BioWare's Rob Chestney, senior writer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, has posted a blog entry outlining how he moved from his job as a CNN producer to his current work in the gaming industry. He had nothing but good things to say about BioWare's commitment to keeping the Star Wars lore in the forefront of the design process.

For our initial news article this month, we chose to focus on “story,” because that really is one of the main ways in which Star Wars: The Old Republic stands out. We’re staking BioWare’s reputation on the story in this game, and that’s a both tremendous responsibility and a tremendous privilege. It’s something we’re taking very seriously at every level, and something I’m amazingly proud to say that I’m a part of.

The full blog can be found here or below. Also, the Holiday Edition of PC Gamer, which is currently on shelves now, contains an exclusive look at SW:TOR.

Working for BioWare and on Star Wars ™: The Old Republic™ specifically, stands as one of the proudest achievements of my career and my life. I’m actually still pinching myself, wondering how I got here. I’ll try to tell you the story, but to be honest; I have to think it was some act of divine intervention, because it still seems too good to be true.

Like a lot of you probably, I played every video game I could get my hands on as a kid, everything from Pong to Pitfall, and of course all the good early RPGs like Zork, Akalabeth, Ultima, … the list goes on. Somehow, I wound up taking a break from video games during my college years (I had to get some work done… if you can call it that). Fortunately, though, my escape from gaming turned out to simply be an extended hiatus. One day, after graduating from school and starting my career at CNN, I picked up a collection of the old Dungeons and Dragons-based gold box games for PC (Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, etc.). I thought I’d enjoy playing through these classics once again in my spare time; I thought it would just be a casual pastime for my evenings. On one of the discs in that collection, though, I discovered the demo version of Baldur’s Gate. I think I played the demo for about ten minutes before rushing out to buy the game. I then retreated to my basement during every free moment for about a month, until I had played through Baldur’s Gate about two or three times. My gaming started back up full throttle after that. Eventually, I had to learn a little restraint, and spend a little more time with my family, but I stayed committed to my rediscovered favorite form of entertainment. Since then, I’ve played through every single BioWare game from start to finish as soon as I could get my hands on it. I played a lot of other games too, on both console and PC, but as a fan, BioWare never disappointed. I joined the BioWare community, and when Neverwinter Nights came out, I, along with thousands of others, picked up the toolset and started tinkering around to see what I could create on my own. At one point, even then, I considered applying to be a writer at BioWare Edmonton, but when I suggested this brilliant idea to my wife, she fixed me with a stare that was colder than a January in Alberta. I decided not to push it.

A few years later, as the War in Iraq entered its third year of dominating our news coverage at CNN, I started thinking about BioWare again. To apply to be a Writer at BioWare, all that’s required is that you submit a sample module, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to build a short piece and send it in to see what they might say. After a month of spending every evening writing dialogue and trying to understand scripting in C/C++, I finished my module and sent it in. Much to my surprise, I got a call two days later—they actually liked it! They still had about 6,000 suggested edits (that’s a BioWare tradition), but they told me they were opening up a studio in Austin, Texas, and would I be interested? Hmm. About four months later, I was the first Writer hired in under Principal Lead Writer Daniel Erickson. At that time, there were only about a dozen people working in the small temporary office, and we still weren’t even sure what game we’d be making, only that it would be a story-driven MMO. Just like all starting BioWare writers, I went through three months of training, and because the group was small, Daniel really had the time to mentor me, to show me what he had learned from writing on Dragon Age, and what he envisioned for the new project. It was a priceless education in the art of storytelling that I’ll never forget. I remember when I completed my training and became an official “Senior Writer”, I told the other writers who were still in training that it was better than graduating from college. Since then, I’ve heard many of them say the same thing.

What blew me away more than anything in those first few months was that this whole idea of story coming first… it wasn’t just talk. The storyline and narrative setting were the starting point of every discussion about design and even the conversations about art. Once we settled on Star Wars : The Old Republic, we started fleshing out the time period—we wrote timelines, faction summaries, visions for the planets we’d put in the game. It was a Star Wars : geek’s wildest dream! As we progressed, more writers joined the team, incredibly talented craftsmen, some were screenwriters, some were from pen-and-paper gaming, and some, like me, were really from totally different backgrounds. An amazing creative team formed, and some incredible stories were hashed out… and then rehashed out. The process for creating a narrative of BioWare standards is more thorough than you can possibly imagine. And that was before we even started writing dialogue! Talk about edits! The commitment to quality at BioWare and specifically on the writing team would blow your mind. And that commitment to quality only begins there. Just as the writing team has grown, and more than a dozen writers have now been involved, so have all the teams at BioWare Austin grown, and their passion and their commitment to quality is just as strong as it is on the writing team. When you play this game, you’ll experience the passion, and commitment we all have to making the best story-driven game in the world — Star Wars : The Old Republic will speak for itself.

For our initial news article this month, we chose to focus on “story”, because that really is one of the main ways in which Star Wars : The Old Republic stands out. We’re staking BioWare’s reputation on the story in this game, and that’s a both tremendous responsibility and a tremendous privilege. It’s something we’re taking very seriously at every level, and something I’m amazingly proud to say that I’m a part of.


Rob “Jedi Rob” Chestney