The following is a transcription of the third chapter of Geoff Keighley's documentary work The Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, published in 2012.
Contents[]
The Doctors[]
It was 2:45 in the morning when Ray Muzyka's eyes sprung open in the hotel room. Lying in bed, he began to roll his body to the nightstand to grab his pager. Then he caught himself. He'd felt this way before. Many times. This was another one of those "pager nightmares" as he came to know them. During these moments he dreamed that his ER pager had gone off and he was needed urgently at the hospital, only to wake up and realize there was no pager. Instead, beside him was a binder of documents for the pitch meeting he had the next morning at a game publisher.
Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka first met in medical school at the University of Alberta. For years they worked as practicing doctors in Alberta who played video games on the side. In towns like Slave Lake, Redwater, Radway and Mayerthorpe, doctors Zeschuk and Muzyka were always on call. Zeschuk handled geriatric patients in towns with populations in the thousands, while Muzyka worked in the ER with patients he wasn't always able to save. He still remembers the families he had to speak with, the hard nights when things just didn't go as well as they could. But once in a while he had the opportunity to do a big stitching job — say, 300 stitches to put someone back together — and it had a strange calming effect. "Stitching is like bringing order to chaos," he recalls.
Between the games and the stitching both doctors spent time programming medical simulations their friend Augustine Yip. Together they created projects like a Gastroenterology Patient Simulator, a choose-your-own-adventure program of a different kind in which doctors discover how to diagnose and treat stomach ailments. The doctors made a bit of money on the side for this program, and one day at lunch tossed around a wild idea. What if they tried to make their own video game instead of another medical simulator?
Working out of Zeschuk's basement, the ceiling so low that Muzyka would often hit his head on the way downstairs, the three founders incorporated BioWare and pitched 10 game publishers on an idea for a robot action game called Shattered Steel. All it would take was one company to say yes. But with absolutely zero experience making games it wasn't an easy pitch. Still, one publisher, Interplay, said yes. The doctors worked on the game at night while practicing medicine during the day. All told they invested nearly $100,000 of their own money and didn't draw a salary for the first four years.
Eventually, however, it became clear that they had to make a choice between games and medicine. It got to the point that Muzyka's wife threatened to leave him unless he slowed down and picked one. It was an agonizing situation. Muzyka and Zeschuk picked games; Yip went back to medicine. Years later, the doctors rationalized their decision by saying that BioWare's corporate taxes pay for the training of dozens of new doctors.
Fully invested in BioWare, the duo focused on building a team to create Baldur's Gate, their signature role-playing game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Baldur's Gate took 90 man years to build, sold 2 million copies and was successful enough that every gamer in Edmonton had heard of BioWare — including a local garbage man.
By all accounts Edmonton, Alberta, is situated in a harsh climate. Preston Watamaniuk knows that more than most. As the son of a printer and city councilor, Watamaniuk graduated from college with a political science history degree but spent six years after college working a garbage route all over Edmonton. Every day he was on his truck by 7 a.m. and spent the next seven hours tossing 10 tons of black garbage bags into his hopper. Then he headed to the local LAN store to play StarCraft in the afternoon, because, if he was being honest, he was so physically torn up that he couldn't do much more than push a mouse around a screen.
The job paid the bills and sure was stable, but by the time he turned 30, Watamaniuk wondered if this was really all that life was going to offer. He asked friends to keep him in mind when they heard of job openings around town. One day a pal from the university mentioned that he had just started working at a new company that made D&D video games. Watamaniuk's eyes lit up. He had loved D&D since, at age 11, his mother bought him a D&D kit after his open heart surgery for a heart murmur.
Watamaniuk didn't know anything about making games but boy did he love playing them. And back then, that was pretty much the bar you needed to hit to get hired by Zeschuk, who would conduct a 20-minute job interview with one question, "So what games are you playing lately?" Watamaniuk came indoors from the harsh winters to work on a database that held spell data for BioWare's upcoming role-playing games.
At BioWare, Watamaniuk found a group of like-minded gamers, including Hudson, who had been hired as a technical artist thanks to his programming background. Hudson and Watamaniuk were soon joined by David Falkner, another D&D nerd-turned-programmer; furniture truck driver-turned-writer Drew Karpyshyn, whose claim to fame was appearing on Jeopardy (he placed third with $4,000); and artist Derek Watts, who was known around Edmonton for his retro pop sarcasm art, like a Sweet Jesus Chili Hot sauce sign with the slogan "Holy Moly It's Hot!"
Together, these developers helped Muzyka and Zeschuk hone in on what's referred to as the "four pillars" of a BioWare game: story, progression, exploration and gameplay. BioWare still experimented with action games like MDK2, but the leaders wanted to make deep role-playing games their specialty. Baldur's Gate was a hit, and it led to a host of offers, including one from George Lucas' video game company to effectively make Baldur's Gate in space with light sabers.
It didn't take long for BioWare to say yes to that. Hudson, who dreamed of maybe being art director on the project, lamented that he was too young and inexperienced to even get that role. As he and Zeschuk were playing some MDK2 on the office couch at 2 a.m., Hudson mentioned his personal disappointment in not having more experience. A few days letter he was summoned to a meeting with the founders. "Casey, we'd like you to be the project director for the new Star Wars game," they said. Hudson couldn't believe what he just heard. He was hoping for art director at best — not project director. He had just been given the opportunity of a lifetime.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was a chance for Hudson, Watamaniuk, Falkner, Watts and Karpyshyn to start working together as a team. Arriving in the summer of 2003 on the original Xbox, KOTOR (as it's known to fans) was heralded as one of the best Star Wars video games ever made. The story, set long before the events of the films, lets players pick between joining the light or dark side of the force, and this choice impacts the end of the story. Emboldened by the success of KOTOR, the team at BioWare wanted to create an all-new science fiction world that they could own. Casey Hudson had a few ideas.
Images[]
- BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk
- The doctors in the early days of BioWare.
- BioWare's first successful game: Baldur's Gate.
- Preston Watamaniuk
- Derek Watts
Quiz: The Mass Effect Challenge[]
Commander Shepard could have which pet in his quarters?
- Fish (correct answer)
- Dog
- Turtle
- Space bird
What is the name of the main character in Mass Effect 3?
- Commander Shepard (correct answer)
- Commander Sheen
- Commander Garrus
- Admiral Anderson
The Illusive Man sent this assassin after Shepard.
- Kai Leng (correct answer)
- Wrex
- Diana Allers
- Samir Alori
Who is this character in the Mass Effect universe?
- Kelly Chambers
- Miranda Lawson (correct answer)
- Liara T'Soni
- Diana Allers
Who is the director of Mass Effect 3?
- Mark Meer
- Casey Hudson (correct answer)
- Greg Zeschuk
- Mordin Sollus [sic]
This character is a member of which race in the Mass Effect universe?
Name this frozen terrestrial world from the Mass Effect universe.
Results
You answered (number) question(s) correctly out of 7 total.
Infographics: By the Numbers - Learn More About Mass Effect[]
How many people play as a male vs. female Shepard?
- 82% male
- 18% female
How many people import their game from Mass Effect 1?
- 54% in first 5 days Xbox games imported ME1
What percentage of players chose each class?
87.2% of all careers used a customized Shepard's face.
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