The anticipation behind BioWare’s upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic title is understandable – the studio essentially redefined the RPG genre with Baldur’s Gate, and their last Star Wars game, Knights of the Old Republic, nabbed the title for the Game Developers Choice Awards’ 2004 Game of the Year. When gaming students dream about working on blockbuster titles in the gaming industry, they’re usually thinking about games like this.

Which is probably why things have been a bit surreal lately for Full Sail Game Development grad Thomas Rader. Directly after finishing school, Thomas was offered a Gameplay Tools Programmer position at BioWare’s Austin, Texas studio – and it’s been nothing but Jedi-like training ever since.

“Being on a project like The Old Republic is really exciting,” he says. “It was very nerve-wracking at first, going directly from Full Sail where my team consisted of five people, to being in an environment at BioWare, developing a game of massive scale.”

On a title as huge as The Old Republic, gameplay tools play a crucial role in the coding and development of a game, allowing designers the ability to quickly and easily create and implement various assets and get them into the game at breakneck pace. Thomas works with both designers and programmers to ensure that the features that he implements and fixes are functional, effective, and rock-solid. It amounts to a lot of hard work, but it’s nothing that he didn’t come in prepared for, both from his Full Sail experience as well as a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps.

“I always call the military the best mistake I ever made,” Thomas says. “I’ve always known I loved games, but when I graduated [high school] I wasn’t sure what it was I wanted to do with that interest. Being in the military gave me the time to figure out what I wanted to do, and it also instilled the drive that I had to do things the right way. Because there is no other option there – you either do it the right way, or you do it over and over again!”

By the time he was out and enrolled at Full Sail, Thomas was moving full-speed ahead. “The friendly competition is what I really loved about Full Sail. Everyone wants to put out the best game that they can in class, because when you see other people playing something that you worked on, it just gives you goose bumps, especially when it’s a feature you put a lot of heart and soul into” he says. “What I learned in school – and what I’ve seen to be true at BioWare – is that you’re always going to be able to tell how much time you put into a project. Full Sail really got me used to being able to prepare the best deliverables possible when under a deadline.”

While Thomas has to be a bit tight-lipped about details surrounding The Old Republic (which is tentatively slated for a Spring 2011 release), he has plenty to say about the BioWare work environment.

“Everyone here is really friendly. It’s a great atmosphere to work in. A lot of the guys here have been in games for a long time, and it’s great to be able to learn from stuff that other people are doing here,” he says. “It’s just very surreal. This is the most fun job I’ve ever had. I honestly don’t know how people could go to work at a job they hate. I don’t think there’s been a day that I woke up and didn’t want to go into work. Overall, it’s been a really positive experience and nothing short of what I expected professional development to be.”