Ray Muzyka Interview

VG247 also managed to corner BioWare’s Ray Muzyka during GamesCom for a conversation about Star Wars: The Old Republic, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and their semi-merger with Mythic Entertainment.

One of the things that always comes over when I talk to you is just how hands-on you are with the games. You do appear to have a lot of knowledge about the games themselves. How do you balance having that sort of input with managing what’s now a 500-plus developer?

Ray Muzyka: It’s more than that. There’s three locations with BioWare – Edmonton, Austin and Montreal – and Mythic, of course, is the fourth location.

I mean, I have great trust in the teams, so I’m really not that hands-on in terms of the day-to-day development. There’s too many things going on. But I have great EPs, I have great project directors, I have great development directors and GMs at all the locations. I have a lot of trust in all of them.

For me, I’m involved in the early vision phase, in the ideation. Who’s the target consumer? What are we building? Why’s it going to be fun? What’s exciting? And then the teams build the games and I get regular updates from the managers, and then at the end I play them. My knowledge of the games really comes from me playing the games. To me that’s a really important thing. It’s a key. I have to play the games. I have to know them. And many other people at BioWare take that really seriously too. It’s not just me; I’m just one voice among many. We take it very seriously. You should always have an experience, personally, with the product you’re going to launch. I believe in that strongly.

If you’re going to say Dragon Age is one of the best games you’ve ever played. I’ve finished Dragon Age. I’ve played it extensively on PC and console. I can really stand behind it. I’ve played it a lot. On one of the play-throughs I spent 120 hours. Two hours a day for 60 days, 90 percent of the game, according to the telemetry. And I loved it. Every minute of it. I couldn’t wait to come home. After about ten hours of gameplay, every day I was talking about coming home and I played it for two or three hours, or whatever time I had free, and play it to the early hours. Luckily I don’t sleep as much as my wife. I’d stay up till after midnight and play it after she was asleep.

I take all the games seriously. I want a hands-on experience on all the platforms. You know, to varying degrees: sometimes I’ll focus on one platform more than the other, but I love the games we make. I really have a passion for them. To me, it’s work but it’s also a lot of fun too. I can describe the areas in Dragon Age, and it’s not because I’ve seen them from afar, it’s because I was there. I went there, and I fought this creature, and I had the best party ever. I just love games.