Ziets earned a degree in Psychology from Georgetown University and spent the late 1990s in graduate school.

In 2001, he secured his first games industry job at Westwood Studios, working as a writer on the short-lived science fiction MMORPG Earth & Beyond.

[citation needed] Ziets relocated to southern California in 2006 to become a designer at Obsidian Entertainment.

[2] MotB shipped in 2007 and received mostly positive reviews, winning praise for its story and narrative elements.

He expanded the fictional canon of the Dungeon Siege world, producing a 100-page sourcebook that was used as source material by the development team.