BioWare have come a long way in more than fifteen years of making hit games, co-founder rising from a background in medicine to becomeVice-President at as well General Manager and CEO of BioWare. With his studio hard at work on 2 and this winter's Dragon Age: Origins, we sat down for a bit of a chin-wag behind the scenes at GamesCom.

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Thanks for chatting with us Ray. Are you enjoying GamesCom so far?

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Yeah, actually I'm really impressed. It really gives you a sense of how big the is. I had a walk around this morning, didn't get to play much. I looked at Aion, and I got to wander around hall six.

Jumping in at the deep end, we've previewed quite a few times now. Getting to know it quite well.

You've played it a bit?

Yeah, I wasn't very good sadly. I guess I'm not a hardcore player.

Yeah, once you get about ten hours in it, it just compels you. You can't just stop playing.

Lots of dragons in RPGs. What is the affinity?

Well, fantasy RPGs... yeah lots of dragons. Especially in a game called Dragon Age, you kinda expect to see some dragons.

Why Dragon Age?

Well, it turns out that that's the name of the age, the aion, of that world - that fantasy universe. It also turns out there are dragons in the game.

I was killed by one of them.

Oh really? You fought the dragons? Which one?

[long pause]

It's a spoiler moment! Don't say which one. That must have been one of the high dragons, their tough.

Yeah, he was tough.

Well, you need to get some more experience and levels and come back. Dragons, well, I guess they are part of the fantasy history. Dragons are part of myth and fantasy stories are inspired by myth and legends. Tokienesque fantasy is one expression of that. Dragon Age is trying to do something fresh and innovating. It's inspired by Tolkienesque fantasy on one side, but also low fantasy, a dark fantasy and it's got the best of breed features of these.

I guess it's important to you that you appeal to beyond the hardcore?

Yeah, yeah it is. We've got elements that will appeal to the traditional fantasy fans, but it's fantasy with a edge, its fantasy with a twist, yet its accessible and deep at the same time. It's about striking a nice balance where you're going to reach new fans, but it will be really resonating with your traditional fans.

Mass Effect is obviously plowing the fertile fields of sci-fi, and you're doing the fantasy thing of course. Is that a conscience effort?

Yeah. Well it's good on a range of fronts for diversity. The portfolio helps our teams. Like they get to work on things they to engage with different things and get passionate about. The team has to be passionate. And it's good for our fans. Some of them like Mass Effect, some of them like Dragon Age, and some like Star Wars: The Old Republic and some like stuff that we haven't announced yet. So between all those products we're developing, we're going to appeal to a range of gamers, through genre diversity, though gameplay diversity, through platform diversity, through business model diversity through distribution model diversity, and these are all different ways of reaching different kinds of fans. I'm excited by that.

Interesting you mention business model diversity. What do you mean by that?

Well, for our announced projects... with Dragon Age and Mass Effect, there is a box, with downloadable content. Star Wars: The Old Republic, we've not even announced the business model, but it's an game so you won't be surprised. It'll be launching in North America, UK, France, Germany, are the territories we announced thus far, there might be more in the future. When we look at every territory, the kind of audience, we always try to pick the distribution and business models that will resonate and be relevant to them. This changes over time too - like you didn't used to have even MMOs 20-30 years ago, but when they developed they started a business model they thought would appeal to people. We try and look at the fanbase and see what are they going to find satisfying. The content, the gameplay, the business model.

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