Future BioWare games could have polyamorous and asexual romance options, with developers sharing their ideas for in-game romance down the line in the company's GaymerX panel.

At the convention last week, during the panel's Q&A session, developers revealed that the reason polyamorous relationships haven't been available in Mass Effect and Dragon Age already is because the necessary programming breaks the game code. Outside of scripting issues, having characters in more than one relationship at once is "not something we have a problem with on any level beyond the scripting." The developers also noted that one of the more popular romance requests BioWare receives is the additional of asexual relationships, which they said they are exploring.

Additionally, Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider noted that future games could ramp up the possibility that relationships will fail.

"We have often talked about there's something to be said about how maybe we don't need to have romances be automatically successful [and give them] more failure conditions," Gaider said. "You could actually fail a romance and then you'd actually need to work a little harder to get through it, and it's not just saying, 'Do you like me?' Okay, that means we're going to start the romance and we're automatically going to get to the end. That is something we've considered as well."

Developers also mention during the Q&A that future in-game relationships could depend on more than gender and race, such as characters' worldview and political preference. For examples, certain characters could rebuff the player for not being part of a certain faction.

The full panel — which includes a look at how BioWare decides who can romance who and how they write these encounters — can be listened to above (it's audio only).