Bio Domes
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #177. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Analyzing the digital and analog feedback loop.
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In a recent blog update about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Bioware’s community team for the title brought up a design term that I misread as an ecological one. Biomes. In earth science, biomes refer to large areas characterized by their vegetation, soil, climate and wildlife. Despite being situated in a statement that was obviously highlighting a desired Bioware game feature, my initial reaction to the use of this organic word was that the community team meant to invoke an earthy tone. Narrative-driven games are often harping on about immersion and environmental storytelling, so I assumed this is what was being signified in a concise manner. Here’s the exact quote for context:
“In this crafted character-driven RPG, you’ll visit meticulously crafted biomes and beautiful regions, some that you’ve only heard whispers about in Dragon Age lore, including Rivain, Weisshaupt, Arlathan, Minrathous and the Deep Roads – to name a few.”
Let’s ignore the fact that players have been to the Deep Roads several times throughout the series, including in Inquisition’s main plot and in the DLC story add-on The Descent, and have technically seen Weisshaupt in Origins (albeit in the illusory realm of The Fade) for now. What seems to have thrown me was that Dragon Age, like many fantasy series, relies heavily on its sense of place alongside the cast of characters’ connections to it for that sweet escapism players are seeking. There’s also often an aspirational aspect of virtual world building that players will feel that these secondary worlds are as precious as the real one they call their home. Veilguard is banking on this aspect because as we all know by now, Thedas is in danger of being destroyed and remade in the image of the lost Elven world of yore. Solas, your former companion turned antagonist, is wracked with regret over his role in previously bringing an end to that Elven world and hopes that he can restore what was lost.
Incidentally, Veilguard is being released during a period of global climate change, which makes players like me view the game and its devotion to world building with an ecological slant. I care about making the best of the world we have now and doing what I can (even if it’s not monumental) to at least mitigate the damage wrought by genocidal wars, unsustainable growth models and mistreatment of natural resources. My Inquisitor chose to “redeem” Solas in Trespasser’s conclusion, because that option was about proving you don’t have to seek a perfect solution to the current world state. And to accept that what’s done is done, instead of seeking an absolution of past guilt that paradoxically puts you in the position of having even more blood on your hands than previously.
Related to the above, I chose a similar option at the end of Bastion, letting the character explore what was left of their world instead of rewinding time in the hopes of redoing every action with hindsight. I don’t know if this makes me naive, fatalistic or jaded in some people’s eyes. I just know that I can only hold within me hopes that aren’t singular-minded or idealist in the extreme. We don’t get many do-overs in life and sometimes that makes us better at approaching important events with the appropriate amount of respect and selflessness. And sometimes regret that can’t be easily remedied is a better motivator than a misplaced sense of justice.
I also just like that in Trespasser’s redemption option and Bastion’s living in a post-apocalyptic world state, there’s a focus on appreciating what you still have and the unexpected silver linings that came about because of the misfortunes. There’s a focus on found family in both games that I like to follow closely. Perhaps this is corny, but I like the Worthless Treasure trope, if it’s dealt with using the proper amount of subversion or nuance.
What does this have to do with me scratching my head about biomes? Well, biomes are quite important to both SFF prose and game design, but they are employed with somewhat divergent aims. In prose biomes are mostly thematic and part of the strategies a writer uses to convince the reader of a believable secondary world. Sometimes the setting is more of a character than the human (or humanoid) protagonists of the novel or it is strictly allegorical. Often writers like P. Djeli Clark have criticized fantasy maps in Fantasy’s Othering Fetish for being a blatant marker of white authors negligence in creating a diverse fantasy world, or showcasing an Orientalist mentality in cordoning or tacking on a distant continent late in the world building process for the most Othered fantasy races in a work.
Video essayist Worlds Unreal discusses how maps are never neutral in terms of their philosophy and politics and the same goes for imaginary cultures living within the different regions of these fantastical maps. Tolkien, one of Dragon Age’s major inspirations as well as Ann McCaffrey, were known for their detailed and (especially in the case of former) metaphorical maps. Game maps and their biomes are more practical in some regards, although there can still be room with allegorical and alternative signification via environmental storytelling and lore.
