14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer BioWare managed to deliver one of the most successful MMO launches of the last few years with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The leaders of the team now seem to be thinking about outright creating an MMO built around their Mass Effect universe.
Greg Zeschuk, one of the co-founders of the BioWare development studio, told the Penny Arcade Report that “The implication of a Mass Effect MMO has so many expectations. We already bit off a big thing to chew with a Star Wars MMO, and that’s not so small.
“It’s daunting, but the neat thing is it would lend itself to a different type of game play. It’s fun to think about. It’s really interesting, I don’t know. It’s a tough one.”
Ray Muzyka, who is the other doctor leading BioWare and the overall role-playing and MMO division at Electronic Arts, added, “When you deliver a game, and you deliver it for a player, you have to capture what they think is the possibility space.
“You need to let them do everything they think they should do, and you can’t block them from doing anything they think they should be able to do. You have to nail all the features and content that should be in that possibility space. Mass Effect is a big possibility space.”
The Mass Effect universe now includes three full video games, a number of novels a comic book spin-offs and there have been strong suggestions that Electronic Arts is actively looking for partners to create a movie or a television series built around the intellectual property.
Mass Effect is also uniquely suited to the MMO treatment because it has a large number of races and classes that players can choose from as well as a large galaxy that can support a variety of quests and battle zones.
Mass Effect 3 launches in one week on the PC, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.