was sort of a mecca based game. How did you decide, you know, it's not sort of what you've been playing and interested in before that comes with the game afterwards. So yeah, how did you arrive on what you were going to make for your first game? So that will look kind of almost like a happenstance situation. So in a sense that we teamed with some guys and ended up being in their own little sort of side studio called PyroTech. So it kind of started, it was very complicated, like kind of starting where like by where it was one company and this other company did some of the, so we joined up together. We're all friends. They want their own company. We want our own company. We're like, okay, cool. We'll have two separate companies and work on this. And then they were very technology oriented. These other guys like very, very 3D math technology people. And so what happened there was interesting as they wanted to do like voxel train with, with a bitmap robots. And we were like, okay, well, and we kind of did the design side and like the art side. It's funny. I did all the animation in that game. I just programmed some of the tools. I was a terrible programmer. I was a pretty poor animator, but it was also like the standards back then were really, really low. And so, and what I mean by that is like, you know, very quickly, we're like, I'm like, I'm not good enough to do this professionally. And I mean, I got like, you know, company to run and projects to run. So, you know, like I kind of realized we could find folks much better. Many of these disciplines than me. And so that's, that was kind of what happened. So we kind of like got Shatter Steel out, but we'd always like from the very beginning imagines being a multi-project company. So because Ray would run a project, I'd run a project. He would say, hey, we'll run two at the same time and kind of trade resources a bit and kind of like, you know, start one up in pre-production and one in full production and shift back and forth. So, you know, while we were doing Shatter Steel, we were actually already pre-producing what would become Balter's Gate. It was funny because the very first program we hired, he knew how to program in Windows, which no one had ever seen. 3.1 Windows 3.1, like so we actually did our first demo. It was like a Windows native app. Like, and this was like, again, we're talking 96, 1996. And he'd like kind of, we had this little top down our fantasy theme of our PG. In retrospect, we may accidentally, accidentally design the fantasy, let's just say a God's pantheon MMO. So, like, hey, these are the Greek gods, these are the Norse gods, you could battle it out. And so you could pick a pantheon and we had this whole, this big elaborate design, which I'm glad we didn't try and do because it was actually an MMO because I would be impossible at that time. Right. Right. But then, you know, we actually pitched it around and interplay sort of, it was funny with interplay because we'd done Shatter Steel with interplay and Ferguson or Cart was our producer there and then we told him, well, yeah, we're pitching this new game and his bosses said, we got a bunch of D&D projects all day. We got like, descent to under Mountain and Dragon Dice and I'm like, okay, not really doing any real D&D games or whatever. We'll pitch this somewhere else. And so then we went to like a cross-street Virgin Interactive, had an office across the street from interplay and they heard we were there. All right. And Ferguson was like, hey, can you, can you, like, just, and everyone, everyone saw we were doing it. Can we sign it? Like, everyone was trying to sign it. So we were kind of like leaking this back to Ferguson. He's like, hey, do you mind just coming over and showing it? And so they were like, okay, we got to sign this. And then we'll make it an actual D&D product. And that for us was like, okay, the dream, have a chance to work on D&D was, was huge. We were super, super fans, right? So that we spent our entire youth doing it and kind of had, it was one of our main inspirations. So it wasn't super complicated for us to pick to work with them. It was back out at the time and interplay and then, yeah, that's how elders gave the story. It was kind of like, they did their best not to sign it and then we signed it. So did that come with any creative limitations for you? Did you have to change anything that you, no, it was actually really wanted to do? It was wonderful in the early days because no one looked at anything at what we did. Like, like, like, honestly, like actually, it's really, so it was one really hilarious story I'll tell you a way to even though it's out of order slightly. No, we could just, we just did whatever. So like, because we were like a subcontractor to interplay, like, they would kind of like, just throw stuff up to TSR, you know, the owners of at the time of Dungeons and Dragons. And those guys weren't really caring because they didn't think these dude video games were a big deal. They thought it was like a small part of their business and like, it's irrelevant. Which kind of was at the time, I guess? At the time. Then Baldur's Gate came out and changed the world of RPG. But the funny thing about that was that so then Baldur's Gate 2, they started paying more attention because suddenly this was a big deal. And they were like, you can't use just, you can't use this, you can't, or you can't make them killable, you can't kill all minster. They were like, oh man, we want to do all this stuff, but they won't let us do any of it. They started being a bit restrictive, but really minor. And the funniest part was like, as developers, we were fairly prone to revision, but like you see for improvement. So we like changed the story once or twice or Baldur's Gate 2 and then somehow it was actually still T.S.R. I should say. Maybe it was Wizards by then. They heard about this. They go, wait, you can't change the story because we already wrote the book based on your manuscript. We're like, what do you mean you wrote the book? Oh my gosh. Yeah. So we're halfway through development. Well, we've changed the story. This is you can't change it. And we've got like 70 people working on it. It's a big production for like the early, early 2000s. And then finally, I think I can't wait for us to figure this. Wait a minute. How much did it cost you to write the book that said like $5,000? We'll pay you $10,000 because for any more than that per day on this game to rewrite the book, they're like, yeah, we'll pocket that. It's like the super like the sense of scope of like what we were doing, what they were doing. Like, you know, when you're so close to something, they didn't have the sense of it, right? It was really funny because they were like, they didn't realize like, so funny. And then maybe we just, we kind of lived our lives as developers even when doing license property. Like, we kind of pushed really hard to get our way. And usually got it. I mean, it also reasonable about it. Whenever, you know, there's never stuff that, you know, we we were never unreachedable like Star Wars. We went to the old Knights of the Old Republic went old, the pre pre history because like, there was less, less oversight. Now it's purposeful. Yeah. And then the only thing they saw was this, don't blow up any plans. We'll use later. It says, no problem. We'll make new plans to blow up. All good. So that was like, it's always