The Making of Bioshock

Gamasutra is running a feature from Game Developer magazine in which Bioshock's project leader writes about what went right and what went wrong making last year's award-winning shooter, Bioshock. He talks about what the developers learned from fans and focus groups, how long it took them to firmly define what the game was supposed to be, and how they tried to reconcile their ideas with their capabilities. Quoting: "...just after the first beta, the entire design team plus a contingent of 2K producers headed off to see how a group that knew nothing about our company or BioShock would react to the first level. It was brutal. The first level, they said, was overly dense, confusing, and not particularly engaging. Players would acquire new powers but not know how to use them, so they stuck to using more traditional weapons and became frustrated. They didn't interact with the Big Daddies, and they didn't understand (or care) how to modify their characters. They were so overwhelmed by dialogue and backstory that they missed key information. A few of the players did start to see the possible depth of the game, but even they were frustrated by the difficulty of actually using the systems we had created."

that's nice

[gEvil (beta)]

Funny. I recently bought Bioshock on Steam (when they were running their $15 special a month or two ago). I only had a chance to play it for a few hours (not much time for games these days). However, in the past week my system's gone completely crazy. Turned out it was due to SecuROM. I found the uninstaller utility and removed it, and now my system is behaving perfectly normally again. I liked what I managed to play of Bioshock, but unfortunately I'm not going to reinstall it again. It's a shame, really, because it seemed like a good game.

Re:What went BADLY wrong

[Colonel Korn]

EA's sales numbers for the last year show PC gaming as their largest market. The same is true at a lot of other publishers. Things are looking up, financially, for PC gaming. The memes are looking down, though.

Re:Sigh. Here we go...

[Narpak]

....just after the first beta, the entire design team plus a contingent of 2K producers headed off to see how a group that knew nothing about our company or BioShock would react to the first level.

I think it is safe to say that what they played at that point was not the same game that we played after launch.

Re:What I found odd...

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

I think you haven't been paying attention. The bad English is likely from the Asian scientist (Dr. Suchong), whose English (as heard from the diary recordings) is pretty bad...

Re:What went BADLY wrong

[bigstrat2003]

Are you kidding? First of all, the PC version was a simultaneous release with the 360 version. By definition, that makes it not a port, because the two versions were developed at the same time. Second, I have both versions (I bought the 360 version and pirated the PC version), and they are exactly the same. The only difference, in fact, is in the PC's favor, what with the fact that you have mouse and keyboard support.

Re:that's nice

[linhares]

Discuss!

I like turtles!