09.06
We had the incredibly special opportunity to speak with Dr Greg Zeschuk, VP of Bioware, on an assortment of topics. This the audio version of the interview and as stated before the video versions of all of our interviews will be up after PAX so look forward to that later on. Thank you again to Dr. Greg Zeschuk and the Bioware team for the interview. For now we hope you enjoy the audio form of this interview.
Text transcript after the jump, click read more to view it.
Pete: Alright guys, it’s Pete Trerice here from Darthhater.com, and I have someone extremely special in the Bioware universe. We’ve got Dr Z. Why don’t you introduce yourself?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I’m Greg Zeschuk from Bioware and I’m here to chat with you guys about… I think a variety of things today.
Pete: Absolutely, first off, tell us a little about your background.
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I’m originally a medical doctor, like my other partner of Bioware, Dr. Ray Muzyka, and both of us started Bioware more than 15 years ago now. We’ve made a lot of games.
Pete: I’ve played every one.
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Yea, a lot of familiar names, you can go search on the internet and find out. Now I’m actually part of the MMORPG group now, I’m actually the group creative officer, and Ray’s the group’s general manager. We worked on Bioware’s stuff and also helped out with Mythic. A lot of exciting things going on.
Pete: With your PHD and your executive MBA, how does it help guide the most creative games studio on the planet?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Those are probably negatives for the creativity. Well, no, I think what’s fun is that those things give me a little bit of a practical basis for making cool games. For us, what we’re really focused on is always pushing the envelope of the games, doing cool stuff that our fans are always surprised by. We think it is really important on a fundamental level to delivering the best story-driven games to the world
Pete: Very cool. Do you currently play or have played MMOs in the past?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I do play, I’ve played many many of them. I first played MUDs, I was quite addicted to MUDs, and my wife always kept on wondering what that funny sound when she picked up the phone up was. I was like Nooooo!
Pete: I’m in the in the middle of burning someone’s forest down!
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I know, I used to play a lot of MUDs, and there was a point where I played almost everything. Probably up to Final Fantasy… What number would that be? Was it thirteen that’s an MMO?
Pete: Eleven
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Eleven, yea, thirteen’s the next one
Pete: Yea, it’s coming out in a few weeks. 
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: A lot of numbers, and it’s very complicated for me. Yea it was eleven. Up to that point I played everything. The one that I spent a lot of time on earlier was Ultima Online. And everything else.
Pete: What did kind of character class did you like to play?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I typically play a warrior derivative. Maybe like a dual class. I was a grandmaster warrior; grandmaster mage on UO. I like that kind of dual feature character, sometimes… in WoW I play a warrior, it kind of depends on the game.
Pete: What’s day to day life like? What do you do as one of the honchos of Bioware.
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Actually, quite a variety of things. I would say a large part of our job, me and Ray, is supporting our team and making sure they’re succesful. So, a lot of meetings with the staff, talk over what we’re doing. Actually, in the last little bit, certainly right now, playing a lot of games. Like, you’ve got Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 coming down the pipe. And of course, there’s Star Wars: The Old republic. I’ve been joking with people that the Bioware game playing has been getting in the way of my other game playing. So my job is actually affecting my game playing, but I’m still getting to play games, ironically.
Pete: Very cool, are you familiar with what most of the staff call the 4 pillars, at Bioware.
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: I’m pretty familiar with them. I was ones who helped set them up.
Pete: My question leads into that: Can you describe how you came up with the concept of the 4 pillars? It seems interesting because there are 4 very defined areas.
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Actually, yea, that’s interesting, as I said, I helped work on them. Four of us that actually, well, everyone at Bioware contributed. It was like, me and Ray, and James Oland, who is of course, the Creative Director. Also Kevin Barret who was our director of design at the time. They came out in a fundamental level around Oblivion. We looked at Oblivion and tried to understand, it’s a very cool game, so what was cool about it? And then we actually said, what defines a Bioware game? And then actually we realized that the 4 pillars were the key elements. Those being story/character, some kind of conflict or combat, character progression, and exploration. And the games like Oblivion and Fallout have huge detail. They’re incredible in progression and exploration. I’d say we probably do more with story. And you suddenly have this formula by which you can evaluate games. Not to say that’s we’re trying to minimize games into a formula, but it’s a way to understand them.
Pete: Very cool. That’s one the things that makes your games stand out more than anyone else, because you hit all four and do all four well.
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: Why thank you!
Pete: So, advice for people looking to get into the industry?
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: General advice… Right now especially, the world is at your fingertips. You can make stuff yourself. There’s no need to… Really, I should say you really shouldn’t be applying to a place unless you can demonstrate something. Secondarily there’s a lot of good opportunities in terms of education that you can get. I think those two things together, like getting some training. I mean, you don’t need the education. It helps, it helps on your resume, but if you can show stuff you can do that’s awesome. Like an I-phone or flash or whatever. That’s actually the ticket.
Pete: Well thank you so much for your time, we really appreciate having you here. Thanks for hanging with us at PAX!
Dr. Greg Zeschuk: My pleasure, it’s been a really fun show. It’s fun meeting folks you love our work.
Pete: Well thank you so much.
Related posts:
Dr. Z played UO. I wonder what server? I was on the pacific server from day one. UO was hardcore, get ganked lose everything you carried.
Dr. Z played FFXI and plays WoW, that’s cool. FFXI is a hardcore(but fun) game, it’s nice that someone like him played it.
As soon as they find someone who would donate their time to do so Adam, until then audio is all we get.
Transcript is up
.
Guys, could you try to include transcripts with your AV content? It would be of great value to deaf readers and those who otherwise can’t listen to audio content.
That is one of the things we are going to do next week after PAX is over. Unfortunately with PAX going on we don’t have the time to transcribe it at the moment.
Actually, found someone (bjbrains) to do the transcribing of the interview, it’s up now.
Thanks guys, much appreciated!