kind of, we always kind of like struggle for creative freedom as developers. So let's talk about that quickly. The stars, the old Knights of the Old Republic because what an amazing game and just felt like it came out of nowhere. Yeah. Obviously, it didn't, but it was, you know, extremely, as a player, I guess, extremely ambitious by-way game set in the Star Wars universe. And like you say, it was, it was kind of around the time of the prequels coming out in cinemas. And so it was a big cultural moment. All of that. And anyway, yes, how did you get that deal? It's hilarious. So actually Simon Dreffery's just like, call this up randomly one day. So that would have been, I never, probably about 2004, she was probably like, early 2000s. We get this phone call from a British fellow and we're like, okay, someone's pranking us because he says he wanted us to make a Star Wars game. Because like at that point, like you never, like Lucas has an internal developer. Like they never actually did any outside development. They were like very much in-house. They had their own teams. We knew some of the guys really talented developers working there. So like, yeah, they just don't go out. So this guy calls us up. But we're like, we never heard of them. We're like, yeah, okay, who is this? Like, we're almost like, almost accusing them of faking us out. And he goes, but you gentlemen like to make a Star Wars RPG. We're like, yes, seriously? And so it was really funny because we had a, and then we're like, because it was perfect. Because we're like, absolutely, we, and so we finally confirmed it was real. Like literally, like, okay, this isn't a prank. We'd been looking at a lot of different titles with other people. Like we actually had a slot that was coming up. The MDK2 team where I have my MDK2 toaster behind me on my, it's my podcast studio. Is MDK2 toaster was the, was the gift for MDK2. And with a slot coming up, we had all these things. Like we've got really crazy stuff on there. Like, activation was talked to us about an X-Men RPG and all kinds of stuff. And we're like, and all the Lord of the Rings owners were always like, can you do our Lord of the Rings RPG? We're like, no one, we only will do it if we're one has one license. We don't have competing products. So we walk into the meeting where fellow senior staff write star wars at the top of the board. And everyone's like, no, no, yeah, I mean, done. All right. And it was like, it was like unanimous in one second. It's like, all right, we're like, okay, yes, we're doing it. And then, then it was sort of like, I mean, history in a way. Like we just, then we just, then we just, check one, one thing. Yeah. So when you say, sorry, the competing license thing, you say internally your team was like, we're only going to work on one license product at a time. Is that what you're saying? No, no, I meant like, with Lord of the Rings. Like, so we had, we had like so many people calling us up, oh Lord of the Rings, and hey, we got like the movie rights. Hey, we got the book rights. It was only with Lord of the Rings. Got it, right. I mean, you know, at that point, we were doing almost all licensed because that was kind of where the opportunities were. But then we switched from that. So yeah, that was, that it was almost all licensed at that point. Okay. Got it. So you would already work with them if it was just like one centralized IP. Well, because yeah, like, I mean, we didn't want to have like us do the Lord of RPG and something else comes out with one and it's confusing. It's like, you know, product confusion. Yeah. But we're being, but like the Star Wars appeared, we're just like, there's just not even a question. Like it's not even, it was, it was, it was really funny because the reaction was, it was almost like, mayhem when we wrote it like it in the room, just kind of erupted. Like there's that meme, the reaction guys. It was like, that's what it was. It was like, and I guess they'd come to you because they wanted you to make a Bioware game set in the Star Wars universe, but at the same time, how much freedom did you have? Actually quite a bit. Like, I mean, so it was interesting. So Simon was wonderful to work with. He was a really, really great, great partner. And also, there was a whole team, and he might galo and he and Blackburn was there at the time and that whole grang. And they just basically, you know, the first to establish, we're not just going to do Baldur's Gate with lightsabers. You know, so we're going to do something new and different. And we did, we'd done like, you know, 3D action, like action game and MK2. So let's, let's take some of that technology and some of that know how and apply it to like a Star Wars RPG, which would provide a more immersive experience. And then also our storytelling layered in. So we kind of worked with them. We had a lot of, we had a lot of license. We kind of wrote the story and, you know, we kind of like came up with all the stuff we would just pass stuff by him. Like the only, the only contentious meeting we ever had was really funny. It was this kind of how Barwood was one of like, how was, so one of George's actually direct confidants that worked with them a lot. And we just had this, we had this hilarious meeting where we all argued about how bad the names were in Star Wars, ours and theirs, and we would like, they'd throw it a bad Dave and our game and we'd throw bad, like character names, like like a job of the hut. That's a stupid name. Like, you know, you know, you know, Joly, like, you know, like, it's really funny. Like we have this big argument and it'd be like, we all laugh at the end of it. Like it's just like, it's just like, okay, yeah, we recognize these names are all kind of silly in retrospect. Like, no, it was good. They were really good to work with. And I think they let us, like, again, we kind of maneuvered it by doing the prehistory. Like we knew for a fact, like, you know, we knew the guys from Star Wars galaxies, the MMO, and they were having, you're just challenging 'cause if you're around the movies, they were super, like, aggressive about being around the movies. So they were like far away from the movies. They didn't really care as much. And that was purposeful. We always tried to make sure that was far away. - I mean, it makes sense. You could put something in your game and then, it's a big way back to the Baldur's Gate 2 situation with the book coming out and they don't want conflicts in the storyline till they were the characterisation of it. - Yeah, the one's totally makes sense. Yeah, it makes total sense. - All right, then, Greg, let's come to your third game. So yeah, we're going back in time a bit to 1987. Tell us about this one once again. - It's dungeonaster. