Dragon Age - Ray Muzyka Interview @ Gamasutra

Ray Muzyka has been active doing interviews lately and Gamasutra is the latest site with a conversation with EA's "group general manager of the RPG/MMO Group". Titled An Age to Come, Ray discusses Dragon Age's planned social networking aspects, PC vs console controls and modding:

We'll have more to show on what we're planning, but I think it's really cool. We're creating a community site that's going to enable the fans to get revved up about what each other is doing. They're showing their choices and consequences to friends. Even though it's single-player, you can still reveal those choices to each other and have fun doing it.
It enables some of that stuff that occurs anecdotally amongst friends at the water cooler: "Hey, did you play this yet? Did you go this way?" "No, I didn't run into that. I did it this way." "Really? I didn't run into that at all!"
You can meet people who are across the world and enable them to see those kinds of things, too, which I think will lead to a lot of fun discussion and collaboration in the community. Imagine that getting broader when you have post release downloadable content that expands the game as a platform concept, or community-driven content that people can play through and maybe the fans embrace this and make content that can even be expanded further with even more choices in it.
There are a lot of possible extensions to this, but I always thought the idea of a hero's journey being shown through an RPG would be really cool. So, with Dragon Age, we're going to try that.

More information.

Ray Muzyka apparently doesn't know anything about what a hero's journey is all about. It is, indeed, not a journey in which you involuntary more or less, are being conscripted into the army's elite unit, in DA: Origins called the Grey Wardens.

A hero's journey is one where an ordinary man is subject to a change in his enviroment or experience a crisis of some sort. He, then decides, to do something about it, to go beyond his ordinary life as say a farmboy or a teenager on a desert planet.

And the so-called social community Bioware is planning isnt' it just a forum for spoilers?

So… they are making forums… right? Is that what he wanted to say?

Probably a forumish thing where your choices are displayed in a neat way, without having to specifically tell each other what you did.

Also, a hero doesn't have to be someone who gets their life turned upside down by some great event. Someone like al'Lan Mandragoran in Wheel of Time is certainly a hero, and he was shaped to be one from his birth, though certain things did impact his decisions of course.

Originally Posted by Konjad
So… they are making forums… right? Is that what he wanted to say?

No no no. It's much more than that. It's a cutting edge online, social networking community. Maybe with spoiler tags.

To me 'social networking' is just the buzz-word of the last couple of years. Everything with 'social networking' is better. Since Tweeter is popular, and all it is is people letting others know about what they had for breakfast, then it's obviously good for RPGs too, right? right???

Soon we may have epic, dark and gritty social networking

Originally Posted by Konjad
Soon we may have epic, dark and gritty social networking

but will it be mature?

Originally Posted by wolfing
but will it be mature?

Now somebody must go on:

And will you be able to get sex cards?

Do people really buy this vapid hype?

Well, it´s unbelievably cheap so some probably do.

Just wait till they create a game using those sex cards along the lines of Magic the G!!

Originally Posted by wolfing
To me 'social networking' is just the buzz-word of the last couple of years. Everything with 'social networking' is better. Since Tweeter is popular, and all it is is people letting others know about what they had for breakfast, then it's obviously good for RPGs too, right? right???

You obviously have no clue about Twitter - to the point of not even knowing the correct name - so why bother chiming in with inaccurate generalities you obviously heard from someone else?

Originally Posted by txa1265
You obviously have no clue about Twitter - to the point of not even knowing the correct name - so why bother chiming in with inaccurate generalities you obviously heard from someone else?

Well obviously I wasn't serious… or 100% serious. I'm sure there's a lot of information that you can spread with, what is it, 150 characters? So maybe you can actually say what you had for breakfast and lunch (if you don't mention the dessert)

Yes, that's my impression. Only 150 characters? Doesn't that limit you to just sound bites rather than meaningful information?

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Yes, that's my impression. Only 150 characters? Doesn't that limit you to just sound bites rather than meaningful information?

No no, you could always skip the main course and list the desert instead. So you have plenty of possibilities to express yourself.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Yes, that's my impression. Only 150 characters? Doesn't that limit you to just sound bites rather than meaningful information?

Well, with the lolzspeak it's possible I guess, something like…
ZOMG did u c d l8st DA vid? D sux! u hav a swrd & cut all heds & blod, LOL!

You can use links too, most seem to shorten them with one of the links-shortening services. And a link says more than a thous.. I mean, 150 characters.

Originally Posted by Arhu
You can use links too, most seem to shorten them with one of the links-shortening services. And a link says more than a thous.. I mean, 150 characters.

Yes you could link to a page describing your breakfast, lunch and dinner menue! And showing pictures from your collection of sex cards.

It is hilarious and ironic that all of the last posts ridiculing Twitter would have fit as Tweets …