GC: BioWare's Ray Muzyka

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As the CEO of BioWare, one of the world's top-tier developers, Ray Muzyka knows his games. We caught up with him at last week's Gamescom show in Germany for a lengthy interview about the developer's on-going projects including, of course, Mass Effect 2.

Look out for part two of our Muzyka interview on Monday.

First up, we must say that Mass Effect 2 is looking fantastic.

Muzyka: Yeah, Mass Effect 2 is a really refined evolution of the Mass Effect experience. We've took a lot of feedback from gamers and the press, and internally. I think it's just an awesome game, when you play it feels real tight and tense.

It focuses on deep character development but how do you get players to really care about polygonal characters?

Muzyka: That's a really good question. I think one of our visions is to really create an emotional engagement with the game and that can be done in a variety of ways.

One of them is through characters and story, to get you to make choices that matter and to have characters that feel like real, living characters - digital personas that you actually care about.

With Dragon Age it's a little bit different, but with Mass Effect's Sheppard, it's almost like a third-person authored experience because you're given general directive orders and then you see Sheppard enact it, and that's almost a game in itself - seeing what he's going to do. Be he has a strong personality and it grows on you so you really care about him doing the right things.

But the small things matter. You have to have digital actors that are credible and believable. The small things like the characters' eyes - whether they look right, where they look and if they blink at the right frequency, whether the light reflects off their eyes in the right way, whether their hand movement is right.

In real life you don't even need to speak - you can convey as much by nodding your head or lifting your eyebrow, and that's the same thing that a high-fidelity character can bring. It's with this motional expression that, if you can make players believe in your characters, the possibilities are endless.

Heavy Rain is similar in many ways to Mass Effect in that it focuses on character development, choice-making and open-ended conclusions. What do you think of Quantic Dreams' work?

Muzyka: It sounds really cool. I haven't seen it at the show here yet, I've only read about it online. I don't know enough to comment in detail as I probably should, but I heard they have some broad goals around emotion in games and how that's an important part of their vision and I share that.

Games like Heavy Rain and - going back a bit, Shenmue - take away much of the action and play like interactive stories. Not everyone responds well to this. Do you think these games work?

Muzyka: I was a big fan of Shenmue. But in my opinion I don't think people play games for the mundane. They play them for aspiration.

Our games are more about the heroic journey, or the anti-heroic journey, depending on the character you're playing. They're less about the mundane activities. I think if we make RPGs we always will pursue the heroic or escapist aspect in gameplay.

It could be anything, like a sports RPG. Arguably a lot of sports games nowadays are emerging with RPG elements anyway, with stats and progression and taking on the lifestyles of the sportsmen. Is GTA an RPG?

None of them are mundane, they're all heroic in different ways. They all escape from the every day. And that's kind of why you play games - because you want to be part of something special. I think that's what players want, to do something that you can't do in the every day, because if you can do it in the every day you would do it.

Why has BioWare chosen not to bring Mass Effect to PS3?

Muzyka: I think a more accurate way to frame it is to say we've announced we're developing Mass Effect for 360 and PC. Right from the beginning we said we wanted to deliver Mass Effect on the 360. Right now all we've announced is we're working on 360 and PC.

So a PS3 version could be on the cards?

Muzyka: We haven't announced anything on that front.

But it's not out of the question?

Muzyka: We haven't announced anything on that.

Moving on then, Lionhead announced that it would be re-releasing Fable II episodically via 360's new Games on Demand service. Does the service provide any similar new opportunities for developers like BioWare?

Muzyka: Yeah. Just like when you consider new platforms or new business models, distribution and ways to reach your consumers. It's like how we committed to deliver Mass Effect on 360 - we're making sure the fans on that platform get the experience with the continuity they expect. And we're excited by that.

But if you broaden out the distribution you're going to open the possibility to bring in new fans that may not have considered the purchase before. And that's often a healthy thing to do.

Plus, I like the idea of episodic delivery. I think micro transactions are interesting. It's not a 'one size fits all', so I wouldn't say every game would be improved by being delivered digitally or episodically but some would. It's just a different business model, and we always plan from a consumers' perspective, we review the audience and as if it's what they're looking for.

Do you think digital distribution will completely take over from physical media in the future?

Muzyka: I think it's definitely become more relevant and important and you can see more and more sales occurring digitally. I still like going to a store and seeing a physical product though.

But anything's possible. If consumers decide to pursue digital distribution it could take over. If they choose not to pursue it then it won't. It's almost impossible to predict the future of that.

How do you think Natal will affect games like Mass Effect in the future?

Muzyka: It would depend on what developers like us do with it. I'm excited by the idea that it represents, of a reduced barrier of entry for consumers.

I think that, for them getting immersed in a game, a graphic user interface is always a barrier. Any time you have a barrier it's an opportunity for a player to lose their immersion in it.

If you remove the controller as a barrier then you have one less thing that prevents them from believing in the game and they can immerse themselves fully in the world. I don't think its necessary for every game to use it, but if you can do it right and you can pull it off then it can be really powerful.

Look out for part two of our Muzyka interview on Monday.

Mike Jackson