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Bert, and this one's really funny. I put this one in purposely, even though I didn't ever really personally play it. And you might think, well, why the hell would you include that? And it's really interesting. It's because that is the game that got me back into gaming. So in, like, I think I probably played it in '88 at a friend's house, my friend was playing it. And I was kind of, I went to university, I'm going to my gun to my school, and I'm like, oh, I'm too important for games. I'm so busy, I'm gonna be a doctor. My addiction was gone. I went to my friend's house. I saw this game, it was on an Atari ST, and I was like, oh my god, this is, it's like, wizzery on stare. It's like the best thing ever. And so I basically like, bothered him all the time to play it. He'd play it, and I'd watch him, oh my god, this is so incredible. I can't believe it. And then I basically go back into games. Like, I kind of, it's the thing that if I didn't ever see Dungeon Master, and never saw it, never saw where things were going, I'd buy what wouldn't have existed. Like, I wouldn't have gotten back in that we never would have gotten, kind of as hyped up again. So it was kind of like a funny one in that, I just remember, I still remember seeing it for the first time, and just, it just kind of like blew me away, and I just, I just like, oh man, I gotta like see what's going on. I think that's when, that's when like, I got, I got pool of radiance, and then that just took me down the terrible, terrible path. And like, so I kind of tried to, like I did do okay in medical school, but I was gaming a lot in medical school. And every time like, they gave you like, okay, you got study break, I'd be like, all right, I can squeeze in, I have four days, I do two days, days games, the two days straight of gaming, and two days of studying. I think I can do half and half. And so I just kind of like did that. - And you say, so you never played Dungeon Master, good because you just watched your friend, and then you didn't have the platform. I didn't have the platform. - Oh, you never had a tower. - No, I just saw a bit of the place. - Right, I went and said, okay, I ran to the game store, so I need to play games again. What fool I was to stop the thing I loved, 'cause I thought I was gonna be a medical student. - One of my daily with my life. - Yeah, with the hellless. And I just haven't included it, 'cause it was pivotal for me. There's a funny one, 'cause I think it's like, it just reignited the passion in like one brief moment, I saw how cool it was. And I would have, I mean, I couldn't afford to go by Atari ST, 'cause they were expensive, but I still had a PC, and I'm like, oh, this PC, I rate my essays on for medical school, and I get to get a game on this. - And just one thing I need to check, so you call this a dungeon step. Am I right in thinking that's when everything is paused, but until you take a step, and then everything takes one step, is that what you mean? - Yeah, I think it's like, or you move, yeah, you're kind of moving, I can't even remember, maybe Dungeon Master wasn't, but that Dungeon Stepper for me is like, you see the dungeon in front of you, and you step, and you step, and they go, they take a, so it's sort of like, all of a turn-based thing. - Yep. - And maybe Dungeon Master wasn't, but I kind of remember just like a first person dungeon, like simulation that was like, light years ahead of my beloved wizardry, and I'm like, oh my god, whether it's Stepter or not, I'm just like, oh, it's incredible. And that's, and that's just, that idea was just too much for me. - I love that you've never gone to play. You just left it as this platonic idea of, but I should probably, how far games have come. - Oh yeah, and it's just, and it's just like, and I just, that's all, I just need to see it, and I'm like, it's just like, - It's a bolt for the blue. - So yeah, Star Wars nice, and the other, oh, the Republic comes out, massive success, obviously, along with everything else, you've been doing. - Have you got lots of people courting you to try and buy your company at this point? - We did. Rain, I had a folder of actually failed attempts to buy us, and like, we had this folder, almost all the publishers. - Okay, who was it? Come on, you gotta, you gotta talk us through. - Oh yeah, no, no, no, no. Oh, it's, I almost don't want to in some cases, but. - I know, but. - No, well, there was an Activision one, and then there was a Sega one, there was THQ. - Dodge the bullet there. - Yeah, there was EA, early EA, then later EA, of course, but later EA wasn't actually EA. - Why were these breaking down? Was it that the terms were right for you? - Yeah, like, I mean, also Rain, I had no desire to sell the company. You know, at the end of the day, we weren't in it to make, like, it sounds weird, but to make money off selling the company, we're in it to make games, and I always sort of say, like for me, and I think we're a similar, that experience I had as a young kid, like, explaining these incredible games, and this incredible experience, I wanted to pass that on to people. Like, I wanted to create things, like Baldur's Gate was the creation of a type of game that had ceased to exist, that we knew was still really compelling. And if you remember, like at that point, in the early late 90s RPGs were dead in quotes, right? And then Baldur's Gate comes out, and it was probably 20 million units. I'm not even sure how many millions it sold, maybe more than that, I have even no idea. I mean, that was also when the industry was tiny, I mean, over the long history of it, but it just changed, like, so we just weren't interested, unless someone could like, give us the idea that, hey, you have creative control, you have the ability to do better and do more. So when we actually, you know, the reason we joined the private equity companies, it was like, it wasn't, it was potentially a possibility to sell, but it was like, hey, take more control of your destiny. You can fund, we'll fund the Star Wars online game, right? So that was the biggest crux of that, was like, we got the money, and also we're looking for a home for the original Dragon Age Origins. So, you know, we had this property to land, and we had this game we wanted to, like, get funded and make, and when that actually finally all clicked, like, the elevation partners was determined to surrender to us, partner for us. And in the sale of the EA was funny, because people always described that to like the Doom of Bio, where the sale to EA, it's like, not really. Like, EA was actually, was, was, was, like, I like to comment that EA has, gives you enough rope to hang yourself. And, and what I mean by that is like, you have to learn to work within the structure, and I think we did quite well, like, if you look at like the Massive X game out in there, and, you know, like, it's, it was actually a pretty successful run, but you have to understand how to work within a big company. And, and for me, that was like, that was the end, was like, oh, I don't like big companies. And so I knew by year two that I was gonna leave at some point. I just didn't know when. Oh, you did. Yeah, oh yeah, I just, I didn't like big companies. Big companies, like, like, there's no one to ponder on it. Big companies exist to exploit properties, like exploit games. They don't typically, there's very few examples. Some of the Japanese guys do, but most of the big North American guys, they just could, like, hey, let's squeeze the most money out of this franchise, right? And so they don't kind of create a lot of them, and I kind of realize that pretty early on that I like making. I don't, it's just like operating. I think, I think for me, like, I kind of, and so, like, when I got the chance, like, I went, I lived in Austin on and off, like, half time for two years, making the towers the older public. And that was like my swan song in the industry. I knew that was like, kind of a one-way trip. But if it was super successful, like super duper successful, Ray