BioWare Interview

BioWare released Neverwinter Nights last month after spending over three years developing the game. With its ambitious multiplayer component and single-character focus, the project was considerably different from the Baldur's Gate games, which established BioWare's reputation as one of the leading developers of PC role-playing games. We had the opportunity to speak with BioWare's joint CEOs, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, about the game's reception, the long development process, and Neverwinter Nights' future. For more information, take a look at our previous coverage of the game.

GameSpot: Neverwinter Nights was released last month to widespread critical acclaim, and it shot up the sales charts. But how has the response been, overall, from the player community?

Ray Muzyka: Response from our fans has been overwhelmingly positive. We've had more than 200,000 confirmed sales in the first few weeks worldwide (based on CD-key registrations on our community site), and we usually have a minimum of about 5,000 players online at any time. There are hundreds of servers up and running on fan sites at any point in time, and it's all very gratifying to the Neverwinter team--they worked very hard to get the game done to a high level of quality. It's been interesting to see how people felt about the style of gameplay in Neverwinter. It's kind of a blend between Baldur's Gate and Diablo II or Dungeon Siege, but the vast majority of fans seem to find it satisfying. We're definitely motivated to work on new features and new content for the game, and this is what our community/live team will be working on post-release.

GS: The game received a small patch at about the same time as it was released, and some users are still reporting technical issues. In light of that, would you say the game shipped sooner than it should have? How goes the process of stomping all the bugs?

Greg Zeschuk: We've discussed Neverwinter's release internally and we are extremely satisfied it was released at an appropriate time--it wasn't released prematurely, and for the vast majority of users, it has been extremely stable. There are some users who have had problems with the game, and ultimately that's a reflection of the PC industry. Any PC release that uses the latest technologies and drivers will result in some users being unable to run the game. As a PC developer, you can't guarantee people are using the latest drivers for their hardware, or even hardware that is actually supported by the game. Many factors in development are truly beyond our control. Knowing this, we put in as many fail-safes as possible, but they can't detect every problem.

As part of the BioWare community site, we run a technical support forum. People were reporting issues to the forum at the time of release, but the overall number of reported issues was very small relative to the number of copies of the games that were being sold. Tens of thousands of people were buying Neverwinter every day following its release, so there were bound to be some issues noted--that's a function of PC releases. BioWare is dedicated to making technical issues known and dealing with them, not sweeping them under the carpet as some companies tend to do, and that's why we run technical support forums for our games. On a per-capita basis, we've had a very small number of problems with the game. This is supported by the small number of customer-service calls to Infogrames, and the extremely small number of returns of the game. One thing that fans of Neverwinter can be assured of is that BioWare and Infogrames are 100 percent behind the game, and we'll continue working on it for a very long time. We are going to be adding more features, releasing new content, improving documentation, and generally supporting the game and the fans in every way that makes the game better.

GS: The multiplayer aspect of Neverwinter Nights has been consistently touted over the years, but seemingly no one really knew what to expect from the finished product. Would you say that multiplayer Neverwinter Nights is moving in the direction you intended it to?

RM: In many ways, Neverwinter is a great experiment--we weren't and still aren't completely sure where our fans want the gameworld to expand to post-release (only time, a lot of surveys, and analysis of the types of modules being made and played will answer this question for us to the degree that we want it answered). Our BioWare Neverwinter community/live team is working continually with the fans to figure out what features to roll out to them in the next few weeks and months. We're fully committed to supporting Neverwinter and the fans who have bought it. We really appreciate their support.

GS: What are some of the most impressive results so far from users working with the Aurora toolset? How has the Aurora toolset been received, in general?

GZ: In general, the response to the toolset has been tremendous. So far there have been more than 300 fan modules distributed, and we're aware of many more that are still being worked on. A number of fan sites have sprung up to help support builders with tutorials on scripting and other specialized features of the toolset. The builders' forums on the Neverwinter Nights community page have been extremely active, with both fans and people from BioWare sharing information on how to create content in the game. Everyone agrees that the BioWare Aurora Neverwinter toolset is very easy to pick up and use for simple modules. Some of the fans find more advanced features like scripting a little daunting, but there are a number of groups working on making that easier, both inside and outside BioWare. We're really happy to see people picking up and using the tools in such huge numbers.

GS: Neverwinter Nights clearly has a large community of players revolving around it, which was always the intent. How have your efforts gone in terms of working and interacting with the game's fan following? Do you have any plans to expand on the community aspect of the game?

