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Mass Effect Galaxy 'A Big Mistake,' says BioWare

Posted July 29, 2010 by Ben Strauss

With the amazing success that Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 have provided for BioWare, tie-ins, novels and extra merchandise was an obvious choice for the developer. The iPhone app  Mass Effect Galaxy became an experience for fans of the franchise to learn about several side characters present within Mass Effect 2. The main problem, however, was that reviews admonished the game, calling it “uninspired and forgettable.”

BioWare’s Dr. Greg Zeschuk admits that the game could have gone better. “Oh, I think it was very worth attempting," he told Videogamer. "Even when something's not as successful as you'd like, you can take some lessons away and apply them, right? For us, that's kind of where humility comes in, to eat the humble pie on the Mass iPhone game [laughs] and go, 'Yeah, we made a big mistake,' in the sense that we thought story could carry it."

He immediately corrected himself, saying that it might not have been a mistake, but "as much as we took a guess, our guess was wrong, and we learned something in the process. Unless your game is utterly designed about tactile gameplay, you shouldn't release it. That was good information for us to have."

Though Galaxy was a failure in the eyes of consumers, reviewers and developers, the potential for gaming on the iPhone has not been lost. “We’ll explore stuff,” said Zeschuk. “For us, it may be things that link into other games. It’s the cross-platform nature of the potential platform, like an iPhone app able to somehow access one of the other games’ universes, or something. That would be really cool.”

Ben is a recent graduate of Xavier University.  You can see him ramble on about gaming, gamification, military-related gaming and manly things on his Twitter @Sinner101GR.