and I would have probably launched a bid to try to take over EA from the inside being the corporate pirates that we are. But it needs to be like two billion a year successful. But then we did a work out. So I'm like, ah, that's, you know, I'm fine. I kind of, you know, it was an interesting kind of run. But yeah, I just knew when it went, and it was good though. Like, yeah, actually, you know, they gave us, like more input into publishing into marketing. Like we had a lot of like really great opportunity and like people like to describe how how evil they are. It's like that's not it at all. It's like people just don't know how to operate in it. It's also kind of tiring. Like if you're kind of battling a lot, like it's sometimes if you have to be successful, right? So it's like that's the tough thing about it. But as soon as you start being successful, that's when it gets hard. - So yeah, I mean, I'm interested because, you know, you think that a big publisher would buy a Shizu and the reason they're buying you is because you're really good at what you do. And so it's really just we want to facilitate you to keep doing that maybe at a, you know, bigger level or whatever, but essentially you don't want to mess with it. So what is it that messes with it? Is it that you have more people to report to suddenly and that just like slows everything down? Or is it something else? - No, it's not. It's it's it's they don't let us operate freely. Like you know, like there's a lot kinds of shenanigans we did. Like we actually made Facebook games under false pretenses. Like false names actually. Like like and like and even like and like there was with this game called the Gift of the Yeti 'cause you know, like like instead of the gift of the, it's like this Yeti that would run around town delivering gifts because like like we weren't allowed to like do mobile stuff because we were in the right division. So we would like make a fake company. It's within the company and do this and and launch a game and then like just to see what it was like. So we were doing like we like to try stuff. Like I think for our philosophy, I think they're just restrictive. I think and I understand like I mean you can't have a company of cowboys, you know cowboy in the sense of someone who's just gonna run out. Like I wouldn't say we were cowboys we were usually somewhat calculating on what we did but you know we like to try stuff. So when they discovered that you know, we had a couple Apple development licenses and we were in the mobile division. They're like whoa, whoa, what are you guys doing? 'Cause oh we're just gonna see you. And maybe there's an integration into our console and PC games that you know Apple they're like, "Woo, we're suspicious of you guys." - Which is what they should have been. - Which is correct. - Yeah, it's correct. - It's a secret way to mobile. - Well we were just, we wanted to see right? Like we wanted to like, 'cause I think the part of it for us is like is also like what if that's the next big thing? Like what if we missed the next big thing? So big companies just like can't want you to stay in your lane, you're supposed to follow the rules. Like there, if you think of, if you've described anything to like the personality types there's like you know the traditionalists, like the people that like use other rules, you must follow them and like, you know we're just, that was not us. Like like you know, it's funny 'cause Ray on the surface would seem like a traditionalist but he's totally not like he's, he's just, I'm not sure if he's bad as me in terms of like trying stuff and doing things, but I feel like almost in that, like you know we both, we were both calculated about it, but like what the big company, like the big thing I always found is like, you know we make a bunch of money on a product and say hey can I have some of that money to make another product? Like outside of these kind of ones we're making they're like no that's where the back to the company and like oh, what are I gonna make something different? They go you can't, goes oh, or you can find it from your other company, or other games, well then I have to cancel and the other ones to make a new one, those yeah. Like so your budget and but if you're super successful, if you made a ton of money, then you usually get more leeway. - Right, right. - We were pretty successful. I think we didn't have like, we were very fortunate how we did, but like you just, so I'm, it was almost like what level of success do you need to actually like create that kind of lattice? - Having a ton of me. - Yeah and there's no ton of me in a company and that's just the reality, unless you're in charge, and even then if you're the CEO, you have to respond to the board and if you're the board, you have to respond to investors. It's just like this, it's just like this tower of kind of responsibilities that just kind of like, yeah it just makes it so that like for someone who is a free creative spirit that wants to make stuff, it gets really hard and so I don't think there's anything that they do actively, it's just the very substance of what a company is, it kind of be corporationist, stifles innovation. And that's why like if you look at most of the companies, they tend not to be able to create things internally, they tend to have to buy external, and then they kind of exploit and then they kind of repeat that cycle as much as they can. - That's depressing. - Sorry, yeah, sorry. That's why I'm unjust, obviously. - That's why I make beer and small little brewery in Edmonton. - All right, this comes to you with Game of the Great. So this came out in 1996, and I guess you were working on the first board of Gait at this time, yeah, tell us what was the game? - Yes, this was a very disruptive force in our office. - Yeah, so the next thing was the original Diablo. (gentle music). (gentle music) (gentle music) - And then in the same way that I think that Baller's Gate revolutionized kind of like classic RPG, Diablo revolutionized action RPG, it just was just unbelievable. So when Diablo came out, like it's one of those things where like suddenly the office grinds to a halt. So you've got like, you know, how many people at that point, like 50, 60 RPG nuts in this building. And then suddenly this co-op RPG game comes out. And the next thing, you know, like we're all, like we just literally stop working for days. And we'd like, we actually had to start turning off computers and kicking people out of the office to go to sleep. Like it was unbelievable. Yeah, it's just so much fun. It's so compelling. It was like the sort of, the cycle of like fighting monsters, getting loot, exploring, playing with others. Like it just the whole thing just was phenomenal. And I think we just like, we'd be running around from office to office. Like what'd you find? What's this? Because I think that was one of those first, pretty sure one of the first examples of like randomized loot. So it wasn't like, okay, everyone gets the same sword when you kill someone. It's like, you got the sword. When? What does that do? And then, so yeah, it was just like, it was like, it was like so incredibly disruptive. We literally had to create company policy to like, shut, enforce shutdowns, go home half-shower, get out, please leave the office. We're gonna like turn off the power unless you all leave, don't leave. Well, and this was a cleaning