News Archives: Cameron Tofer - Game Developer
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014
The real and virtual worlds collided in the basement of Grande Prairie Regional College two decades ago, when some of the most popular and well-known computer game characters known to gamers across the globe were brought to life with pen and paper. The characters were the brainchild of Computer Systems Technology student Cameron Tofer, who attended GPRC from 1994-96, along with five other fellow friends and local developers with whom he collaborated.
The six would go on to work for Edmonton-based game developer BioWare and the personalities they created would become part of the cast of D & D (Dungeons and Dragons) characters in Bulder’s Gate, a game created for PC by BioWare. The fantasy role-playing game sold over 2 million copies worldwide upon its release in 1998, and has now been translated into 16 languages. Computer Shopper magazine touted it as "clearly the best Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) game ever to grace a PC screen.”
After an impressive career that took him to California working as Technical Director for Japanese company Namco Hometek, the makers of Pac-Man, then back to Grande Prairie to found HermitWorks Entertainment, today Tofer is COO of development studio Beamdog. Starting the company in 2009 with former BioWare co-founder Trent Oster, the two then formed Beamdog’s development team, Overhaul Games, and are recreating classic games with enhanced features and re-releasing them.
