I spoke to the men running the studio behind many of the worldâs biggest role-playing games a couple of weeks ago, to discuss a variety of things. I left with a bonus: The BioWare Vision Statement.
Here is that vision, from the mouth of Ray Muzyka, EAâs general manager for (as he named them) BioWare Edmonton, BioWare Austin, BioWare Mythic and BioWare Montreal: âCreate, deliver and evolve the most emotionally engaging gaming experiences in the world. Thatâs the vision for the BioWare group across the four studios, and they all have different ways to approach that.â
He mentioned this during an interview in San Francisco tied to the 2010 Game Developers Conference. I had been needling Muzyka about his propensity for using the phrase âemotionally engagingâ a lot. But, he said, thatâs the BioWare vision, something that he said came clear in the past year after a series of meetings with the heads of the studios.
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âThe tension of combat and feeling like youâre going to get your ass handed to by some gigantic creature or some kind of space monster or something like that. Or a villain in a contemporary settingâŠ
â[There can also be a] sense of pride in your progression of a character.
âThere are lots of emotions you can have interacting with other characters in a game: hatred, love, loyally, friendship, remorse, sadness, grief â all kinds of different interesting emotions. As long as youâre engaging people in that level, we think thatâs a more compelling experience.â
Muzykaâs colleague, BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk offered his way of looking at it: âPeople are thinking about our games after they play them. The average game.. you play it, you experience it, your go back to work or home and it doesnât stick with you. Somehow, our stuff sticks with you. Itâs the character interactions, all these things that Ray discussed. It all lives with you after.â
BioWareâs four branches currently have several projects in development, including future installments of Dragon Age and Mass Effect as well as Star Wars: The Old Republic. Mythicâs ongoing project is Warhammer Online. The Montreal studioâs project(s) is/are unannounced. Expect the above goals â or an attempt to attain the above â to be targeted in all of those games.
