Tag Archives: Dragon Age 3

Train2Game News: Mass effect of Bioware ‘fathers’ on the move

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Bioware has announced its plans for the future following the departure of their founding members.

Earlier in the week Dr Ray Muzyka and Dr Greg Zeschuk, the founding fathers of Bioware, left the company.

To reassure the world, the company announced what’s next in line for development. The biggest announcement was that of a new IP for the next generation of consoles.

Aaryn Flynn, General Manager of Bioware Edmonton and Montreal, said “Casey [Hudson, Mass Effect series boss] and his leads are putting together their vision for an all-new game set in a fictional universe, built from the bottom-up with all new gaming technology.”

Their next project to launch will be more DLC for the highly popular Mass Effect 3. They have said they will develop more multiplayer and single player content. The single player content is strongly rumoured to be set on the Mass Effect 2 location, Omega. The add-on should see players team up with angry asari Aria T’loak to retake her crime-laden home from long time antagonists Cerberus.

Bioware are currently looking in to how they can expand the Mass Effect series in to another game for the series.

The company have also been working on their other highly popular series, Dragon Age. The third instalment was announced a few days ago named Dragon Age 3: Inquisition. No more details have been released about the game to date.

Mr Flynn said about the departure of the Doctors “I know this might be concerning for some of you but the leaders at BioWare have had some time to think about it – to think about how the games, the fans, and the creative teams would move on without the two guys who started this organization back in 1995.

“We – including Ray and Greg – think the studio is solid and the team here is ready to embark on a whole new era of games.”

EA admit Game Design of Dragon Age 2 drove Origins fans away

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Dragon Age 2 Publishers EA have admitted that “innovations” in the game cost them fans, and therefore providing a lesson to Train2Game students about Game Design.

While innovation is key to the games industry, the admission demonstrates that Train2Game students who produce games that are too far out there may risk unpopularity.

Many fans were disappointed with a particular Game Design element of Dragon Age 2 that reused the same locations multiple times.

“We were clearly disappointed with some of the response from the fanbase, because we want them to be as excited about it as we are,” EA Games Label boss Frank Gibeau told Eurogamer.

“We’re very proud of the game. We tried to innovate and do some different things with the combat system and some of the way we told story. For some fans it worked well. In fact, we brought a lot of new fans into the Dragon Age franchise.

“But to be honest, we lost some fans as well. They were not pleased with some of the innovations and things we’d done. We understand that and we’re listening.”

It’s not the first time the Train2Game blog has reported that fan feedback will be taken into consideration with the Dragon Age franchise. As reported by the Train2Game blog last month, Bioware admitted they’d be listening to fan complaints.

Some Train2Game students will no doubt be pleased that EA say they’ll listen to this criticism when it comes to developing Dragon Age 3.

“As we think about where we take the franchise next, we’re going to take that into consideration and really engage them,” Gibeau continued.

“Ray [Muzyka] and Greg [Zeschuk] have built a long career being close to their fanbase and understanding what they want.”

“If they do something in a direction that is innovative and fresh for some but not for others, they’ll take that into consideration as we think about the next design and where the game goes from here.”

Last year, the Train2Game blog highly praised Dragon Age: Origins, particularly when it came to Game Design.

For more on why Bioware decided to take Dragon Age II in the direction they did, see extracts of an interview with Mike Laidlaw on Game Design hereon the Train2Game blog.

How important do you believe it to be for developers to listen to fans? Where is the fine line between innovation and alienating fans?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: Eurogamer]