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.

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.

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.

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

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

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.

BioWare is a proudly Canadian company. Sure, we have a lot of international employees, but we were founded by Canadians in Edmonton Alberta and we remain very proud of being a Canadian game development studio. However, even though we are proud to be Canadian, we’ve never really had a presence at Canadian gaming events. Sure, we always attend E3 and lately we’ve been attending other international shows like GamesCom in Germany or PAX in Seattle (more on PAX later this week), but we’ve never really done much here in our home country. Well, all that changed this past weekend as the BioWare Community Team took Dragon Age Origins to Fan Expo Canada.

Fan Expo takes place at the Metro Convention Center in Toronto Ontario and is sort of 4 smaller conventions all wrapped up into one big show. In past years, Toronto hosted a comic book show, one dedicated to horror, one on Sci-Fi and one on Anime. They realized that instead of having 4 small shows with only so-so attendance to each, they could combine and have one massive show that would pull in fans from all groups simultaneously. This year, they were hoping to have around 50,000 fans come out, but on Saturday the lines were SO huge, I think they will have easily beat that number this year.

So what goes on at Fan Expo? Well, as I said, it is a combination of Sci-Fi, comic books, anime and horror. There are the usual booths selling their back issue comics or gothic clothes or Pocky or whatever. There were a large number of celebrities attending, like Bruce Campbell, Roger Corman and Leonard Nemoy, signing autographs and taking pictures with fans. There were some big companies like DC Comics, Disney and Warner Brothers present showing off their upcoming projects. And there was a staggering amount of fans in costumes. Don’t get me wrong, there are always fans in costume at conventions, but I say that I saw more fans in costumes at Fan Expo than any other Con I have been to. I saw Leatherfaces chasing after Narutos and Squirrel Girl doing battle with Ghostbusters as a squad of Yeoman Brands watched. We even had a few “famous” characters come by the booth to try out Dragon Age: Origins, but sadly, their superpowers couldn’t prevail over the Darkspawn Blight.

I should also call out one more very cool thing. There are always a number of artists at these cons. Sometimes they are famous artists working on comics, movies and TV, other times they are up and coming artists starting up their own projects. Now I have always said that of all the departments at BioWare I am always the most impressed by our artists. It may be because I like to think that I can write a bit and I also like to think that if I went back to school and applied myself, I could learn the basics of programming. However, I know for a fact that I cannot “art”. I have tried to “art” even taking a course at college (where my Prof suggested I transfer to drama), so I am always in awe of the talent that we have at BioWare. Well, this year at Fan Expo, a few BioWare staffers and friends have started up The Anthology Project. If you are looking for the “delirious pursuit of compelling narrative and notable artistic work in the medium of sequential art”, you should really check it out.

Well, we have wrapped up another successful convention. We had a great time this year at Fan Expo and I hope to return again next year. Why? Well, because it was a heck of a good time and, frankly, because Canada rocks. This week is the start of our last official Community Convention of the summer as we head to Seattle Washington for PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo. Keep track of us on Twitter at biofeed and check out our convention pictures on the Community Flickr account here: Flickr

Well, another year’s Gen-Con has come and gone. I, and the rest of the BioWare staff working the Con, are very tired, but very pleased at how much fun we had and how well Dragon Age: Origins was enjoyed by the fans. We had great turn out each and every day. I don’t think there was more than a 30 second gap of empty space at any of the kiosks for either PC or Xbox 360 demos.

I guess I should back up a bit. If you read part 1 of my Gen Con blog (and if you haven’t go do so now, I’ll wait) you know that me, Fernando Melo (Producer), David Gaider (Lead Writer), Cori May (Technical Designer), Randall Bishop (Assistant Brand Manager), Derek Beland (Senior Programmer), Bryan Derksen (Toolset Programmer) and Vanessa Prinsen (QA Analyst) all came to this years Gen Con in Indianapolis Indiana to show off Dragon Age: Origins. We had 4 stations each for hands on demos of the PC and Xbox 360 versions. We also had a stage where we gave presentations and toolset demos to the crowd. Everyone had a great time meeting and talking DAO with fans. I think 99% of the people who came to the booth walked away impressed with the game. The 1% who walked away unhappy wanted it to be an MMO (too bad for them as they missed out a great single player RPG. We told them to check out Star Wars The Old Republic for cool upcoming MMO goodness).

The game went over great and even the people who only watched walked away talking about how cool it was or how much it reminded them on NwN or Baldur’s Gate. I had a large number of people pull out PDAs and pre-order on the spot, which was great to see. We did have a few minor tech issues, all caused by Xboxes overheating in their tiny cabinets in the hot Convention hall, but otherwise the builds performed great. Our biggest disappointment was that our swag never did arrive. We were supposed to give out 18 thousand inflatable Dragon Age swords, but the truck never showed, so our apologies to fans that didn’t get any. Our biggest surprise was likely the transformation of Vanessa from knowledgeable game assistant in to “booth babe”. Never underestimate the power of an attractive woman who is also a huge gamer and fellow nerd.