hot stew. Like this was like a self-preservation mechanism. Like we were both like, we're all playing it. Like this was like Mayhem. And yeah, it's just like, it was funny 'cause I'd seen this preview of it. It was this really funny example where I was actually on this show in sort of some sort of San Francisco the computer chronicles of this TV show, Stuart Shefe, this guy who was like this older guy who didn't really know anything about games, he wore way too much makeup. And but he'd interviewed like game makers. So they was literally like me, Tomb Raider and Diablo's, like Shatter Steel, Tomb Raider Diablo, like two giants won that, that's a giant. And then I had to fix the Tomb Raider guys' computers. You couldn't get the geese to work on their PC. So actually I troubleshot. And then I met Max from what two cables are north and saw Diablo and I was just like, wow, this is super cool. And I mean, Tomb Raider was really cool too. Like both were amazing. I could tell these are gonna be killers. And so yeah, it just, when it finally came out, like you know, and I think it's been a real force in the industry, like it's been like Diablo is kind of shows the franchise power of doing something like that. And then I mean Blizzard being able to kind of have multiple simultaneous franchises just built them into such a behemoth. - Cool, all right. Well, let's come back to your story and your decision to leave by way. You said much earlier in the conversation that it took you two years to recover from your time working on all those games. And yeah, how do you reflect on it? Because obviously the question of burnout and working hours and all of that, which we touched on quite a few times, it's much more in the conversation these days than it probably was even in like 2010. So how do you reflect on all of that? Is there a way to make games ethically? - There is, there is. And I think towards the end of it, we got better at it. I think when we were young and foolish, we were like pretty bad at it. Like anything of the sense that we, you know, and tell people started getting families and still they started becoming your lives, becoming more established. It wasn't just about work. The part of the problem was people's like best gaming PC was in our office. And so we'd have people that would like come back to game at the office or the best network. So it's actually sort of a bit of a problem where people can just get into this really severe habit of like staying in the office all the time. And you know, like by the end of it, like it was interesting. So when we started the studio in Austin, like the Star Wars Night's Old Republic, or so I was the older public studio, it was really interesting because like we started it, we were independent and all of a sudden EA buys us. And it's like a pretty giant deal. A number of the people that worked at ELA with the famous ELA, ELA spouse stuff came out. And like this sort of like the expose of work, life balance. And so there was like a pretty heated hands, all hands, and the studio there to talk about like the sale. And you know, as EA's going to force, it's sort of philosophical work, life balance, onto us. But like we actually all did it to ourselves. Like we were the ones that were immature. And you know, like so we are also the ones that can get us out of that. And we did as best we could. Like I think that you know, always could have done better. But I don't know, there's just times where you have to put a maximum effort. But we also, we tried to institute things like, hey, there's no way. sympathetic, like if you work from home, go home. You know, like if you can kind of like, don't have to be in the office. Like we didn't have people like, but I think the biggest offenses in that world were like when you, just in case, we're gonna have you stay in the office and do nothing for hours and end to like, in case someone needs you. It's like no, I just go home and we'll call you in or like it's just like be reasonable. And I think that we try to do it better. I don't know if we did. Like, like, you know, I think we did better than we could have done. I mean, it's, but like, there's always ways to improve. I know personally, like, like I was, like, and the reason I'm not in games anymore is I don't think I can handle the, like, it's either zero zero, going zero miles an hour, 100 miles an hour in gaming. And it's like, the worst thing imaginable is running. Like I learned this actually making a service based game. Like I wake up every morning, flip on my phone, check the numbers at like, wow, I'm in bed, start shooting out emails. Like, you know, like your life is all, and I was like, I lived in this sort of like, not the desirable world of gaming with hundreds undesirable game of world of managing a game project that was online. And so I kind of realized I was really unhealthy and kind of, I think also personally, the creative, like I've done everything I want to do. Like I felt like the star, the landing that star wars game, the older public was the hardest thing I'd ever done. And it was like, okay, I could play time to stop. Like that's, that's it. And I think we did better. I know that the, the continued improvement of the work life balance stuff. But I think that, you know, like, for me personally, just I'd done it so long and done it so hard that I just, I literally, I think it was six months of recovery to get back to kind of normal, normalcy. And then I mentioned like, oh, I feel normal again. I don't feel like, and because like, there's this weird phenomenon also, like early on, like I, this was one of the, when they coached our, our people about like, people who ran projects is like when the game is launched, it's not a service based game. Suddenly no one wants to talk to you. Suddenly you're not the center of attention. Suddenly you're like, just like everyone else, like your world of distraction and kind of like high, high energy is gone. And you're like, you have to re-adapt to like, like, being normal. And I think that, you know, like, just what you have to put in to make a hit product of any kind is so high. Like it's, I think I could do it better now if I did it again. But, you know, I don't know, I don't know if I, I don't think I'd want to. Like I think, you know, I don't think I want to make another game, but I sometimes I think so, but not usually. Tell me about the, the last, the day when you walked out of the studio for the last time. What was your emotional state? I think by that time I was, I was, I had, like, often all by the time I take action, I'll have already made peace with it. So I probably made peace with the leaving. So it was funny, because like, Ray and I had to kind of give notice way ahead of time leaving, right? And so we actually told them the EA folks way ahead. And then there was this sort of like activity around, trying to kind of rein us back in and keep us there. We're like, now, it's just, it's just over. And then, and then they get, you get kind of like, shut out of everything. It's like, your email still works, but I don't think it goes anywhere. And all the, all these meetings happen. And you're like, hey, there's a meeting about these products. Well, you don't really, you know, work on that one. So don't worry about that. So you kind of like, you become like, like, dead man standing, right? Right. Which is actually okay, because like, then I had a bunch of, a