Canadian gaming company BIOWARE is looking to outsource basic game art work (placeables & parts of environment) to Indian studios.
Based in Edmonton, Canada, the 10 year old studio has a total workforce of around 230 employees and has created titles such as Jade Empire for XBOX, Baldur’s Gate and Star Wars Knights of the old republic and is currently working on Dragon Ageâ„?, a fantasy role-playing game which it announced in May 2004, besides some other unnamed projects.
David Hibbeln, director of Art at BIOWARE was here in Mumbai as part of the Autodesk game industry Icons 7 city tour. Speaking to Animation ‘xpress, Hibbeln remarked,”Bioware is interested in outsourcing some basic game art work to India, which includes props and small pieces of environments. Some Indian studios are already talking to us and we have given them tests. These tests shall belater evaluated by our experts and we shall give feedback to the studios”
On being asked as to how did the International gaming industry percieve India as, Hibbeln remarked,”One of the strongest plus points that India has against competing countries is its English speaking advantage. Communication plays a very important part in any outsourced work and that’s important”
“BIOWARE is also interested in marketing its game engine to Indian studios. The engine is especially developed for Role Playing Games” concluded Hibbeln.
BIOWARE has so far sold close to 12 million units of its games, its top selling title being Baldur’s Gate which sold 5 million units. The game developer also has an online community with a staggering 2.5 million online users.