BioWare’s Mike Laidlaw: Inclusive Design “is not arduous”

I caught up with Mike Laidaw of Bioware over the weekend at the Guardian Gamesblog Live EA event. Being a huge BioWare fangirl, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to get a little one-on-one time with the lead designer of upcoming swords-and-sorcery RPG, Dragon Age 2.

Among other things, we talked about the challenge involved in making a protagonist with whom all fans can identify. As a leading RPG development house, BioWare has supported female avatars all the way back to the original 1998 PC version of Baldur’s Gate and is known for integrating gender and sexuality into their worlds (albeit with varying levels of success).

Debbie Timmins: [When it comes to female and homosexual characters] How do you find that affects the whole design?

Mike Laidlaw: I don’t think it does actually. I think… an awareness of it, and just understanding that it’s something you want to incorporate… if you do it right and you build for it from the ground up, and you have a writing team that’s good at that kind of stuff; it doesn’t add a particularly heavy load on top of it.

If being able to romance a character equals x amount of work, you’ve just created somewhere between a half and x amount of work, based on how much overlap there is in terms of like, are they doing shared quests or whatever? The end result then is something that I think it much more inclusive and that I’m proud we have on.

Having a character notice that you’re playing a female is not a huge amount of effort once you figure out how to do it once. It’s like “Oh yeah, we’ll just do this check” and then away we go. We can write some alternate lines. Not to trivialise the effort that’s involved but it is something that, when it becomes habitual, is not arduous.

DT: Do you think games in general are going more that way [i.e. inclusive], or less?

ML: I don’t know. It’s one of those things where I think as an industry the awareness and comprehension of female gamers, let’s say, is certainly something that everyone is keenly aware of. Whether you’re putting it in the somewhat mercenary context of “untapped market potential”… or you’re looking at it from a standpoint of “are there alternate game type or alternate game needs you could be serving that might actually appeal more to a female audience?” which is clearly out there.

I think there’s a number of things, both of intrigue and in terms of just compelling reasons to pursue that. I think there’s still kind of a leaning towards more male-oriented stuff –

DT: Mass Effect. Well, the advertising more than the design

ML: Sure, but I mean there’s also the push of the iconic character, right? Someone that’s recognisable; face of the game kind of thing. Do you muddy the waters if you suddenly have two characters? That’s like, “Wait, do I play two people now?” and that kind of stuff so it’s just a matter of having clarity.

In our case it’s been leading with a male character on the majority of stuff but making sure that there are some events where it’s like “Ok, so while we’re talking about character customisation, let’s take advantage of that and talk about, y’know let’s roll a female character and make sure that she’s taking the lead for this time. It just helps contextualise it.

DT: Does that happen?

ML: Yeah, actually. I did a live chat last week that was like, 20 minutes of me playing the game as female Hawke. So that stuff’s always fun. And it’s good especially when you can deliver it in a way where the medium is the message. “Yes, we have character customisation, speaking of which, check out a customised character, right?” and so on. So you keep it to the feature and the point and people kind of come out of it going “That’s really cool” as opposed to “Wait, confused,” which is always bad.

DT: Does your wife play games?

ML: Yeah, yeah. She’s pretty avid, actually. She’s beat Dragon Age 2 three times now. Origins probably four or five. She digs into a JPRG as well, I think Grandia 3 or something, she just demolished. We have a baby now so things are a little tighter in terms of time but yeah, she still loves it. She’ll sit down with shooters, sit down with just about anything really. Tends to like RPGs, tends to like things that are a little bit less twitchy but can play either.

DT: So she’s definitely not one of the untapped market potential ladies at all.

ML: Nooo, I don’t think so. I mean, she keeps stealing my games. Which is good, which is good. I love it. And then, you know, some casual stuff too. That’s kind of cool, like Echo Bazaar is the one we’ve both been playing through recently that’s been kind of cool – neat text-based kind of stuff.

Many thanks to Mike for taking the time to speak with me. The Dragon Age 2 demo is out today for Xbox Live Gold accounts and PC. It should be available tomorrow from 4pm on the PlayStation Network and 1st March for Xbox Live Silver.

The Guardian has posted much more info about Laidlaw, Camarillo and Shift 2’s Andy Tudor from the Gamesblog Live events – definitely worth reading.

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