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]

Muzyka optimistically says, "I think there are more people playing PC games and more dollars being spent on the PC space than ever before, but it's taking a different form."

More people playing, Muzyka believes, comes in the form of casual games. More money being spent obviously refers to MMOs. So don't go counting PC gaming out. Ray Muzyka believes in it, and he's not only a licensed medical doctor, but also a giant.

BioWare: PC gaming is in fine health [CVG via Massively]

“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]

Great science fiction arcs often occur in trilogies. It seems like it's sort of the way of it. Maybe it's a convenient number. But it allows you to have different pacing in parts of the story.

We're proud of the mature plots that we build into our games. They're really appropriate for the type of story we're trying to convey. And romance is part of that. It's part of life. It's part of an interaction — a healthy relationship with other people.

Bioware Talks Video Game Romance In The Post-'SeXbox' Era [MTV Multiplayer]

We're not going to sacrifice quality because our fans deserve the best and we're going to make sure that we continue to deliver that, each and every game we make.