BioWare founders getting Lifetime Achievement Award
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk to be honored next month at Game Developers Conference Awards in San Francisco.
BioWare founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award next month during the Game Developers Conference Awards, organizers announced today.
Zeschuk and Muzyka--known as the "BioWare Doctors"--left BioWare in September. Zeschuk said he lost passion for making games and is now working on a craft beer Internet show. Muzyka is now involved with social impact endeavors, like charities for education, health care, and animal rights.
Previous winners include Deus Ex designer Warren Spector, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Metal Gear Solid designer Hideo Kojima, and Civilization studio head Sid Meier.
The pair met while in medical school at the University of Alberta and continued to moonlight during the first days of BioWare. Once they made the game company their full-time jobs, Muzyka and Zeschuk oversaw the creation and development of role-playing games like Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Lifetime Achievement winners are chosen by the Game Developers Conference Awards Advisory Committee, which is made up of "notable" representatives from the game industry. Muzyka and Zeschuk will receive their award in person on Wednesday, March 27 at 6:30 p.m. at the Moscone Convention Center as part of the 2013 Game Developers Conference.
Those not in attendance at the awards show can watch a live online stream through GameSpot.
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
78 comments
1 Like Much respect to Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka. I thank you BOTH very much for entertaining me for HUNDREDS of HOURS with each Mass Effect 1 & Mass Effect 2. I bought Mass Effect 3 on day ONE but haven't played it yet cuz I have been backlogged with way too many other games I own. I shall play Mass Effect 3 asap when I make time for it & I hope at the very least the GAMEPLAY entertains me :D
Thank you both again & I wish you the very best in your future endeavors!
Good for them, they got a lot of great titles out there. Bioware is still one of my favorite rpg creators, though I worry about it's future now that they are gone. It's been about a year now since ME3 and I have really heard anything about them starting anything new. I'm assuming they might follow through on a Dragon Age III, but so far there hasn't been much hype about it or indication that there are any new IPs around the corner...
2 Like pffft, fav better studios out there than these haccks
whatever talent they had is gone now
12 Like Yes, they deserve the award and they deserve the award to be taken away from them for selling out to EA.
2 Like I honestly think that people who say that ME3 is the worst game of all time have never played a bad game before in their short little lives.
Obviously this is a well deserved prize and I hope they'll produce more games in the future.
@MikeDrawsALot The only bad thing with ME3 was the poor ending which they corrected. My gripe was that it seemed nonsensical and they rectified that. Definitely not a bad game.
@ACWH @MikeDrawsALot No, the worst thing about ME3 was the fan entitlement. People who know nothing about how stories are supposed to be told dismissing years of hard work because they wanted a happy ending.
The voice of an unhappy fan sounds louder than a happy fan because they shout the loudest and sites like this do stories about them.
I know a lot about the ME lore, And I hoped for that they won't go with typical Hollywood ending was hoping they would treat us like adults Sheppard going away with booom and end this current story but that ending was just horrendous.
First ending before DLC "fix" they basically destroyed the whole galaxy or at least what we have been told about these mass relays and if they would survived the blast every species would be stranded at the Earth. The game was 10/10 until the last 20 minutes seemed so rushed. And Sheppard we knew would never think about going with Synthetic or become the new Reaper.
Intoxicating theory that the community made up was a perfect plot to maybe fix with huge DLC and make it right but their ego was too big to admit they made mistake.
Regardless of what people say about Mass Effect 3's ending, the whole series was groundbreaking and is definitely one of the best Sci-Fi franchises to come out of the 10s.
Well done??? I'm a fan of Bioware and I'm crazy about NWN,Mass Effect series and Dragon Age.Great works!
1 Like They did make some great RPGs but should also get the award for creating then destroying one of the best game development studios ever given life.
