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together with DTV Services ongo-
ing marketing for Freeview, seem
to have pushed public awareness
of the service through the roof.
“Recent research showed
awareness figures for Freeview
were at something like 58 per- F cent,” says Seaman. “I’m not say-
ounded in 1995, game devel- opers Bioware are based in Edmonton, Canada. With a
pc heaven
ing there’s not a lot to do, we’re very aware of that. But that level of awareness is pretty much unheard of for a new product. And that’s across the whole pop- ulation: often when you work in a marketing company you say ‘of the target audience’ but this is of the whole UK population.
“I think the omens are very good. If you talk to retailers and manufacturers they are excited about this. One of the ways you can judge that for yourselves is by the plethora of new products coming onto the market from a wide range of manufacturers. “People are talking about Freeview being integrated into DVD players and Personal Video recorders. It’s already integrated into quite a few Sony televisions and other TVs. What I think you’ll see is the technology becoming part of a wide range of electron- ic goods, which shows real confi- dence from manufacturers and retailers that this is here to stay.” When the service started, doubts were raised about how well the public service-orientated BBC would manage to work with its two more commercial part- ners. Andy Duncan dismisses those concerns.
“Despite what the cynics said, the three companies, BBC, Crown Castle and Sky worked very well and closely together throughout the period and, to this day, we continue to work in a way which harnesses the different strengths of each player,” he says.
He firmly believes that Freeview offers “a key missing piece of the jigsaw in moving to a fully digital Britain”, comple- menting rather than competing with the paid-for services.
“The profile of people con- tacting our call centre do have a different profile to the average pay subscriber,” says Duncan. “They are typically older, and more upmarket. This is a sure sign that Freeview is appealing to a different audience.”
He describes Freeview as “a major new way for millions of our licence fee payers to receive all our services... the format meant it appealed to the very audiences that had previously been least likely to go digital.”
“Launching Freeview was probably the most important thing we did at the BBC last year,” he adds, emphatically.
staff of 135, they are one of the most successful producers of computerised role-playing games in the world (their Baldur’s Gate series alone has sold over 4.5 mil- lion units world-wide).
The game that won them the PC Game BAFTA was Neverwinter Nights, described by the awards committee as “among the best PC RPGs of all time.” Ceri Thomas talked to Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, Joint CEOs, BioWare Corp
Q. What was your reaction to winning the BAFTA?
Muzyka: We were ecstatic! The BAFTA is a major award and the Neverwinter Nights team was really happy that their hard work was recognized by the BAFTA group. We all tried very hard to make a great game that our fans would like, and to get the addi- tional recognition from major awards like the BAFTAs was a great honour for us.
Q. Do awards like this really mean much to you? Do they have much effect on sales, for instance?
Zeschuk: Awards are always a nice thing to have. It’s hard to say whether they affect sales directly, but cumulatively awards do add credibility to the project. And, the team really appreciates the honour, especially with an award as credible as the BAFTA!
Q. How is Neverwinter Nights selling?
Muzyka: Neverwinter is doing extremely well. So far, more than one million copies of NWN have been sold world-wide and we have over 850,000 registered user accounts at our BioWare Community page, as well as nearly 2200 fan-created modules for Neverwinter Nights!
Q. Any cross-platform plans?
Zeschuk: We’re certainly inter- ested in exploring ideas like this in partnership with our publisher, Infogrames. But we don’t have any new announcements at this time - if we do have anything to announce in the future it would be announced in partnership with Infogrames of course.
Q. What new projects are on the go?
Muzyka: We have a few major projects in development right now. First off, Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic is in develop- ment for both Xbox and PC - the Xbox version will likely ship in June this year, and the PC version later
in the year, closer to Christmas. We are really excited about this game as it’s the first role-playing game set in the Star Wars uni- verse - you get to role play as a Jedi, either on the dark side or light side of the force. We’re also working on two expansion packs to Neverwinter Nights right now - one is called Shadows Of Undertide, and we’re working on this in conjunction with Floodgate Entertainment - it’s due out later this spring/early summer.
Photo left:
The PC Game BAFTA winner Neverwinter Nights
The second expansion to NWN will be even bigger and better, and will be completed in time for Christmas this year. We also have two new BioWare-created intel- lectual properties in development right now, one for Xbox and the other for PC. All in all we have a lot of cool projects in the works.
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