Bioware Talks Non-Standard Relationships

With LGBT equality in games becoming a hot button topic as of the last few years, writers and editors went to the LGBT-oriented convention GaymerX2 to address the concerns and challenges of building romance in games, with a particular point towards those more non-standard options for said romance. The lead writer of Dragon Age, David Gaider, Karen Weekes (editor, BioWare), Patrick Weekes, (writer,BioWare), and development manager Robyn Thegerge held the panel, titled “Building a Better Romance”, and at the end of the panel, opened the floor to questions, with some building dialogue towards the issue of alternative relationships.

Among such topics included polygamy, to which the Gaider responded, saying that an NPC that was able to engage in that type of relationship, would be bound to that relationship, and not any of the monogamous pairings, otherwise there would be too much dialogue, coding, and scripting to make it possible. Another concern they addressed was the damages to a character caused by allowing the gender to switch so easily, as the NPC’s gender would be a part of their character, making writing even more difficult to be able to make the characters believable.

The team also discussed the points from a more business-side light, with Gaiger saying “The problem, at the end of the day, is that a lot of times doing what is more realistic or adding more variation into the romance, it means that we have to write more, and there is only so much writing that we can do. Writing is very expensive.”