Feature: 'GDCTV: Storytelling Across Genres: BioWare's Perspective'

Gamasutra is proud to present GDCTV, a special feature showcasing streaming high-quality video content of some of the notable sessions of this year's Game Developers Conference. For this session, we're pleased to showcase BioWare joint CEO and co-executive producer Dr. Greg Zeschuk speaking on "Storytelling Across Genres: BioWare's Perspective". The original presentation description for this lecture at Game Developers Conference 2005 explains: "BioWare is well known for crafting great stories which form the core of its roleplaying games. Our perspective is that practically any game can be considered a roleplaying game if it contains a strong story and character interaction. Of course, RPGs and other kinds of games also often include other common elements such as world exploration, meaningful player rewards and character progression, but increasingly story seems to really drive the impact of many different kinds of games, not just RPGs. As BioWare broadens its perspective and fuses new gameplay into its story-driven games, merging genres in games like the martial arts action-RPG Jade Empire, a new challenge appears - that of delivering great stories effectively across disparate genres. This talk will discuss some of the fundamental issues BioWare has encountered when working with story in video games for PC and console. BioWare's approach to presentation of story and the different techniques we use to acquire and retain our players' attention will be discussed. The importance of strong characters and character interaction will be examined, as well as some of the prerequisites found in memorable character personalities. The different options that exist in telling a story, such as questions of linearity and player choice will also be explored." You can now access the current GDCTV streaming lecture for 'Storytelling Across Genres: BioWare's Perspective' (a brief, free registration process is required if you have not previously registered.)