Here is where I should finally define biomes in the sense that Bioware was actually referring to. In game design, biomes are part of the engagement strategy of a title. According to gamedeveloper.com, biomes are regions in a game that will “include some (or all) of the preset values somewhere within the [usually procedurally generated] space.” Biomes are “structured around the player” and therefore need to be deliberately designed with regards to when a player will access each individual biome and its unique features. If a developer fumbles the building of biomes, in other words, you can negatively impact the flow and replayability of a game.
Biomes, as they are perceived in game design, by their nature need to often be cordoned off by artificial boundaries. Even in games like Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring, there’s a need for there to be a limit for you to push in order to make exploration feel purposeful. Although I admit those examples just mentioned are some of the few that manage to make a world feel less like a sandbox and more like you are fluidly moving between natural biomes.
During the Summer Games Fest reveal of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Bioware launched an official Discord server and invited fans to join them for a casual Q&A session about the upcoming game’s features. While biomes were only briefly mentioned near the end of the hour-long Q&A, I noticed that Creative Director Corinne Busche was keen on using artisanal/organic language to describe the world building process for the new areas being introduced to Veilguard’s lore. Key terms like “curated” and especially “hand-crafted” were emphasized, focusing on the human forces behind the digital experience. But these terms also had some friction to them – although I like to focus on how vital the human hands wielding the digital development tools are to the industry and how undervalued they are in recent years, Busche’s language felt calculated. Mostly in a good way. Perhaps this is because of how rare organic language actually lines up with the current philosophy of crunch and mass layoffs of the investor-driven games industry.
Busche’s intentions are good, I believe. There’s been general buzz of Veilguard being a game that returns to some of Bioware’s most sturdy and beloved roots of putting narrative craft first. Organic language is also difficult for us to avoid in common parlance, both in professional and personal spheres of experience. Where I get frustrated with the usage of such language is when it’s obvious it’s co-opted for specific business purposes. Greenwashing works (superficially at least) because the resonances of organic language hit us deep. We are organic beings and no matter how digital our tools become, the hands and brains wielding these tools aren’t any less flesh and blood.
People often forget that games and their attendant technology, especially at the AAA game level are actually made possible due to a large assemblage of bodies (as the writers of Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet describe anthropocentric existence) and their unique skill sets. Titles like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Cyberpunk 2077 rely on outsourcing (and in some cases exploiting) studios abroad. People Make Games published an informative piece in 2021 on such crunch studios in Malaysia and Indonesia.
To be clear, I’m not accusing Busche of being covert or of greenwashing. But I am saying that despite good intentions and a vested interest in having Veilguard be an authentic Bioware experience, her choice of words rings a little insincere. Even if it’s more incidental than anything. I want Bioware to do well and honestly I play their games mostly for the deep focus on storytelling, both at the macro political level and the micro interpersonal level. Bioware is still emerging (hopefully) from a very toxic cycle of development which affected many employees’ lives, many of whom departed the company during the Andromeda/Anthem era and some of whom are weathering burnout during the current era of development. They seem to have learned a lot from this rough patch and the project leads seem to have a lot more empathy for their teams. But I’m wary of the state of affairs as things currently stand.
On a less charged note, the use of biomes in game design terminology and marketing also reminds me that in spite of all my discussions in this column about interconnections between analog and digital media, sometimes concepts are incompatible. Or in some instances the concepts aren’t wholly incompatible, but the language relating them fails to capture their true interrelationships. Although Jessica J. Lee is referring to citizenship in her recent essay collection Dispersals I believe she accurately describes the tensions between the urbane human world and the fluid natural world. The globe is increasingly marked by arbitrary geopolitical borders yet nature often ignores and transgresses these borders. Subtexts often speak louder than words.
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Phoenix Simms is a writer and indie narrative designer from Atlantic Canada. You can lure her out of hibernation during the winter with rare McKillip novels, Japanese stationery goods, and ornate cupcakes.
