BioWare's Design Docs

An Interview with founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk
3/19/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 4 of 5

Crispy Gamer: What's the latest scoop on fantasy title Dragon Age and why have you decided to pursue launching an original IP when you've had so much success in the past with licensed content?

Muzyka: The Dragon Age team is hard at work on the title and it's looking amazing. We've been very fortunate to have worked with some terrific licenses in the past (like AD&D and Star Wars), but we're excited to roll out some original work that's never been seen before. We're striving to innovate at BioWare, so the opportunity to create a brand new fantasy world is very appealing to us.

Crispy Gamer: Just how many titles do you have in development at the moment, and how does someone juggle managing so many projects, not to mention ensuring they're all of top-notch quality?

Zeschuk: At our Edmonton studio, we're currently working on the Mass Effect sequel, Dragon Age, a new Sonic title for the DS and a few other unannounced projects. BioWare Austin is working on the MMO. As we mentioned earlier, it's all about surrounding yourself with top-notch talent; we've got some amazing teams hard at work on these projects, and although we do have quite a few of them on-the-go, they're in good hands.

Crispy Gamer: Ah yes, Mass Effect... Given your experience getting burned by the mass media, does it make you more reticent to take chances with these titles?

Muzyka: [Laughs] It's an interesting question... We view games as an art form. Mass Effect is an example of that. The team clearly poured their hearts and souls into making the game, so everything we have in the game is something of which we're really proud. We have romance scenes in the game, and they're optional, and they really help the flow of the narrative and the story. I think it's a complex answer, but in the end, the public really wants to feel emotion and if we're evoking an emotional response like this from them, hey... It's just a sign of games being an art form, as we believe they are, albeit a commercial one.

Crispy Gamer: Fine, and not to burst your bubble and all, but the last time Sonic the Hedgehog was cool was, oh... 1993 or thereabouts. Why choose to make a role-playing game starring the blue bomber one of your next major projects?

Muzyka: Sonic has always been one of our favorite characters, so we jumped at the chance to bring a fresh perspective to the franchise. We've also wanted to get into the handheld space for a while now, and the time felt just right to take a great platform like the Nintendo DS and to do some really cool things on it with the Sonic license. You can expect a very original and truly amazing new experience within the Sonic universe from BioWare.

Crispy Gamer: Role-playing was once declared a "dead" genre overall, though -- what do you have to say about that, let alone the reported demise of other categories like adventures and simulations?

Zeschuk: The RPG genre has certainly come a long way, and in fact I think you can see a lot of games in other genres starting to adopt some of the features that make RPGs great. A lot of games these days are starting to put more emphasis on stories, characters, customization, dialogue and all those things that have traditionally been staples of the RPG genre. So we're glad to see that the genre hasn't died, and is in fact starting to gain more and more prominence.