Tag Archives: Evil Chris

BioWare Community Team Europe tour. London, Paris & Stockholm!

[BestRockStarVoice]Hello London, Paris and Stockholm![/BestRockStarVoice]

The BioWare Community team: Community Manager Jessica Merizan and Community Specialist “Evil” Chris Priestly, along with their special guest Holly Conrad (in her Commander Shepard gear from Crabcat), will be attending MCM Expo, Paris Games Week and GameX. They want to meet with BioWare fans, talk about Mass Effect and Dragon Age, take pictures, meet cosplayers, and experience some fine British/French/Swedish hospitality. We are worked closely with the community teams in each country to finalize the details of our trip wanted to share details with you.

At all events, follow @JessicaMerizan and @BioEvilChris on Twitter to find out where they are at the Con and where you can meet up with them. They will be mobile throughout the conventions but want to meet up with BioWare fans. Following them on Twitter will keep you up to date on where and when they will be each day.

Jessica, Holly and Chris will be at MCM Expo London England October 26- 28. At MCM join Community Manager Jessica Merizan and Community Specialist “Evil” Chris Priestly and possible special guests as they talk with fans of the hit Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. Jessica and Chris will be talking about getting a job at BioWare, working with the BioWare Community and answering questions on the Mass Effect and Dragon Age games. The panel takes place on Saturday at 12pm on Stage B. Also make sure you check out Courtney Taylor (the voice of Jack in Mass Effect) and Ali Hillis (the voice of Liara in Mass Effect) who are also attending MCM. Follow UK Community Manager @TullyAckland for UK updates.

Chris, Jessica and Holly will be at Paris Games Week in Paris France on October 31 and November 1rst. Paris, please take pity on them as they speak almost no French, so will rely on the kindness of our great French fans. You can also follow French Community Manager @Mister_Moreau who speaks fluent French to get all the latest Paris Games Week updates.

Holly, Jessica & Chris are really excited to for the first time directly meet our Nordic fans, as the BioWare EU Tour will stop and visit Gamex in Stockholm, Sweden between the 2-4th of November!

If you live in Sweden, you definitely want to come out to Gamex and say hi as they host a series of activities and events, both on and off location. These include everything from just answering your community questions to panel Q&A, signing and giving away some cool swag, early N7 Day Celebrations and even an offsite fan meet and greet and more!

If you live in Denmark, Finland or Norway and can’t make it, don’t worry. There’s a chance to win a trip to Gamex through our local Facebook Pages! You can read more about this by visiting either this page containing the activity schedule for Gamex as well as more info about our Gamex stop or…your local BioWare Facebook Page:

http://www.facebook.com/BioWareSE

http://www.facebook.com/BioWareDK

http://www.facebook.com/BioWareFI

http://www.facebook.com/BioWareNO

Follow Nordic Community Manager @Lion_Martinez to ask questions and get the latest updates on Game-X.

So if you are near London, Paris or Stockholm and want to meet BioWare, we hope you will join us at MCM Expo in London England, Paris Games Week in Paris France and GameX in Stockholm Sweden. We’ll see you there.

Facebook Friday Week 1 – “Evil” Chris Priestly

By Evil Chris Priestly

Hello BioWare fans.

We thought we’d show you that those of us who work at BioWare are regular people just like the rest of you. So we thought we’d start a series of weekly staff profiles where each week a chosen staff member will give you some details about who they are, what they do for fun and their job here at BioWare. The selected staff member will give you a little insight into their personality and their job here at BioWare.

Since it was my idea to do this, I get to be the first person for Facebook Fridays here on the BioWare Facebook page and BioWare Blog. In the coming weeks we’ll have more BioWare staff, some you may have heard of others you may not have, all of whom will give you a little look into who they are and what they do here at BioWare. We hope you enjoy these looks into our lives here at BioWare

Name?
Chris Priestly, known as “Evil” Chris

Where are you from?
Born in New Westminister British Columbia, but mostly an Edmonton Alberta native.

Favorite movies:
Blazing Saddles, LotR Trilogy, Raider of the Lost Ark, The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight, Touch of Evil, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Favorite TV:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Top Gear, Monty Python, Futurama and The Simpsons, WWE Wrestling, Deadwood, Top Chef, Dexter, 30 Rock, Boardwalk Empire, NFL Football. Really looking forward to The Walking Dead.

Favorite books:
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I have everything, including the maps. I am also a HUGE comic book fan with far too many titles to name here.

Favorite pizza toppings:
I’d eat anything, even anchovies, but I prefer a simple margherrita .

Job or title at BioWare:
Senior Community Coordinator

How long have you worked for BioWare?
10 years this coming March. I’ve been a part of pretty much everything BioWare Edmonton has done since Baldur’s Gate: Throne of Bhaal.

What does a “Community Coordinator” actually do?
I am part of the Community team here at BioWare which falls under the Marketing department. Mostly I am responsible for taking messaging from the Development teams and presenting it to the public on our forums and other Social Media outlets (like Facebook, Twitter, etc). I also take the feedback from our fans and present it to the Dev teams. I am the chief forum moderator at BioWare and am responsible for the fan forums, rules, etc. I also get to do things like help plan which conventions we will attend and what our booth will look like, work to promote items and help come up with ideas for the BioWare online store and I spend a lot of time playing our games and so I can accurately talk with our fans.

