 With
their brand new video game looking likely to conquer the
hearts, minds and lightning reflexes of vid kids everywhere,
Drs Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka are feeling pretty good
about things right now. Just released in April, their
new baby, Jade Empire — a role playing game
(RPG) filled with Eastern mysticism and martial arts —
is already getting the joystick-thumbs up from critics
and gamers alike. The BBC's game reviewer approvingly
describes it as "a game of life, love and smashing people's
faces" and online gaming magazine IGN named it Game of
the Month ("Jade Empire is an early leader for
RPG of the year, if not overall game of the year," gush
the editors). Not bad for a couple of MDs from Edmonton.
Five years ago, things didn't look
so bright. Five years ago, something had to give. For
the longtime friends, lifelong ambition had collided
with lifelong obsession. The two young MDs were caught
between fulfilling their childhood dreams of practising
medicine, and the burning desire to nurse their fledgling
video game company into an RPG empire. In the end, obsession
won.
THIS
GAMING LIFE
"I liked emergency medicine quite a bit," recalls Dr
Muzyka, "so I tried to do as much of it as I had time
for... but I'd often drive like mad up north to work
in a small town where I would do the shift from Friday
night through Monday morning, on call, getting very
little sleep, and then I'd come right back down to work
at BioWare Monday morning." He adds, with extreme understatement,
"I started to get a bit tired." His friend and partner
Dr Zeschuk was going through the exact same ordeal.
Dr Muzyka, who is now co-CEO of
BioWare, producer of such high-gloss, wildly popular
narrative-driven RPG games as Star Wars: Knights
of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights,
remembers starting out playing Pong on a home computer
with a paddle joystick in the late 70s. His business
partner, Dr Zeschuk, was partial to a role-playing game
called Pirate Cove, that came on magnetic tapes
that loaded via a cassette drive. "You had to load it
three times," remembers Dr Zeschuk, "and it took about
three minutes each time."
They've come a long way since then.
But those primitive games captured their imaginations
for good.
ARCADE
ENTREPRENEURS
They both grew up in Edmonton, both sons of teachers
and both hopelessly addicted to Atari, but the kindred
spirits didn't find each other until pre-med at the
University of Alberta, where their common obsession
drew them together.
"That's how we got to be good friends:
our shared passion for video games, just sitting around
talking about them, and how cool it would be to make
them," recalls Dr Muzyka. "We both found them to be
an excellent procrastination tool during finals," adds
Dr Zeschuk wryly. Back then they were still just enthusiasts
with some big ideas. That started to change in the early
90s, when, with fellow student Dr Aug Yip, they started
playing around with medical education software, including
a gastroenterology patient simulator.
Suddenly, the dream seemed more
plausible than it had before, and things quickly picked
up speed. In 1995, they incorporated, and in their minimal
spare time between locum gigs, the three developed Shattered
Steel, their first video game. Set in an apocalyptic
future, it cast players as hotshot fighter pilots battling
aliens. It let people blast holes in digital terrain
with tactical nuclear weapons — and it moved 200,000
units. Encouraged, they followed up with Baldur's
Gate, a Dungeons and Dragons-inspired RPG that tells
the tale of a realm on the edge of chaos, with food
shortages and war lurking in the shadows. The Lord of
the Rings-esque game became a huge hit, and suddenly
BioWare was a going concern.
THEN
THEY WERE TWO
That's when things started to get crazy. Like his partner,
Dr Zeschuk remembers working at BioWare all day, then
doing overnight medical calls. "Eventually, it was like,
'What? Why am I doing this?'" he says. Dr Yip was the
first to make his choice, opting for medicine and leaving
the company (he's now working as a GP in Calgary). The
other two took the plunge and became full time CEOs.
In the early days, they wrote,
designed, programmed and marketed the games themselves.
"It was akin to the Wild West," reminisces Dr Zeschuk.
"Eventually, we solidified into more of a project manager
role, but in the early days we did a bit of everything.
It was an excellent foundation for what we do now."
These days the docs-in-name-only hire professional wordsmiths
to write the dialogue for their games, and armies of
designers, animators and programmers to bring them to
life.
Their medical training came in
handy, in unexpected ways. For Dr Zeschuk, the most
valuable carry-over was the sense of responsibility
he had developed working in a geriatric facility. "As
a physician, you're ultimately responsible for the patient's
well-being," he explains. "And in many ways, running
a business is the same thing. BioWare's our patient,
and we have to keep it happy and healthy." The ability
to learn new skills cultivated during medical training
has been invaluable to Dr Muzyka. He says the professional
structure of medicine also translates to the business
world. "It's useful realizing the things you don't know,
and going to specialists in those areas for help," he
says.
 BUSINESS
HEADS
That skill came in handy in the early days, when their
unfamiliarity with the finer points of running an office
and handling the legalities of business operations loomed
large. To make sure they were well and truly captains
of their own destiny they both went back to school and
got their MBAs, Dr Muzyka in 2001 and Dr Zeschuk in
2004. It's paid off; the company is now one of the top
game producers in the world. To date they've sold over
12 million games, their gothic-looking website boasts
2.4 million registered users, they're honoured by scores
of unofficial sites with tips and message boards, they've
won dozens of business and gaming awards and their games
have countless adoring fans around the globe.
While there are no regrets about
turning their backs on medicine, they still have a soft
spot in their hearts for their first career. "I enjoyed
the diversity of experience, the contact with people,"
says Dr Muzyka, who still meets with former medical
colleagues for a regular poker night. "It was very gratifying,
being able to get a good outcome for someone."
Dr Zeschuk agrees. "I think I'd
still enjoy doing it if I didn't have another career
that was very rewarding in a different way. This is
a very creative job. I think that might be a major difference
between medicine and running an entertainment-based
business. One of the jokes we always tell is that no
one wants a creative physician."
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