dlcraddock

I've played thousands of hours of Soulsborne across Demon's Souls, the Dark Souls trilogy, and Bloodborne. For FPS games, still play Doom, Duke 3D, UT99, and UT2004 every year.

Me reading the first clause of your question: "What kind of question is--"

Me reading the second clause of your question: "My faith in humanity is restored."

Many devs from Obsidian will be able to draw from their personal history, but I can also take a crack at this one. The first chapter of Beneath a Starless Sky, my Long Read on Shacknews, goes into detail on the relationship between Black Isle, BioWare, and Interplay.

The short version: BioWare started development of Baldur's Gate--their second game, following Shattered Steel--when the company was small. Black Isle, an internal division of Interplay, agreed to publish it and provided numerous resources including funding and input on design. BioWare was the primary developers, and their lead programmer, Scott Greig, was the chief architect of the Infinity Engine. After BG2, BioWare was ready to build new technology and move on from Baldur's Gate, so they licensed the Infinity Engine to Black Isle, whose developers made Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale 1 and II.

Hope that helps!

Totally a fair question. The main reason we set out to make this documentary was to tell stories that have never been told. I write stories (books and now films) because I'm curious about how things work. Until recently, I didn't know that Maze War was considered the first FPS. I spoke to two of the guys who worked on it for our documentary and learned all sorts of things about how they approached level design, game balance, and deathmatch--20 years before the term was codified--on mainframes and dumb terminals. I love learning things like that, and hearing about how different designers approached the same concepts in their own ways.

People who enjoy a hobby often wonder what goes into it. If you enjoy FPS games to any degree, there are stories in our film that will intrigue you, and make you laugh, and give you a lot to think about. Most of all, we're telling stories we know you'll have fun learning.

• As a 13-year-old kid, Windows 95 blew my mind.
• I still ran most games in DOS, which was more than the flimsy shell we have now.
• Plug and Play was mostly bullshit until semi-recently.
• Remember Bill Gates?