BioWare: Your Questions Answered

Dragon Age: Origins is out. Mass Effect 2 is out in January. Star Wars: The Old Republic is out… well, we don’t know when, and there are even “unannounced projects” on the go. Canadian developer BioWare is busy. But not so busy that co-founder and CEO Dr. Ray Muzyka couldn’t take the time to do a massive, no-holds barred interview with VideoGamer.com. Here, in the final part of the interview, we put the great inquisitive VideoGamer.com Community’s posers to Ray in a special edition of Your Questions Answered. Did we ask yours? Read on to find out. Missed the first part of the interview? Fear not, RPG fans. It’s right here.

Karlius: Are you tempted to integrate Natal into your IP? Could it work with the kind of games BioWare makes?

RM: It certainly could. We’d want to approach it from a fresh perspective and design a game around the mechanic of the controller. It’s so different. In the same way the best Wii games embrace the control mechanic as part of the core design. It remains to be seen what kind of Natal games will come out. It will be very cool. The best ones will probably approach it as a core part of the game as opposed to an add-on or an afterthought.

VideoGamer.com: It would be a bad idea then to put Natal integration into a game not built from the ground up for it?

RM: I don’t know if it would be a bad idea. It might be dependent on how the developer puts it in. But it might be easier to design it from the ground up as the core mechanic. If we were doing it, that’s what we would do to push it. But other developers might be able to think of ways to integrate it into an existing mechanic. It remains to be seen.

Mr_Ninjutsu: Is BioWare interested in exploring other genres? The FPS or the RTS?

RM: We are arguably doing that now. I see the definition of RPG as being pretty broad. We look at Mass Effect, I say, and I believe, that it’s as much a shooter as it is an RPG. When you play it, it really feels that way. So I’d say we’re approaching other genres by expanding what the definition of RPG is, and blending in features of other genres to enrich our game experiences and drawing in new fans.

VideoGamer.com: Mass Effect is a third-person shooter though. Would you consider an FPS?

RM: We would. We haven’t announced anything on that front, but yeah, I can see that being a very interesting combination.

robz48: Will there be a Star Wars: The Old Republic beta? If so, when will it begin?

RM: We haven’t announced any timing on it, but yes there will be one. In fact, we’ve already started the sign-up process for closed beta testing. Lots of people have signed up already on the Star Wars: The Old Republic site.

dudester: Do you see Mass Effect making it to the big screen?

RM: Yeah, I could see that happen, for sure. We’d be interested in that happening. We’re already doing a ton of ancillary development – books and extensions to the IP. I would love to see Mass Effect go to film or television. We’ve said that before and it’s still true.

VideoGamer.com: Who would you like to play Commander Shepard?

RM: [Laughs] I have no idea. I mean, there are a lot of great actors out there.

VideoGamer.com: Don’t say Tom Cruise. What about the guy from Prison Break?

RM: Oh yeah. That would be interesting.

Bloodstorm: Will there ever be a PS3 version of Mass Effect 2? Is that a tiresome question?

RM: Yeah [it is a tiresome question]. But all we’ve announced at this point is we’re doing a 360 and PC version of Mass Effect 2. We haven’t talked about any other platforms.

Woffls: Were you able to track what the more popular choice was among Mass Effect players, Paragon or Renegade?

RM: I think we did. I don’t know off hand what it was, but that’s just from jet lag right now, probably. I don’t know off hand.

Woffls: Do you know off hand who the most popular party member was?

RM: We’ve done some surveys and the feedback we’ve got, I don’t know if we tracked that telemetry or anything, but I think Wrex was very popular, and Garrus was very popular, Ashley. Probably in order it might have been Wrex then Garrus. Liara and Ashley were both behind them. Different people find different characters popular. It’s this endless debate. They’re all good in different ways.

VideoGamer.com: Did you have a personal favourite?

RM: I liked Wrex a lot. I liked Ashley and Liara. I liked all the characters. I mean I played Mass Effect 1 so much that I probably played with all the different combinations at some point or another.

VideoGamer.com: You’re obviously an incredibly busy man, but you seem to play all of your games for hundreds of hours. Do you have an evil twin somewhere who helps you out?

RM: No, but I have a big stack of games in my office that I want to play that I’m waiting till Christmas to play through.

VideoGamer.com: What’s in the stack?

RM: Uncharted 2, Demon’s Souls, and a bunch of other things, including some ones that are going to come out in the next month, too.

VideoGamer.com: How do you marry your current demands with BioWare and indeed EA [Ray is also group general manager of EA’s RPG/MMO Group] with a willingness to remain a gamer who can engage on that level with your development teams?

RM: I don’t think you can be very effective as a development leader if you aren’t willing to invest the time to play through all of your own games and your competitors’ games as well. It’s just critical. It’s easy for me because I love games. I’m passionate about video games. Any free time I have, if I have a great game I’m ready to play, I look forward to playing it. What I did before I came out here, all weekend, all Saturday and all Sunday, I played Mass Effect 2. I think for probably 20 hours. You take the time and you play the games, right? Some things are just that simple sometimes. You just gotta invest the time.

VideoGamer.com: What’s your Gamerscore?

RM: I don’t know offhand. I don’t actually even track it that much. I don’t pay attention actually. I just play a lot of games.

VideoGamer.com: Are you an Achievement whore?

RM: Well I am in life, but I’ve never really got to try and maximise my Gamerscore. I’m more interested in playing a lot of games and just trying them, as opposed to making Achievement points. I’ll play a lot of games. It’s rare that I’m going to finish a lot of our competitors’ games. I finish all of our own games, but I play our competitors’ games mainly to get a feeling for what the gameplay’s like and to try and look for best practices or worst practices, things to avoid and try and emulate. Sometimes that’s not compatible with maximising your Gamerscore, but either way I play a lot of games. The ones I love, the best games of the year, I finish those. There are a handful of those every year I’ll finish. And some I’ll even replay but that’s even a much smaller subset.

VideoGamer.com: The game page on your website lists a “new next gen game” as “in development”. But Mass Effect 2 isn’t on the list. Is that game Mass Effect 2, or is it something super secret you haven’t announced yet? [BioWare’s game page was revised following this interview].

RM: It’s probably an oversight that Mass Effect 2 isn’t listed on there, but yeah, we have some unannounced things that we haven’t talked about, so.

Mass Effect 2 is due out on Xbox 360 and PC on January 29, 2010. Dragon Age: Origins is out now on PC and Xbox 360, with a PS3 version out November 20. Star Wars: The Old Republic is yet to be dated.