What is your average day like at the office?
An average day has me at work around 8 am. I check and respond to emails that came in overnight. I then head onto the internet and check over our forums, websites and Social Media pages. I read the new threads and responses since I last checked. I am also in charge of enforcing the rules, so I take care of that if any of that is needed. I usually attend 1-2 meetings per day with different teams (marketing, Dev teams, etc) and work out what is being talked about currently, what is coming up, how we should present the information to our fans. I continue to monitor our forums throughout the day, check out other Communities that discuss gaming or our games, read news sites for gaming related news and play the games we have in development. I’m usually done around 5pm, but I often spend a couple of hours online in the evenings on our forums reading and prowling.

Favorite BioWare moment Game related or thing you are most proud of at BioWare?
I’ve been with BioWare almost 10 years now and I have lots to be proud of. However, my number one moment was helping get John Cleese to be in one of our games. Back while we were making Jade Empire, I was asked by the writers to suggest some actors who could voice Lord Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard (I was asked as I am known to be a big film nut). Since the writing for Ponce, if played straight, would come of extremely racist, I suggested that we get John Cleese to do the lines as even though he could read it straight, his voice and inflection would bring a lot of humor to it. As a huge Python fan I was thrilled that we actually got him for the role and I got to “work” with John Cleese (even in this tiny tangential manner).

Favorite BioWare moment not game related?
Again, over the past 10 years there have been many great moments. We’ve had some great game launch parties. I’ve met some great fans at conventions and travelled a great deal showing off our games (although that may fall under work). I think one of my best memories was at a BioWare ski night. I don’t ski and neither does Ray, so he and I stood at the bottom of the hill, cheering on the others and smoking a couple of Ray’s rather expensive cigars.

What do you do to relax/do you have any hobbies:
I watch a lot of movies and TV. I am an avid comic book collector reading titles like Walking Dead, Chew, Invincible, Hellboy, Green Lantern, The Boys and more. I love to cook and consider myself a foodie. I’m trying to learn to appreciate wine. My wife and I travel when we get the chance. And I am an amateur poker player.

What game are you losing sleep for right now (that you are not working on)?
Well, right now (since I am not on the actual Dev team) I could say Dragon Age 2, but for non-BioWare games I am waiting for Medal of Honor, BioShock Infinite and Batman Arkham Asylum 2.

What is the most “nerdy” thing about you?
I can quote any skit from Monty Python from memory.

If you didn’t work in video games, what would you be doing?
I would love to be a travel and food blogger like Not Quite Nigella

What do you want people to know about you?
How I got the “Evil Chris” nickname. Back before being on the Community team, I was in the QA department here at BioWare and we were working crunch time (Crunch time is when the game is almost finished and we are trying to ship it to the publisher. This can mean lots of long days and late nights.) as we finished Knights of the Old Republic. We were working late one night after around 18 hours in the office and we were all tired and a little silly. We had recently added smilies to the old BioWare forums and I made a joking post of how I had snapped working late and was running around the office being “evil” to the other staff (using the little evil emoticon smiley liberally in the post). It was meant as a silly post that I did more to keep me and my barely awake coworkers entertained, but the fans enjoyed it more than I thought they would. That combined with the fact I am the person who has to enforce the forum rules and the nickname of “Evil Chris” stuck. Now I end all of my forum posts with the evil emoticon and I’m actually rather pleased to be known by it. The fact that I eat the occasional puppy has nothing to do with it.

Dragon Age 2 at San Diego Comic Con (Set Up)

by Evil Chris Priestly

I was really surprised to hear that we were going to be bringing Dragon Age 2 to this year’s San Diego Comic Con. As many of you who follow this blog or read our forums know, I am a huge comic book nerd and love getting to come to SDCC as it is a major event with comics, movies, TV, video games and back issues by the score all in one massive event. I was just surprised that the DA2 team were ready to show stuff to the press.

I asked Mike Laidlaw, the Lead Designer for DA2, why we were doing it now and he explained that the whole DA2 team felt that things were stable enough and looked good enough to start to show it off to fans. We’d had the very successful Game Informer issue last month, and now it as time to get out and meet the fans, and the timing with Comic Con worked out great.

So yesterday me, Mike Laidlaw, Dan Lazin, Aidan Scanlan, and Bruce Venne flew down to San Diego to start to set up the DA2 Super Sneek Peek. We are once again in the Gaslamp Hilton for the Electronic Arts game experience. This year we share the space with the awesome (yet scary as all get out) Dead Space 2. We spent the day setting up the booth, installing the builds, dealing with “tech problems” (dear hotel guests, we did not mean to trigger that fire alarm. Sorry) and getting everything set up for our first day today.

If you are in or around San Diego, you NEED to come down and experience our booth. Since we are only 4 hours away from opening the doors I think it is now safe to say, if you come down, you will have your first chance to get your hands on and PLAY Dragon Age 2. We are open from 12-9 Thursday, Friday and Saturday and from 12-7 on Sunday. We hope to see you here.

