Between discussing the impending launch of Dragon Age: Origins or teasing the features of Mass Effect 2, BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk has devoted energy toward convincing gamers that it will be exciting to grandly save humanity once again.

When Zeschuk and I spoke a couple of weeks ago at the Penny Arcade Expo, however, I asked if there was any reason BioWare couldn't or wouldn't make a role-playing game about something more pedestrian. Must the preservation of all life always be the motivation?

"Like you said, it's almost like there's a formula," he said. "Save the world: Check." Zeshuck and I both know that a lot of gamers want that feeling of being a hero. That's a big draw.

Half-joking, I said to him: Why not have an RPG just about having a good week?

"You've got to go to work," Zeschuk riffed. "You've got to finds your clothes." As he threw these ideas out, I realized they didn't sound that appealing. But Zeschuk liked the idea of making an RPG that's about less pressing matters than the preservation of all life.

"We have had conversations about having a game that would have much more intimate moment to moment experience, not so much like saving the world," he said. As a means of loose comparison, he brought up Milo & Kate, the virtual person project showed by Peter Molyneux at this past E3. "It's not quite like the Milo stuff, but taking the character technology and taking something like — mundane is the wrong word — but something like sitting around the table." His idea sounded more like indie games I've played or heard about that center on the simpler moments in life, like the dinner part in Facade.

BioWare's epic Mass Effect did involve a lot of visual and interactive technologies designed to make conversations more nuanced and engaging. So it's easy to see how the company could enable the creation of more quotidian role-playing games.

Zeschuk could also see fans taking BioWare's tools and doing it themselves. He's high on the potential for the mod-making tools in the PC edition of Dragon Age and told me he's already seen someone recreate a key scene from Hamlet with them. Smaller-scale RPGs could be made through that. "Funny enough, I think that's the stuff people will do with the tools," he said. Smaller creators could pull that off as BioWare devotes energy to the grander endeavors.

"I wouldn't say we're limited by our creativity," he said. "But we're limited in the scope of things we can undertake."

Here's to the creation of a Having-A-Good-Day RPG. Who wants to make it?

As an attempt to appeal to a broader and broader audience, consequence has left gaming. Everything is very low impact and there’s no real negative result that can occur. We’re going to start bringing that back but in a rational way, a way that doesn’t punish the player — but puts them on the spot.

Please, do. My most defining memory of BioWare's Mass Effect was the Wrex showdown, think they worked consequence (without punishment) in there almost perfectly.

BioWare: Consequence Has Left Gaming, ‘Star Wars’ MMO Will Fix That [MTV]

“We look at every platform that comes along. Obviously, something that’s as big a cultural and technical success as the iPhone is something you really got to take a close look at. Certainly, there’s nothing written in stone yet but we’ve got a lot of folks looking at it. It’s intriguing. I think one of the things that we’ll have to see how it shakes out is what type of consumer buys games on it and what type of experience they’re looking for. You want to always mash the consumer experience with what you’re building. We want to understand what people are going to do with it. Who knows. We’re definitely looking at every platform.”

They were speaking, by the way, as part of an interview in which they reiterated their fealty to the PC platform, calling the market "vibrant." So are iPhone games about to become "the hot new thing," or are they already?

BioWare Confirms PC Support, ‘Looking At’ iPhone Development [MTV Multiplayer]

Bioshock, Mass Effect and some of the other titles coming out this year show us how some of the games before weren't next-gen. It's not that we're so much better, but the bar is being set. Certainly Bioshock set a high bar, I think we'll set a pretty high bar, and it's going up and up.

It's scary, because you discover how many groups can legitimately compete at that level. In the games business it's winner takes all, so if you can't compete... That's a bad position to be in.

Certainly out intent is to have all three iterations or installments of Mass Effect to be on Xbox 360. That's the goal...I hope, I hope, I hope that this cycle is longer than the last one.