For a blog about the the business and culture of video games and their intersection with Hollywood, the guys in charge of Bioware are really well situated. They run a hugely successful RPG [role playing games] developer that was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2006, along with Pandemic, for $860 million. They've worked on one of the most successful licensed games of all time, "Knights of the Old Republic" (with an MMO sequel in the works) and created several hit original properties, one of which, "Mass Effect," is currently in development as a film. And they've got a huge original property, "Dragon Age: Origins," in production that's one of the few bets the newly slimmed EA is taking.
In other words, they're at the forefront of the storytelling in video games, cooperation with old media, and the business of developing for the mass market. That's why Variety was really pleased to get to interview Ray Muzyka, the CEO, and Greg Zeschuk, VP of entertainment, for half an hour at the Game Developers Conference.
World building? Yes indeed. One small building on one small patch of land on one desolate lifeless planet in one solar system at a time...apparently.