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BioWare Co-founders on Social Commentary and Mainstream Media

Bioware_LogoThe BioWare cofounders, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are back in London tonight to give this year’s BAFTA Annual Video Games Lecture. This event sold out weeks ago and is always a highlight in the gaming calendar. Last year’s was given by Media Molecule’s Alex Evans, in which he talked about games development as the only medium to properly capture interactive storytelling. No word on what the BioWare doctors will be talking about tonight but I’m sure it will be fascinating.

Back in September I had the opportunity to talk to them. My first article from that interview focused on environmental storytelling in role-playing games. We also talked about a host of other subjects, including emotional engagement and the perils of social commentary when interpreted by mainstream media. BioWare’s worlds are famously inclusive, covering sexual preference, religion, gender roles and many other ‘serious’ themes. When asked if it was their intention to make games that provide social commentary, Ray Muzyka told us that they see it more as an essential factor when creating a game for a mature audience.

“It’s not that social commentary isn’t valid in art. It can be very valid. And sometimes the artists on our team are making commentary but as a general concept, it’s more about making games that are relevant and using themes that translate well to create engagement. Emotional engagement comes from having a correlation with something, feeling a reaction to it, feeling immersed in it, feeling it’s compelling. The goal is of creating emotional engagement with our content. We see it as an art form and an outcome of art is that you feel emotional reactions.

“It can be challenging to create it in a way that’s not misinterpreted as social commentary or provocative for the sake of being provocative. When there are unfortunate coincidences in the real world that are similar to what you have in a game… it’s concerning.

Zeschuk added “It’s more inclusive as well when you have broader options. We always have the mainstream press ready to pounce.”

Some of you might remember the Fox news “scandal” from 2008 wherein the American mainstream news channel tried to portray Mass Effect as having graphic sex scenes. We talked about how the media landscape has changed and Zeschuk told us how he has done plenty of interviews where the reporter talks about how they’re not sure if “these games things” are going to catch on.

Muzyka said “That doesn’t occur as often now, not like 10 years ago”

“It still happens occasionally.” Zeschuk replied. “I did one of those two years ago and I was like “Are you crazy?” I think now maybe, finally, with the advent of Facebook gaming and hundreds of millions of people playing games on that platform… It’s not a question any more but it’s very interesting because, I think also they were trying to find the next great evil. what’s the thing we can demonise in media that’s actually the source of the downfall of our youth.”

“It was rock and roll in the 50s, classical music back in the 1800s”

“In the 20s it was billiards. Like you say, once they got to the marches in the classical music-”

“It was too vigorous. There was a controversy about that in popular music at the time. Some of the stuff Mozart did was seen as SCANDALOUS relative to the more traditional. It seems weird now to say it. But I think video games are becoming a more and more mainstream form of art and entertainment.”

If that’s the case, does this mean that we’ll be returning to the more “traditional” sex scenes of the original Mass Effect? I know I and a lot of other people found the Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2 scenes extremely underwhelming.

“We don’t set out guidelines for our teams,” said Muzyka. “Our teams set out their own parameters for how they do it. Really it’s an artistic choice. We encourage choice, we encourage enabling choice. You can look at Mass Effect 3; we got feedback from our fans, they wanted more choice so we’re putting that in.” It wasn’t made explicit but he’s presumably referring to the addition of male homosexuality in the forthcoming Mass Effect game.

“We don’t try to have gratuitous content either. We try and show mature themes in a respectful way. We try and enable those mature themes. It’s up to each team to decide how they want to portray it and different artists have different ways they want to portray it.”