And make sure you say hi to Fang.

Pre-PAX East Blog

by Evil Chris Priestly

Well, for me, PAX East in Boston Mass kicks off the start of the Convention season. I know for industry types it is usually DICE or GDC, but for me as a Community guy (and huge nerd) I prefer the fan oriented conventions. In the past, BioWare has had a great time at conventions like Koln GamesCom, Gen-Con, and Fan Expo Canada, but probably the biggest each year is PAX.

PAX, for those who don’t know, is the Penny Arcade Expo which takes place annually in Seattle Washington. It was founded and run by Gabe & Tycho of the Penny Arcade webcomic and a huge army of volunteers who make it the place for fans of gaming to go each year. This year, for the first time, they have taken PAX from it’s home in Seattle (usually in late August/early September) and have taken it to Boston on the East coast, bringing it to a whole new audience.

PAX is a great time for video gamers, Magic Players, board gamers, P&P gamers and fellow enthusiasts (basically nerds, and I use the term lovingly as I am one myself). Many awesome and huge names come out to show off their upcoming games. This year I have seen EA (with APB, Skate 3 and Dante’s Inferno), Turbine, Rockstar and many more. Also smaller independent game developers bring out their products to get noticed. There are merchants selling board or card games, tech companies like nVidia and Intel showing off their latest hardware and fans all over the place. There are areas of the Hynes Convention Center set aside for people to bring their own PCs, people who play hand held games, areas for table top gaming, etc. Basically, if you are a gamer on the East Coast, you should be coming out to PAX.

Now this year, BioWare doesn’t have a booth. Since we have already shipped Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening as well as Mass Effect 2, it just wasn’t possible for us to have a major booth (they are pricey things once you add up cost to make, shipping, equipment, staffing, etc). But even though we aren’t there with a booth, I made it my mission to attend anyways. Even though I have been to the past 3 PAXs on the West coast, I am usually tied up at whatever booth we have running and don’t really get much time to see the convention or get to meet with fans. So this year, I am attending for the fun of seeing the show. I plan to take in game demos, watch some of the panel discussions, meet BioWare fans (there are lots of people running around in ME2 hoodies or DAO t shirts) and generally take in the show as a fan. Now I will e handing out Swag items to fans who find me. I will be tweeting my locations throughout the show and the first person to find me will get some cool BioWare swag just for following our biofeed on Twitter.

The pictures in this blog were all taken during set up. I’ll blog again tonight or tomorrow morning (depending on how late I’m out till as PAX doesn’t end till around 2 each morning) with Day 1 impressions of the fun and madness that is PAX East. The line below may be empty now, but it will be PAXED later. Get it? Packed? PAXed? *sigh* Nevermind. See you in Boston.

Dragon Age – The Revelation comic

by Evil Chris Priestly. A collaboration with Ideas by David Gaider and Art by Aimo.

We are very pleased to bring you an awesome new Dragon Age: Origins comic strip jointly created by one of the members of our Community, Irma Ahmed who is better known by her artist name Aimo with assistance from Dragon Age: Origins Lead Writer David Gaider. If you have not yet had a chance to see Aimo’s art, you should check out her personal art website here: Aimo Studio Fortunately for us, not only is Aimo/Irma a very talented artist, she is also a huge Dragon Age fan. She and David were talking one day and… actually, I think it would be better if Mr Gaider explained in his own words.

David Gaider – “I’ve always been a big fan of Aimo’s art – she has an incredible ability to capture the emotions of her characters. So I started chatting with her a bit back in January, and the idea came up for us to maybe collaborate on something. I mentioned a cutscene we had considered doing prior to Morrigan’s offer in the climax (*spoiler alert* for anyone who hasn’t played that far in Origins) but which had been left on the cutting room floor along with so many other scenes. This one in particular was hard to cut, because it was supposed to give some context to the player who romances Morrigan or who had become really good friends with her that what she was about to do was causing her conflict. As is pretty typical for game development, however, you have to work with the resources at hand… but this comic will maybe allow some people a brief glimpse into the “might have been” that was. Naturally Aimo’s efforts here were ten times mine… all I had to do was write up the scene from memory and then she proceeded to sketch it out over the next few weeks. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. Hope you all enjoy it!”

Check out Page 1 below and then click the links to see the full 8 pages.

Dragon Age: The Revelation Page 1

Aimo, real name Irma Ahmed, has been playing Bioware games since the days of Baldur’s Gate II. Dragon Age:Origins is her current gaming ambrosia, which has inspired many fan creations on her part such as artworks, comics, and even storyboard animatics of party banter. She credits the game for unearthing an affection for the Dwarves, as evidenced by pro-dwarf themes in her tributes.

When she’s not juggling game time between a Dwarf Princess, an Underdog Elf, and a Noble Whelp, she is a professional sketch card artist. Her work credits include traditional medium art for card companies as Topps, Upper Deck, and Rittenhouse Archives on properties of Lucasfilm, New Line Cinema, and Marvel. She intends to sit down and start working on that one great comic opus in the near future.