Former BioWare Writer Opens New Game Studio in Australia
David Gaider, a writer who spent many years at BioWare and has worked on Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins, has set up a new indie studio in Australia. The studio will release details about a game in October.
The studio is located in Melbourne and is called Summerfall Studios. The new developer is working on an ‘illustrated character-driven adventure game’, more to be announced at the PAX Australia game event on October 11th. The game will be accompanied by a Kickstarter campaign.
David Gaider set up the studio with Liam Esler, who had a role at the Australian gaming convention GX Australia and worked for Canadian developer Beamdog. Beamdog was founded in 2009 by BioWare co-founder Trent Oster and BioWare programmer Cameron Tofer. Gaider was also active at Beamdog for two years.
Esler thinks the current situation in the game world is quite favorable for indie studios. “The competition between platforms, the need for new ideas and exciting mechanisms, and a desire to build new intellectual property means there is a lot of potential money out there for those who know how to find it. The rise of streaming services means platforms are willing to pay for a lot of original content, following the Netflix model, and that’s an exciting reality for indie studios if this continues,” Esler said in an interview with Kotaku.
David Gaider was the lead writer for the first Dragon Age game, also wrote for Dragon Age II, and was responsible for Baldur’s Gate 2 and Knights of the Old Republic. For the latter Star Wars game, he wrote the lyrics for the characters Jolee Bindo, Carth Onasi and the robot HK-47. Gaider left BioWare in early 2016 and soon after joined Beamdog as creative director, leaving two years later. Liam Esler previously wrote for Pillars of Eternity and Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition.
A month ago it was announced that the lead producer of Anthem, Ben Irving, is leaving BioWare and working at another game studio. He spent eight years with the Austin division of Canadian BioWare and was also the lead producer of Star Wars: The Old Republic for a time. It is still unclear where exactly he is going; As far as is known, the establishment of Summerfall Studios and the departure of Irving are unrelated.