bunch of holiday. And I think actually, I just, I kind of both, because we had a chance to do it together and Ray and I were really still really close. We're good friends. We couldn't could lean on each other a bit. And both of us had kind of reached a point where we just, like, we were just worn out, you know, and, and, and I mean, like, a short, I mean, we could have made, we could have taken six months and got back at it. But like, I think at the end of the day, we both kind of emotionally felt like that was the time to go. And so, you know, we did this announcement on the October of 2012, like, I, you know, by the end of the year, but I'd already been like, kind of, kind of, new to Linarown for months before that. So I kind of already knew. And then October comes along. We kind of say, our goodbyes. And some people knew some people didn't. It's just, it's a little sad. But it's like, yeah, you know, it's in good hands. They kind of go off into the sunset and just kind of live your life, right? Well, let's come to your fifth and your final game, then, Greg. Speak you've going off into the sunset. So if you're part of this, this is a much more recent from 2022. Tell us about this game. Uh, Elden Ring. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Yeah, I'm a massive from software fan. I finished everything since Kingfields-- actually also a non-clity armor core-- everything solos, single player, every single thing, every boss and every piece of content by myself. Oh, you were an early adopter then in at Kingfields. Fairly early. Not Kingfield. I didn't do Kingfield or what everything sensed. So like Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Demon Souls, Demon Souls, Dark Souls, not Kingfield. I kind of want to go back to it, but I know I can't. But no, I did everything. And I just love-- I think it's funny, because I'd really enjoy hard combat games. I really like things that are really, really difficult that drive you insane. And it's kind of like it's kind of like making games. And so-- and Elden Ring, I think for me-- and I think it's funny, because I heard someone else in a prior podcast said the exact same thing. So anyone who makes games can-- and has played the Square Library, can look at and go, it's a culmination of their prior work crystallized into one astounding product. And it's just an unbelievable, unbelievable game. It's exploration, combat. Like everything is amazing. Like, and it's-- I think for me, especially when the DLC came out, like the-- they clearly said even better. And I kind of-- which kind of astounded me, but-- I think it just-- it's such a-- and I think it-- and for me, it reflects also if you look at what Miyazaki says. Like, you know, he comments about taking the time and doing it right and all the right stuff. And that's what is required to make a game like that. Like, another one-- I mean, I could have probably put it on there, but like, tears of the kingdom was just another unbelievable game. And then, you know, they talk about taking a year to balance the physics. Like, I played that game excessively, and never-- single saw single physics glitch in all kinds of crazy contractions. And so, like, I look back at our attempts at hilarious attempts at physics. I'm like, oh my god, like, they're doing this on a mobile phone processor. So, like, these guys that like take, like, their vision and just press it. And I think they also reflect something that's incredibly valuable in games that's organizational knowledge. Like, having those same people that made parts of the prior ones or the prior ones, having that organizational knowledge to kind of move forward. And like, you never get a team on their first instance, like a fresh team will almost ever make up super hit, not in today's world, right? Yeah. It just doesn't work that way. But to see someone like, like, from make, like, Eldon-- I mean, I don't know what they're going to even do next. Like, I can't even comprehend, like, like, I was thinking about that. Like, I was-- I was kind of pining for it. I'm playing "Lord's of the Fall" and now a year after launch. I'm going, yeah, this is kind of like pretty early from-- there's a few things that are different. It's pretty fun actually enjoying it. But it's like, you know, I just-- and I thought, what can they do after Eldon Ring and the shadow there, too? What is even possible? Like, I don't even know what the possibility space is for the next thing. It's just incredible. So for me, like, that's like the culmination of modern gaming. And I think it also somehow, from a narrative perspective, they get away with the most hilarious lack of narrative. And like, I always tell people, like, they always-- there's like, if you want to watch some really hilarious stuff, go watch all the lore videos. I watch a lot of YouTube gaming YouTube. But not gaming, but just the lore videos for Eldon Ring. There's like-- and they just make up all the stuff from random little text things that were badly translated. And I get-- and I deecast puts-- and it's incredible what they glean out of it. And I think a lot of it's true. But I think a lot of it is just like-- it's just like the fans just love the world so much that these little snippets turn into the story. And it's just like-- rather than that's dumbly writing-- Like a rule-shot test of the-- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where others-- Yeah, we're not dumbly writing a million lines of dialogue. They write 14 like item descriptions. And so hopefully you have a joint story. I'm like, brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant. And it's like, at least in the urn tree, they-- I'm imagine they get a version of Mass Effect, where it come on to Chef that, and he says about five things. And very mysterious. Or they have to look-- And you have to look at his gun. And it'll tell you he's kind of mad right now, like in the description. Like it's just like-- yeah, I also love it. Like it's hard to explain, but like the wackyness of it is-- it's just really great. I really-- and I mean, I could play-- I did-- I'd played it like a couple times. And I made a giant mistake and played like an urn tree on Next Game plus plus or something. And like I just kind of-- I didn't realize-- and I had to play it third time to actually get to the end, because I was ready to begin my third playthrough. And then they all know you have to go to the-- near the end to get into that. Like, oh my god, I got to play it. It was fine. But-- Yeah, I did things like saying that. Yeah. I thought, oh, don't make it really easy to get in. Oh, no. No, no, no. And I think that that series in particular, like the-- it's just everything firing on all the pistons, the animation, the sound, the combat. Like, everything is clicking at a level that-- if anyone gets you one of those things so that level, it's impressive, but they're all clicking. And it's just like-- it's a tour de force of game production, in my opinion. Yeah. I don't know, yeah, it is, that's. That's an indisputable, I would say, incredible game. Right, let's go through your console then. Greg, so we've got Atari's adventure, wizardry proving grounds of the mad overlord. Let's say hello to the title, isn't it? Dungeon Master, Diablo and Elton Ring, including Shadow of the Earth Tree from the Sounds of Things, I think you should have that as part of it, I think. Prinin, all right, so yeah, we