BioWare Blog: The Long Road to BioWare, Part Two

[GameBanshee News]

Mass Effect 2 senior designer Dave Feltham continues to tell us how luck, networking, and determination landed him his job at BioWare.

In 2006 Pseudo, without a publisher for their upcoming prototypes, decided to do a significant reduction in money overhead and workforce and a fair amount of the senior staff were lost. Me included. I always knew that Pseudo would be the stepping stone for something else, but to go out through a lay-off was devastating. I had 2 children and a wife on maternity leave to consider. But Toronto’s Entertainment industry was gasping for air and its game industry, which never fully took off, was hurting. My options were limited, unless I opened the doors to other places on the Continent.

And this is where Luck, Networking and Determination culminated.

A day after the lay-off I got a call from my old friend and former boss Kevin, who was then the Director of Design at BioWare. He wanted to know if I wanted to work for them: Edmonton had a lot of great things for families and no doubt my wife’s expertise would be a hot commodity. The thing was that the position wasn’t in Art, it was in Design: they were looking for experienced, game design-wise level artists to help them bridge the gap between level-art and level design.