BioWare at Gen-Con 2002

by Alex Andrews aka Twigster on the BioWare forums

On my first day, Friday, at Gen-Con 2002, I went looking for any sign of BioWare in the huckster's room. I went up and down every isle looking intently. Apparently I didn't look hard enough until my second walk through when I found Aidan behind eight laptops DMing a session. It appeared to be quite similar to the one that they ran at E3. No matter. It looked really cool. After some time after Aidan had left, I introduced myself to both "Neils" (the nickname given to him by Derek), a system admin. for BioWare and purveyor of the LAN on which the game was running and Teresa, the communications coordinator. To my surprise, Teresa remembered me from when I contacted her to interview Bob McCabe. "You're Twigster, right?", she asked.

Neils and I spent a little talking about the network. It took him only an hour to setup, which to me is pretty fast. We got on the subject of the forums and informed it was run completely on Linux. I found that just cooler that hell. Any chance not to buy from Microsoft and Billy boy, I was all for.

I asked if Jay were around. Both Neils and Teresa said he was at the Infogrames booth doing a demo of Neverwinter Nights. Ah, I thought to myself, of course he is. After a while standing in crowd that spilled out into the isles of the Infogrames booth, I resigned to the fact I wouldn't meet Jay this day. It was nice to see such an interest in Neverwinter but, I was on a mission and determined to introduce myself- tomorrow, I'd give it a try.

The next day, Saturday, I went looking again for Jay. I stopped by the BioWare stand and asked about Jay's whereabouts. Neils said both he and Aidan was back at the Infogrames booth getting ready for the toolset demo. So I made a bee line for the booth determined to get a seat. I arrived some twenty minutes before the scheduled start of the demo. Damn! The booth was already full! So I stood at the entrance and held my ground until it started.

Fifteen minutes after the scheduled start of the demo, both Aidan and Jay show up with an obvious rushed look upon their faces. They showed how to lay down tile, asking the audience which tileset they should use. The went through placeable objects and the difference between tags and names especially dealing with doors. They made a quick NPC that told the character what to go look for. They explained the sound placements. All in all a very basic low down on the toolset; nothing new for me probably not to you either if you've spent anytime at all playing with the toolset.

After the demo I corralled Jay and introduced myself. I told him my website name and he appeared to have recognized it. It was of no matter. I perfectly understood if he didn't. How many people E-mail him a day about their site or have a suggestion about one thing or another. I requested to take a picture and he agreed reaching over to Aidan for him to join us who by now was inundated by people with questions. While we waited for Aidan to finish up the questions I asked about the fact that, as a module maker, why they chose not to put in a character creator that was governed by a level range set by the module maker. I cited FRUA (Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures) as an example. He nodded and said that one could play through a level 1 PnP module with any  high level character  if one chose to. It wouldn't be too fun for the player  but, it was possible.  He also stated that once a module is posted up on the net there's no guarantee what will be made of the mod. I conceded the point as we went on a hunt for Aidan who'd slipped away from us.

Quickly finding him at the BioWare stand, I took the several shots of the BioWare team. I thanked them each for their time placating to the ramblings of a geeky fan. They said, that's why they were here. There were a million more questions I wanted to ask, especially dealing with scripting. I held the "nerdling" urge in check to make a pest out of myself and instead told them I looked forward to seeing them in my neighborhood next year at Indy. 

I'd like to take this time out to personally thank Jay, Aidan, Teresa and "Neils" for their patience and time dealing with a big fan. I'd also, like to congratulate you on a job well done. I saw how many people you had to contend with asking a multitude of questions. WOW! I don't think It's something I could have done for four straight days. Well done.