RM: Definitely. We're working right now on a list of features and new content that we can continue to roll out over the next few months to add to the gameworld and the tools and extend the life of the game. We'll have more info on the plans in the next few weeks up on the BioWare Web site and the Neverwinter community site. Some of these features will be released as free updates to fans (new modules, new art, new features in the program), and others will likely be integrated into expansion packs, which we're now discussing with our publisher, Infogrames. Infogrames been great to work with as a publisher--they are very much in support of the title and are thinking long-term on how to ensure longevity and maintain our support of our fans.

GS: If anything, Neverwinter Nights' campaign was a big surprise. Are you happy with the overall response to it? Any plans to address some of the common criticisms, such as the relatively easy difficulty, the overabundance of locked items, and the two-character group restriction?

GZ: The response to the campaign has been very interesting--a lot of people have been very happy with the campaign and the way it unfolds. Before release, we said that its story would be as involving as anything we've done in the past, and we still believe that is true following release. The manner in which the story is told is very different from that of the Baldur's Gate series, and it seems this surprised some people.

I've read some of the comments about the abundance of locked items on a few message boards, and I have to say, it's not something we ever thought would be an issue. In some ways it's a very minor point, but if it affects the user experience (as it seems to, otherwise people wouldn't be commenting on it), we'll definitely look at it in future games. If some really industrious fan wanted to, he or she could go into our campaign with the tools and delete some of the locked objects to a level they were satisfied with and redistribute the modules.

With regard to the group issue, we've been stating clearly for over three years that Neverwinter would have a single playable character--and in fact we didn't even add the option for a henchman until recently. From the very beginning with Neverwinter, we wanted to create something different from Baldur's Gate, but still related through the D&D rules. We believe we accomplished that goal, and we also believe the team created a really top-notch game in the process that is going to change and grow over time.

GS: Neverwinter Nights is the first BioWare game that wasn't published by Interplay. How has the relationship been going with Infogrames, your new publisher? Can we look forward to many more BioWare games from Infogrames?

RM: As I mentioned in an earlier question, Infogrames has been great to work with, and they're certainly interested in working with us on new projects. We were very impressed with how quickly they picked up the ball when the project was signed with them. Though they are a large, geographically diverse publisher, they seem to have excellent communications systems, which allowed us to quickly get up to speed with their excellent marketing, promotion, localization, and quality assurance groups.

GS: What would you say are some of the key lessons you've taken away from working on Neverwinter Nights for so long?

GZ: One of the big lessons we learned is how to pace ourselves. Neverwinter Nights was a long and draining project, but we managed to finish it without any significant mishaps. The team did a great job of pacing themselves to keep a bit of energy for the grand finale. We learned a lot about testing large games as well. There were some unique lessons we were able to apply from the Baldur's Gate series for testing, but in the end Neverwinter had even more territory to cover than the BG games. This was one of the largest challenges with the game.

RM: Definitely. We learned a lot about scheduling for a large project (there were more than 70 people on the Neverwinter team at its peak) during the development of Neverwinter, and we also learned a lot about how to develop user tools (since the BioWare Aurora Neverwinter toolset and the NWN Dungeon Master tools were both designed by a large team of programmers for the end-users to generate and role-play D&D content). Greg and I have both come to appreciate the skilled, creative, and smart folks at BioWare a lot during the course of Neverwinter's development. They are a great bunch of people, and we're very lucky to have them working with us here at BioWare!

GS: You designed three unique modules specifically for Amazon.com, EBWorld, and GameStop. Do you have any plans to release those modules to the general public?

GZ: Infogrames is responsible for the deals with the various retailers and similar groups, so I don't know precisely how the modules are treated after they are released to the groups that ordered them. Our goal is to release the modules once some length of time has elapsed, but the actual timing will need to be determined by Infogrames.

GS: What's next for the team? What's next for Neverwinter Nights?

RM: We'll have more announcements in the upcoming months. Suffice it to say, we have some supersecret projects in the works right now that we're looking forward to being able to tell people about.

GZ: We've discussed most of the key points about the next steps with Neverwinter Nights--more content, more features, and some mechanisms to connect players with top-quality content, DMs, servers, and other players. Most of this stuff is still in the works, so we're keeping relatively quiet until we have all the details worked out.

GS: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

RM: We both just wanted to also say thanks to the many talented folks at BioWare who worked so hard on getting the game done, and also to say thanks to our fans, who have purchased it and who keep us in business. We'll definitely try our best to continue to support Neverwinter in the upcoming months through our BioWare live/community team, and if anything we'll try to outdo ourselves in terms of quality on all our upcoming releases, such as our next project, the first role-playing game in the Star Wars universe, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (which is coming out on Xbox first, followed by the PC version, and is being published by LucasArts).

GS: Thanks for your time, gentlemen.