David Gaider


David Gaider is a Canadian writer and game designer, who worked for Edmonton, Alberta-located game developer BioWare from 1999 to 2016.

Career

Gaider began his professional life providing services at restaurants and hotels, while game designing was a side hobby to him. A friend of Gaider, Kalvin, happened to be working at BioWare and suggested to Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk that Gaider be given a recently opened position in the design department. Gaider got the job and, as his first assignment, was given the task of providing designs for Baldur's Gate 2. He wrote the characters HK-47, Jolee Bindo and Carth Onasi for ', and was the lead writer for ', on which he wrote both Deekin and Valen Shadowbreath. Gaider was set as lead writer on Baldur's Gates spiritual successor, ', creating the world of Thedas in which the game is set. He wrote the characters of Zevran, Alistair, Cailan, Morrigan, Shale and Duncan along with the quests "Nature of the Beast" and "Redcliffe". After the success of Origins, Gaider also wrote its book prequels, ' and '. Afterwards, Gaider wrote for Dragon Age II, where he had a major contribution to the plot, creating the characters Cassandra Pentaghast, Fenris, and Meredith, and wrote the follow-up novel, , which was released on 20 December 2011. In 2012, Gaider released Dragon Age: The Silent Grove'', a comic series published by Dark Horse Comics.
On 22 January 2016 Gaider left Bioware after 17 years in the company. In February 2016, he joined Beamdog as a creative director, and later left the company in February 2018.
Still on 2017, David started thinking on ideas for a new game that would come to be. After leaving Beamdog, he founded Summerfall Studios to work on it. He got funding from Film Victoria and on 10 November 2019 had a successful crowdfunding campaign on Fig, earning 690.079 USD from 6.018 backers.

Personal life

Gaider is openly gay, and in February 2014 he wrote a post on his Tumblr blog, detailing his experiences as a " developer who happens to be gay."

Works

Video games