The Story Behind the Bioshock Hacking Mini-Game

MTV's Multiplayer Blog has a chat with Dorian Hart, the designer at 2K Boston that gave us the pipes-like hacking mini-game in Bioshock. The two of them discuss the reason we direct blue liquid to win, the fan reaction to the game, and the value mini-games bring to their 'parent' titles. "I suppose it certainly gives the game an extra dimension: something else to do other than shoot. In a shooter, even a shooter that has small variance in how the game plays out, the number of verbs that you actually use in a given 10 minutes, half an hour, an hour of gameplay is pretty limited: you have a gun; you shoot it. Having a mini-game just gives the player a different thing to do, a way to break the player out of a rut they may be in, in how they're thinking about what they're playing. It engages a different part of their brain. As long as it's not too onerous or forced upon the player too commonly. They say, "Variety is the spice of life," and I think that applies in this case. As long as you don't make it an essential, unavoidable, too-important part of the game, because people are expecting a shooter."

Comments

Useless

[fozzmeister]

It's a terrible mini game, I like the splinter cell one where u pick a door lock, it makes sense. I have no idea why I have to play pipemania to get 10% off prices, and it's _incredibly_ tiresome after the 60th time.

Re:Useless

[provigilman]

I have no idea why I have to play pipemania to get 10% off prices, and it's _incredibly_ tiresome after the 60th time.

Well, there's your problem right there! You don't have to play it all. Want the cheaper prices at the vending machines? Use the buyout or the autohack. Want to stop those pesky turrets, bots and cameras? Shoot them! Better yet, freeze/electrocute them, then shoot them!

That's part of the point of the minigames. You need to part with something to gain an advantage. Be it money, autohack tools or time, you need to give something in order to get the benefit. If you don't like the hacking minigame just blow everything up, buy your items at full price and craft all your autohack tools for the times when you *do* want to hack something.

Me personally, I sort of enjoyed right up until about the last level. Luckily by that point I could auto-hack the turrets and bots, and the cameras and the few vending machines I encountered were a breeze thanks to my engineering tonics. So, for me at least, right around the time they started to get boring was when I could just breeze through in 10 seconds (which might be why they got boring...no risk). It's all about how you want to play...