need a name for your console, Greg, what would you like to call it? RPG only, I think, is like all the plays RPGs. Something like that. RPG only. Dungeon Stepper. Yeah, there you go, Dungeon Stepper, Plus Plus. I love it, Prinin. Oh, this has been so good, thanks for, yeah, just thanks for like, you know, being so up for talking about all these things, I really appreciate it. Yeah, that's my pleasure. Yeah, we'll find that you go. So yeah, you said right, the start that's, you know, you, I suppose, for every entrepreneur, there's, there is a, I suppose, you know, people can go one of two ways, they either go, no, all of the success is down to my brilliance. Well, they go the other way and go, no, no, no, it's a complete sort of chance and luck, and the treatise is probably somewhere in the middle. Yeah, yeah. You know, you did end up where you ended up, but if you could go back and change one thing about you, your career at BioWare, what would it be? Oh, that's a really interesting one. The one thing I would change, and I've always said this, is that I would have not, like, we, I think sometimes in one gap we had, I think we're sometimes sales and marketing, and that was maybe our biggest weakness. And J&M Pire was a really good game that was launched at the very end of the, I guess that'd be the Xbox original Xbox cycle game. Yeah, Microsoft game. Yeah, Microsoft. Right at the very end. And Microsoft's like, no, no, we should release it now right at the end of the cycle, because it's a great time. It was like the worst advice, like absolute moronic advice from them, the stupidest thing ever. I mean, I'll say that and then Peter Moral punched me and then the most next time he sees me. Wasn't his fault, but we should have repushed that to the beginning of the 360. We could have resded up, we could have, like, amped it up. We could have said, no, we're not going to, like, we just missed the, I would have, I would have loved to go and need a lot. This is a terrible mistake. Give us six months, give us a chance to make it a launch title for the 360, and we'd have another franchise. And I mean, who knows where it, like, I just think it would have been like a way more successful product at the beginning of a cycle versus the end, because they also people by the time they came out, people weren't invited, Xboxes anymore. They were waiting for the next one. And so, and also we needed to tune the comb out a little bit. Combat wasn't as good as it could have been in that game. It was, it had the potential to be amazing, and at times it was, but we were close, but the, the, the artistry of the game, the cinematics, everything, we're just, for the time, we're tremendous. So it's just, just that one little, like, that one little thing I think could have trained church trajectory in it, wouldn't have been impossible. I think we would have been able to get the convince them to do it. I just, I regret not realizing that, that, you know, it wasn't, and I thought, I just never dawned on this, you know, like we never imagined that if we just done me that one little switch, yeah, I would have cost a couple million dollars more, but, you know, it would have made maybe 10 times as much, you know, like, who knows, and then be a franchise, right? So, I don't, I mean, but maybe I also don't regret any of the steps that we took together to where we are. Of course, that's like, pretty good. Greg, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. Can people buy you out there that you make? Yeah. Anyway, would you have to be low-coly and Edmonds? Alberto right now, we're going to be shipping across Canada and I should hopefully be into Europe in, probably summer, I think next year. So we're going to be shipping front of mine since I've been in Porto there. So blind enthusiasts should be in Europe sometime next year. And I mean, England, hopefully as well. Can I make one quick shout out? Is that feasible? I wish you can. Yeah. I'd like to shout out massive fan of the podcast, Michael Harvey, my good friend for like cold, calling slash emailing you. Yes. Saying, "Hey, Greg should be in your podcast." I'm like, it's funny. I'm like, "Sure." Okay. Yeah, that sounds cool. So Michael is a great friend of mine. He's British as a matter of fact, as well. Is he? I didn't know that. Yeah. And he's, so I thought that's not for some reason. Maybe you guys knew each other. I don't know. That was really funny. That classic trope. But no, it's actually really been fun. I love kind of reliving the moments of gaming and then the funny thing is if you ever manage to get re-on air, his stories will be totally different because I've realized we all remember things totally differently. Like it's very interesting how we like time. So some of the stuff I'll recount it will be probably inaccurate. Maybe Dungeon Master was smooth and not a stepper. But at the end of the day, I don't, doesn't really matter. It's the nuance of it all. It is. Yeah. We got the five. That's for certain. Pretty, thank you, Greg. So nice to meet you. Yeah. My pleasure. You too. Thanks a lot of best. Thank you. Thank you to my guest, Greg. The Chuck, what an absolute privilege that was to speak to the good doctor absolutely thrilled to have him on the show and to his story, which was as scintillating as I hope to would be. And of course, Greg is one of the titans of the industry really. Although he no longer works and it is his creations, the studio that he made, the franchises, what a gross word. The series that he built have of course continued to influence and shape the landscape of video games and the culture. More broadly, Baldur's Gate 3, the biggest game of a couple of years ago, after winning, of course, all of that stuff, multi-ward winning. We've got, although it was made by Bioware, we've got Greg and his fellow doctors to thank for his existence. So part of that conversation I particularly enjoyed was Greg revealing that the plan after the following the acquisition by EA was to take over EA. I'm sure lots of people would have liked to have seen that and get old John Riccatello out. The CEO, much maligned CEO in more recent times. I mean, the other day I saw Bobby Cotick, who described former EA CEO, John Riccatello as the worst CEO in the industry, which is a lot coming from Bobby Cotick. But anyway, Greg describing himself and his colleagues as corporate pirates. Great image. And yeah, I wonder how different history might have been if that had happened. I certainly liked to play a FIFA game that was an action RPG, that would have been fun, with a morality system underpinning it. Yeah, also the Yeti game that he mentioned, I did wonder whether that was an exclusive, but it does seem that at some point that was revealed that Bioware had made the Yeti game for Facebook. But yeah, nice to have that confirmed again. As well, I just thought it was interesting. Wasn't it to hear Greg describing the reason that Bioware was able to have so many triumphs in the period when it did have so many triumphs, I guess, you know, around the nights of the over a public time through the Mass Effect games and Dragon Age and all of that, was because they held on to their people. He described it as organizational knowledge. This is, you know, very pertinent at the moment in the video games industry where companies are only too eager to sort of swell up when they've got a project on and get to some of their talent as soon