Despite what most people think, game developers don’t laugh manically when other titles fail. Although the level of competition seems to increase along with the money required to fund AAA games, BioWare writer Patrick Weekes has never wished ill will on other companies hoping to carve out a space in the RPG genre. In fact, during a PAX Australia panel, Weekes claimed that he only hopes CD Projekt Red's The Witcher series succeeds in the future.
"I think 'compete' is the wrong word. I think there's a story that people want to tell, where the video game companies hate each other and 'our game is going to crush theirs.' And that's really not true," Weekes said. "I came to BioWare because I love games. And I hope that the next Witcher game is fantastic and I hope that ours is fantastic, and I hope that people buy both and play both."
Competition is crucial for the consumer. Without companies competing for your dollars, the Xbox One wouldn’t have altered its original policies and gained a pre-order advantage. However, developers see the benefit in this style of rivalry, too.
"Every time another great game comes out, and raises the bar, that's not threatening; it's only threatening if we don't think we can ever do anything better," he continued. "So we look at something and go 'that's a fantastic game. How am I going to incorporate that awesome thing and do it in a BioWare fashion?'"
BioWare is hard at work on Dragon Age: Inquisition and the next big Mass Effect, which is coming along nicely. Hopefully, both games benefit from the hard work being done elsewhere.
