BioWare is closing. The next Mass Effect project, which was in early development, is ending with it. For the people losing their jobs, that is the immediate story, and it deserves more attention than another argument about what a studio’s catalogue means to the rest of us. But once we have acknowledged the people affected, there is a question the industry needs to sit with: how does a company that helped define the role-playing game become something its owner can no longer see a future for..?
Every designer has had an idea that sounded excellent in a meeting. The mechanic is clever. The fantasy is clear. Somebody has already started describing the trailer. Then a player gets hold of the prototype, walks past the important object, misunderstands the rule and spends four minutes trying to climb a wall that was never meant to be climbable. That’s useful information. It’s also much better to discover it in a rough prototype than six months into production...
A game can be built faster and still take longer to make good. Anyone who has watched a “quick” feature turn into three weeks of debugging, reworking, and asking “wait, why does it do that?” already knows the difference. That distinction matters in the news surrounding Epic Games’ upcoming Disney project. According to Game Developer’s report on Bloomberg’s reporting, the unannounced game has moved away from a planned March release target while its development shifts toward an “AI-first” approach. An internal message reportedly called for art to be made with full AI workflows and said there should be “no more hand-written code.” That’s a striking instruction. It also raises a bigger question than whether AI can produce an image or a working function: who understands the result well enough to turn it into a coherent game...?
Mark Cerny and Geoff Keighley have launched a university-affiliated fellowship program intended to support emerging game designers. Nova plans to select 20 fellows each year and provide each of them with $100,000 to develop an original game. Around a quarter may qualify for up to an additional $500,000 if their projects show particular promise. The money matters, but the structure surrounding it may be even more important...