We had a great time in Indianapolis as well. Despite being really hot and humid (compared to back home) we explored, dined well and shopped when we weren’t working hard. The people of Indy are super nice when us nerds come to town for Gen Con. The only day we felt out of place was “Game Day” when the local NFL team, the Colts, played. The streets became a sea of blue and white jerseys and we felt like geeky salmon trying to swim upstream trying to walk anywhere. We also went out to a great Steak Restaurant with our friends from EA Mythic studios (who were there showing Warhammer Online ) as well as watching District 9 with them late the last evening. Great bunch of folks at Mythic and it was a pleasure to meet up with them when we could.

All too soon, it was the end of the Convention. When the announcement came at 4pm on Sunday everyone gave a strong round of applause to the Con, and breakdown on the booths began. We quickly tidied up, scrubbed our PCs and 360s clean (for security), packed up and moved out having had a great Gen Con once again this year. Will BioWare be back in 2010? Well, we will have shipped both Dragon Age: Origins and Mass effect 2 before next summer, but we do have a lot of DLC we’ll be talking about, plus we have an MMO in the works. I can’t promise anything yet, but we’ll see what we can do.

Now I’m sitting in an airport lounge on my way to Koln (or Cologne) Germany for the Koln Games Convention. BioWare is going to be showing both Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2. I’ll continue blogging once I have touched down in Germany and gotten over the jetlag. Keep track of us on Twitter at biofeed and check out our convention pictures on the Community Flickr account here: Flickr

Looks like they’re boarding my plane. Blog at you later.

Well, it is the end of the first day of Gen Con here in Indianapolis Indiana and, like any good adventurer after a hard day’s toil, I have ventured to a local tavern where I can regale you with stories of my adventures.

Gen Con, for those who do not know, is the largest gaming convention in the United States and this is its 40th anniversary.

Sure, there are conventions that are larger for video games (like E3 or the upcoming PAX conference in Seattle), but I think it is the largest convention dedicated to gaming in North America. There are all sorts of games here; board games, dice games, live action role playing, card games, miniatures and, luckily for BioWare and EA, a growing segment of video games. The video games here try to fit in with the audience, so BioWare has sent our next great Fantasy RPG, Dragon Age: Origins for fans to play. There are other great games here as well like Dante’s Inferno and Warhammer Online, but I think we are the game that best fits in with the convention attendees. All of whom are gamers, fans of fantasy and, like me and the rest of the BioWare team, huge nerds who love the games we play.

We knew Dragon Age: Origins would be a great fit for the con, so we created a booth where we can allow fans to try out the PC and Xbox 360 versions with hands on game play. We also have a stage where we are doing combat demos as well as toolset and story presentations. Along with me is Dragon Age Lead Writer David Gaider, Producer Fernando Melo, Technical Designer Cori May, Senior Programmer Derek Beland, QA Analyst Vanessa Prinsen, Toolset Programmer Bryan Derksen and Assistant Brand Manager Randall Bishop. David is doing double duty handling press interviews as well as doing stage presentations on the story of Dragon Age: Origins. Fernando and Bryan are doing toolset demos. And the rest of us are helping fans play the game and answer questions.

So far, things are going almost perfectly. The booth and Dragon Age: Origins are a huge hit with the crowd here. People love the game, David is giving interviews to press, we get to meet and answer fan questions on the game and we’re having an almost perfect time. Almost perfect? Yep, well, there are always a few small issues when you attend a convention. For example, all of our swag is missing. We hoped to have the inflatable swords we gave out at Comic Con here, but they are missing (hopefully they’ll come tomorrow). Also, during set up, we realized we didn’t have internet to authenticate our PC installs. Fortunately, our good friends at Mythic are here showing Warhammer Online and thanks to Bob, Jordan and the rest, we borrowed some internet to get the job done.

What are the things I’ve seen that impress me so far? Well, the Dante’s Inferno booth next door to us not only has an excellent hands on demo, but also a supercool statue of Dante
We also had a fan of Mass Effect stop by the booth in an amazingly detailed Liara T’Soni costume. She had the detail down perfectly even going so far as to create her pistol. Those, along with how well the game is going over with fans are the definite highlights so far.

I’ll be back later on with another GenCon update and later, a blog about heading of to Games Com in Koln Germany, which is the next destination for BioWare this summer on our Summer Convention Tour. In the mean time, make sure you follow us at biofeed on Twitter and check out our convention pictures on the Community Flickr account here: Flickr Now it is time for bed or, as I like to say, Evil Chris needs sleep badly. Blog at you later.