The second episode of Matt Barton's interview with Trent Oster takes a step back to discuss the latter's early career. Trent's first project as a game developer was an obscure shareware title called Blasteroids 3D, developed by him and his friends under the banner of Finite Element Software. The game failed to make a single dollar, but they learned enough along the way that they were eventually able to commit to developing a larger project which became Shattered Steel, BioWare's little-remembered first game. Trent is a technically-minded guy who enjoys describing the various challenges he faced while developing these games, but this part of the interview is most interesting for its look into the drama of BioWare's early days. Trent's older brother was apparently a difficult person, which led to the both of them being kicked out by the BioDocs after they got tired of his attitude, although Trent would soon return after being kicked out by his brother in turn.


Matt doesn't explicitly say so, but I assume the next episode of the interview will be about the Infinity Engine and Baldur's Gate.