Beamdog

Having preserved its past, this Canadian team is ready to move forward

- Chris Schilling

When Beamdog began updating classic RPG Baldur’s Gate for PC and iOS, studio co-founder Cameron Tofer found himself on familiar ground. He had, after all, been one of the first employees through BioWare’s doors after it was founded in 1995, working as a programmer on its debut game, Shattered Steel, and becoming part of the development team on the much-loved RPG soon after. But more than a decade on, as he began looking through the original code, he came across something that left him aghast. “I was like, ‘The fuck were they thinking?’” Tofer tells us. He scrolled a little further, only to discover it was his name on the code. “I just thought, ‘Oh boy,’” he laughs.

Released in 2012, the Enhanced Edition of Baldur’s Gate was the third such update from the Canadian studio, which was originally established as a distributor. It was founded in 2009, when Trent Oster, one of BioWare’s six co-founders, invited his former colleague to start afresh. The pair had been friends since Tofer was just 19. They’d always discussed working more closely together – at BioWare, the two were always on separate projects, Tofer explains – but plans had never really progressed beyond idle chat. But shortly after BioWare was acquired by Electronic Arts, Oster reckoned it was finally time. “When he was finished there, he called me up and said, ‘Hey, let’s do that thing we’ve been always talking about,’” Tofer recalls. There was no hesitation in his response.