BioWare: Videogame Industry Releases “Too Many Games”

One of BioWare’s co-founders is finding it hard to keep up with with everything worth playing these days.

The worst part about growing up is that you inevitably will have less time to play videogames. I’m still mourning the loss of my 8 hour Chrono Trigger sessions that were only possible when school let out for the summer. It’s even worse when you’re BioWare’s Ray Muzyka and you actually have to play everything just to stay current with what the videogame industry is producing.

When Develop asked Muzyka what disappointed him the most about the industry today, he flipped things around and said that it was bad that the industry is so good. “There’s too many games released today,” Muzyka replied. “It’s very, very busy, it makes it very hard as a player to keep up.”

“For us, we have to play our games, play competitor’s games, play other relevant games, and play the handful of games we just really want to play more of and finish,” he continued. “I try and play two-or three hours a night, but that’s hard and it’s not enough.”

I couldn’t agree more. The industry is really being hard on everybody in the way that it’s putting out too many games that are worth playing. We now not only have major console releases to follow, but smaller (and sometimes not-so-small) handheld titles to juggle along with purely digital games on XBLA/PSN and cellphones. If the industry were to release another platform with even more first and third-party content, I just don’t know what I’d do.

On the other hand, what does Muzyka like most about the industry? “All the great games,” he says. Very diplomatic. Fellow BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk feels the same way, adding: “There’s not really too much repetition; there’s just a lot of really good experiences.” So why do these two want to release a game that threatens to suck up even more of our time? How very cruel.

Source: Develop