Mass Effect 2 Statistics Interview

IGN has produced the results of a conversation they had with BioWare executive producer Casey Hudson about the “anonymous player data” they’ve collected from Mass Effect 2, and how the statistics will help drive the design of their future games. In other words, expect more mass appeal:

“Ultimately it doesn’t always give you the answers, but it sometimes raises questions or gets you to ask the right questions.More people played the soldier class than all of the other classes combined. If you know that, then you can start thinking about future games. Is that good? Is that a problem? Should we look at the other classes and start thinking about ways to make them selected as often as soldier? As part of asking these questions, we can design games in the future a lot better.”

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BioWare found that only 15% of conversations were skipped in Mass Effect 2, with the rate higher in non-critical moments like in the hub worlds and much lower later in the game at the climax. “If we found that 80% or 90% of the lines were being skipped, we would have to reevaluate the work that we were putting into the digital acting.”

Other times, the data surprises. That happened with both how there were differences between the PC and Xbox 360 populations, as well as in regards to importing saves from Mass Effect 1. “We were surprised by how many people imported a game from Mass Effect 1.We put a lot into that feature and we could have gotten data back that said nobody was doing it. But actually more than half of players imported their save game from Mass Effect 1. That to me is quite high.”