Dragon Age and Star Wars: The Old Republic developers BioWare may still rely on hack and slash violence to keep the game-buying masses satisfied, but it also sees the possibility in mass appeal games that don't rely on combat mechanics.
Instead, BioWare creative lead Greg Zeschuk envisions mainstream games driven by story and acting, not "battle moments," telling GamesIndustry.biz that "we're actually getting to the point where the acting is almost there."
Obviously, not all games rely on lasers, swords, and laserswords to succeed. But even 2008's bestsellers still relied on combat, whether that meant shooting Locust hordes in the face or launching blue shells at other kart racers.
Zeschuk and fellow BioWare lead Ray Muzyka believe we're on the cusp of seeing blockbuster games "that are story-driven."
Muzyka, in particular, thinks the video game industry is at its "mid-point of maturation."
"It's almost like we finally got our camera built in the movie sense," he says. "It took a long time, decades in the movie industry, where we went from black and white to talkies to the point where we actually started to get rich acting and direction and the subtle moves of camera and things like that that are now accepted practices. From that point on the industry just flourished, and I think the videogame industry is at that point now..."
Doctors On Call [GamesIndustry.biz]