as it's done. And of course, as soon as the interest rates went up and we saw huge sways of the industry being laid off, so much of that organizational knowledge and talent is dispensed with and just sort of dissipates into the ether. And you can't really build a studio, a really impactful studio, I think, without retaining some of that. Of course, yeah, there are financial realities around all of that, but yes, it was nice to hear Greg stand up in favor of that. Right, a couple of things about the music choices there. Of course, Greg's first two choices had no soundtracks. They came out so early that there was no music in in those games. So the first one we had my good friend returning Ed Hawkins, the opera singer, he gave us the voiceover for the first game there, Atari Adventure. So that was script taken from the game with the cave troll and the bridge and all of that that's taken directly from the game, but read by my friend Ed, who I think you can see at the moment at Glineborne, if you like your high culture to go with your local culture. Right, so thanks very much, Ed, always appreciate you stepping in to provide a bit of voice acting. Then yes, Wizardry, Greg's second choice, Wizardry did not have a soundtrack either at the time of its release, but it is a timely pick because digital eclipse, which is the excellent American company that sort of what's the word, the criterion collection for video games, I think is their ambition. So they take old games from the 70s and the 80s and they package them up. So you can play the game on contemporary consoles, but they give it all sort of contextual analysis, they include bits of scans of the ad verticements and artwork interviews with the developers, all of that and put those into these wonderful packages. So if you're unaware of their work, then go and check out digital eclipse. Anyway, they recently did that for Wizardry proving grounds of the mad overlord, which was the second game that Greg chose. And as part of that process, they hired the esteemed composer Winifred Phillips to compose some new music for the game. So that's what you heard. And the reason why it's timely is because Winifred just won the Grammy for that soundtrack. So in 2025, you know, a few weeks ago. So she won the Grammy award for Best School Soundtrack for video games and other interviews. interactive media, bit of a mouthful, but anyway, and that was for her music for the video game Wizardry proving grounds of the mad overlord. It's a superb soundtrack, even better is Winifur is acceptance speech, which if you've not seen it, go on YouTube, it's a lovely thing, she just has the best reaction and it's very very heartwarming. So yeah, really fortunate is timing that Greg picked this game. I mean, you might have gathered, we spoke at the tail end of last year, but I'm obviously only putting the episode out now, but how lovely did he pick that game and then all of this happens with digital clips and with the sort of remastering of that game and the new soundtrack and then it wins the Grammy. A nice confluence of things all happening at the same time. Yeah, I'll need to try and get Winifur into the podcast, so I will definitely be asking her. And also a friend of mine, Chris Coller, works for digital clips now he was formerly a journalist. I think he was a wired for many, many years. Yeah, now he now he works for digital clips and it does absolutely fantastic work there. He is extremely knowledgeable about the games we became friends and bonded over our love of very early square Enix or at the time square or square soft games. And I think he has a collection of all the square games from like the very early 80s like this is pre-final fantasy, some of which you could only buy for obscure Japanese PCs anyway. I'd like to get him on here as well. He's an interesting guy, very knowledgeable and yeah, we've had some good times for so yes, anyway, two new guests, I'll hopefully invite on as a result of Greg's choices. One last thing, wasn't it great to be reminded of the existence of Jade Empire, which as Greg said came out right at the tail end of the first Xbox, but was a truly brilliant RPG. So I can action RPG, but that used I think the morality system from night to the old Republic. So the Star Wars game. And like he said, it came out a little bit too late. It was brilliant, but suffered from where it came out in the in the cycle, but I do remember playing it and having a great time. And I've looked it up actually after this conversation and it is back was compatible. So if you're interested, then track down a copy of the disc on eBay or wherever and you can play it on your Xbox One. How wonderful is that? Thank you to all the good people at Microsoft who have done such such diligent work to make their back catalog playable. We thank you for your service. Lastly, big thank you to Michael Harvey to get a shout out there from Greg, but thank you so much Michael. He's the listener who we've got to thank for the existence of this episode because he is as Greg said. Good friends with Greg and persuaded Greg to come on the show. So thank you so much Michael. Really, really appreciate it. Okay, well that's the end of our February run of episodes. I think it's been a great month and thank you so many of you have written to say how much you've enjoyed these episodes and they've been really positive and enthusiastic I think about games and something that people seem to have appreciated with things that are going on in the world where so much of what's in the news and being discussed on the rest is politics and all the other shows that we might listen to is much harder to take. So it's been just been nice to have a real celebration and that's going to continue as we move into March. Next week, my guest is the very lovely Stefan Powell. Stefan, you may know, is a Welsh radio presenter who was for a very long time the BBC's video game correspondent. So yeah, ideal, ideal chap to get on the podcast and yet I have a lovely conversation with Stefan. He's just got such a sweet gentle spirit and his story is of how he left his very remote village in Wales in the valleys and made his way to the centre of London and you know appears on Radio 4's today programme. Whatever it might be talking about the new GTA, whatever that happens, that story is just wonderful and his picks great to you. So really excited. If you don't know Stefan, you might well recognise his voice because he's on the radio lots and on TV and stuff. If you live in the UK, that is. But if you don't know him, then you're in for a treat. It's going to be a good one. So yes, I've probably spoken enough there. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Thank you so much for your support. If you do get a moment, please do leave us a little review on Apple podcasts or you can leave us a star rating on Spotify. Thank you to those of you who've done that. You can write to me at my perfect console at gmail.com with your thoughts with your feedback, with any suggestions for guests and head to the patreon as well. patreon.com/myperfectconsole. If you would like to get more involved, we've got a lovely community there, lots of bonuses, a few tiers so you can pay what you can afford. If you like this, would like to support it, would like me to keep making it and would like a few bits of extra content. Head there. All right, thanks so much. Till next week. [Music] [Music]