It's difficult to catch up to Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. A conference-call interview finds Zeschuck in England, about to chat with video game insiders about the future of the industry, and Muzyka holding his own in no-limit Texas Hold'em at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
Ray Muzyka
Perfectly reasonable for two med-school grads from the University of Alberta.
Fifteen years ago, Zeschuk and Muzyka, along with classmate Augustine Yip, '90 BSc(Med), '92 MD, founded BioWare, one of the most respected and successful video game studios in the business. (Yip has since left the company to go back to practicing medicine.)
"We got our bachelor's degrees then trained as medical doctors at the U of A - mostly in emergency medicine, family medicine and geriatrics," says Muzyka. "Actually, the skill set is still very relevant to going into business, the ability to talk to people, the value of treating people well. Those are all skills you learn as a doctor that are very, very important in business."
This is a philosophy that's earned BioWare a place on numerous magazine lists-from the Financial Post to Maclean's-of the best employers to work for in Canada.
"We're only as good as making our workplace and our product better the next day," says Muzyka. "That keeps everything in context and keeps everything in perspective for us."
As university students, both Zeschuck and Muzyka played tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) and were fascinated by the technology required to get those games into a computer format. "We spent a lot of time learning how to program computers in our spare time," says Zeschuk. "You had to be quite technical."
But it was a skill they quickly began to master. In fact, the students produced a gastroenterology patient simulator program for the U of A's Faculty of Medicine in 1991.
"We were all self-taught programmers and thought it was a great opportunity to make software that would be better for students," says Muzyka, of the patient simulator.
BioWare creates games that have made a big impact on the industry, from Balder's Gate, one of the most beloved RPGs in gaming circles, to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which still ranks atop most lists of "Best Star Wars Games of All Time" and even "Best Xbox Games of All Time."
Fans of BioWare games are drawn to the company's history of creating games that have an emotional impact in their storylines-a natural evolution from the tabletop games the founders enjoyed.
"We weren't always as deliberate about it as we are now, but we always knew we wanted to have a strong story element to our games," says Muzyka. "I guess it's very intuitive. We always thought story was such a fundamental part of entertainment."
In 2007, Electronic Arts paid $860 million for BioWare and another company, Pandemic, and Bioware became a unit of EA while retaining its own branding. Muzyka became group general manager, and Zeschuk became group creative officer of the new studio group.
"I manage the various studios and am very much involved in the creative side of things," says Muzyka. "I also love the business side, the people side, and the publishing and marketing side. For me it's always been fun to be a generalist. I don't know much about anything, but I know a little about everything, so you get to learn every day."
Greg Zeschuk
Zeschuk recently moved into the role of general manager for BioWare's Austin studio, which is focusing on the upcoming release of BioWare's second foray into the Star Wars universe-The Old Republic. "Whatever needs doing, I do," he says. "It's fun being on the creative side, because I can have my fingers in every pie, but now I'm just very focused on this specific pie."
As video games evolve in the world of entertainment, with more compelling stories and improved graphic effects, BioWare continues to be at the forefront of the interactive storytelling business.
"We think of games as an art form. It's really mainstream now, which is awesome," says Muzyka. "I think the next 30 years is going to be the same level of dramatic change. You can reach people on a dramatic level with some of these stories and characters that are present in games. You can move people. I hear stories from fans who say, 'That moment from this game just shook me to the core.' In the future really anything is possible, and that's the way you want it."
The same holds for the two doctors who became videogame superstars.
"We never had an exit plan when we started the company. We still don't, really," laughs Zeschuk. "We never had a specific target in mind. I always felt like it was a more Taoist approach-don't seek an end-point or a goal, just strive to do better."