Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

“Dragon Age is a game of epic (or ludicrous) proportions, depending on how you look at it,” Darrah explained. “For a game of this scale, as it grows, it gets exponentially more complicated. To try to tell a story of this scale, it requires a lot of people to get together to polish it, and make sure that it’s up to the quality of a game that we want to show to the public.”

It’s important to note that BioWare’s standards may not be the same as some other studios when it comes to releasing a product to the masses. As MMO gamers, we fall victim to early releases perhaps more than most other platforms. BioWare, however, has a long history of seeing a game through to its completion before putting it in our hands.

“The game at Christmas time [of last year] was a game that another company would have considered shipping and releasing to the public. But for us, it was just a lot more opportunity to bring the quality up and polish it,” Darrah pointed out. The title had recently announced a two week delay, pushing its launch from October 20th to November 3rd, but at this point it was explained that that was more for logistical reasons.

Finding the Right Mate

Perhaps one of the most challenging obstacles developing studios face is to find an appropriate publisher. A fantastic game could go by unnoticed if the publisher isn’t up to snuff, and conversely, a virtually unplayable game could find its way into millions of homes if the publisher is a powerful one.

In October of 2007, Electronic Arts purchased BioWare. The news was pretty big, as the industry also saw a merge of Activision and Blizzard not too long before the EA BioWare acquisition. This meant four of the leading game companies were then just two, and BioWare could, at that point, publish through EA, skipping a potential major hazard in developer/publisher communications.  

“It’s been a really good experience for me, for Dragon Age, and for BioWare as a whole because it was an opportunity to bring together a Triple A Developer, like BioWare, with a Triple A Publisher, like EA,” Darrah told us. “They haven’t been jiggling our elbow or anything like that. They brought their expertise on the publishing side, which is something we didn’t have.”

Gentlemen, Build Your Engines

The core behind any game from Pac-Man to Grand Theft Auto is the game’s engine. A good engine needs to power the game to make it run smoothly and look great, but not at the sacrifice of performance. Many games rely on pre-built engines to help streamline the developing time. Other games, like Dragon Age: Origins, have so many new ideas and mechanics, that it becomes impossible to build off of anything already in existence.

“It’s a new engine that we developed specifically for Dragon Age,” Darrah told us. That way, the door is left open for quicker expansions and sequels, without having to reinvent the wheel.

 “Once a franchise gets off the ground and you start to look at sequels or new storytelling opportunities within the same franchise. You want to look at possibilities to keep the audience engaged. You’ll want five years between games once you’ve got the first one out. You want them a little bit closer together. Not every six months, obviously, but you want them close enough that people remember them. ‘Oh yeah, right! I’m still interested in that story.’ You don’t want to go ten years and have them say ‘oh yeah, right! … Terminator.’”

A custom engine provides more than just fancy effects, though. “What we bring that some [other more MMO-based games] don’t is an epic-ness of storytelling - the fact that you are an earth-shaking force in the universe. Ultimately, it’s not a massively multiplayer game, so we can do things based on your choices that affect the entire world. That’s a great storytelling strength.”