BioWare Interview

VG247 had the chance to interview one of BioWare’s “doctors”, Greg Zeschuk, at this year’s GamesCom, and comes back with an interesting piece. Some of the subjects include BioWare becoming an EA label of its own, Star Wars: The Old Republic and MMO in general. Here’s an interesting snippet:

Do you see Bioware as ‘˜the’ RPG studio for EA now, or do you see yourselves as being broader than that?

I think broader. I mean it’s funny RPGs are and always have been our bread and butter, our heart is there, but at the same time I think well, we had the RPG panel breakfast at GDC yesterday and what was interesting about that was that we had the conversation about ‘˜what is an RPG’ and it’s a blend. The genres are blending right now, you’re getting lots and lots of progression and RPG elements in shooters online persistence and so on.

It’s funny because the RPG in the context of the current world is well, it’s not specifically irrelevant, but it’s becoming less relevant in and of itself. It’s more a function of ‘˜hey, this game has a great story’. For us having that emotion but also having other great features like combat and persistence of character progression and stuff.

It’s kind of what we are, but more importantly we’re just about great games.

My take is that RPGs are becoming omnipresent as opposed to disappearing, features that were in RPGs appearing in shooters and the reverse.

Yeah, I agree absolutely.