I totally agree never forget how they grew a company from the ground up and then sold it off for a big chunk of change... Gotta love capitalism... *facepalm*
5 Like I salute you as the creators of the greatest games ever made in gaming industry. Your works have strongly pushed the boundary of RPG game. I'm really grateful for your masterpiece creations that has mesmerized me over and over. Thanks you guys and Bioware team for putting the level of spirits in game that I hardly find elsewhere.
7 Like This is awesome. Thank you for creating one of the most complex and involving games of all time.
4 Like Bioware's efforts since the EA buyout haven't been the best but still everything they did from Baldur's Gate to the original Mass Effect were solid games and all great contribution to western RPG's and RPG's in general.
My faves were NWN, KOTOR and Jade Empire...
3 Like I love those guys, but I believe they should stay in retirement and never return to games.
They've created masterpieces, but honestly the problems with the gaming industry and community, are clearly why they left.
They deserve the reward plain and simple, DA,ME,Kotor,NwN and Baldurs Gate are just amazing series/games.
9 Like Though they left when Bioware was at a low point, you can't deny the impact they have had on the industry.
1 Like congrats! they delivered alot of great games that we know and we love. the recent downfall is only caused by the devil called Electronic Arts
@texasgoldrush @Tixylixx there was no competition. Still, the amouunt of investment in it's development is also unmatched. And is several times bigger than the original ME. And if you look at the sales, ME3 did not sell much more, at least not proportional to the increased investment.
1 Like @TigusVidiks @texasgoldrush @Tixylixx The game of the year was The Walking Dead, that tells you alot right there about the games that were released for 2012
2 Like Kinda of torn as to how I feel about this. On the one hand they created a company that produced some of the greatest rpg's of all time but on the other hand they sold that company to EA and then sold their integrity by supporting all the subsequent bad decisions. Oh well maybe they'll come back to gaming and produce something that makes up for the whole DA2, ME3, TOR thing. Here's hoping anyway.
@moonlightwolf01 they sold Bioware, and from that point on, we can not really judge them for the development decisions. Before that, while it was up to them though, they delivered some of the best games out there. But after 20 years they wanted out. Decided to make a ton of money and sell to the highest bidder that would give them assurance of maintaining Bioware's name, and went to enjoy the gold retirement. Staying 2 extra years in the company was simply to facilitate the transition. Leaving when they did was probably decided much earlier.
In short, EA bought Bioware studio (that has some name in the market), bought it's IP's and codes. That is what they bought. Not the people who worked there, or their expertiseSome may have stayed, most left. The change is focus(or genre) in their games is the reflex of that. It's not that they " want to explore new gameplays", it's more that they don't know how to make new original rpg's with the trademark immersion and game mechanics that Bioware used to provide. They can replicate it (they have the code after all), but are unable to do actual original stuff. So EA hold on to their own "virtues", and use their original expertise in making shooters. The games they released since them are solid action games, that nobody can deny have quality. But no originality. Now that the ME (that started prior to EA) is over, we'll see how they fare without the team of minds behind Bioware successes.
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ah...CDP Red, oh that company that also delivered a crap ending to one of their games, The Witcher 2, and had to fix the ending for free in a DLC.
Hypocrisy at its finest.
9 Like To be fair, the award is for lifetime achievement, they delivered Baldur's Gate (the entire series has over 400 hours of gameplay), Kotor, Neverwinter Knights, Jade Empire, DAO, DA2, the ME series. And out of all those games, only two would I consider mediocre, DA2 and Jade Empire, while ME3 was a great game with a crappy ending, somewhat remedied by the Extended Cut.
CDPR on the other hand is still new, with but two titles to show for, and two others in development. But CDPR is a great developer that ranks third for me after Bioware and the guys from Black Isle (Obsidian, inXile). They will get there in time.
Wtf I never seen a pic of Ray Muzyka and I always assumed he was Japanese with the last name but now I see he's white.
18 Like Good, they deserve it. Now come back to the gaming industry and start Bioware 2 and don't join EA. Thanks.
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