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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."
I have almost beaten this game on the PC, and I must say that I truly love it. It's creepy, weird and under the ocean, so I've gotta give 2K some props for the concept. Those Big Daddies are horrifying tankers, loved'em to bits! The thing that I find most odd about this game is the text during loading screens. they were supposed to be quotes of various citizens talking about how things of gone down the tubes. I know that they were trying to capture some old-style slangy ways of talkin' , but damn the quoted text was so riddled with bad English that it sort of undermined the whole creepy feel of the game. I didn't let it get to me, but wow, it sure feels nice to share that with ya'll ;) Please reply if you felt the same way about those quotes. Great game IMHO!
Sorry, I literally got control back of my system about 30 minutes ago, so it's fresh in my mind (why my post starts with 'Funny'). And sorry, but not being able to use my computer thanks to a game I paid for is a serious WRONG in my book. If they remove the protection I'll reinstall it and pick up where I left off, and then maybe I might be able to tell you what they did "right" in the game. I'm sure there're plenty of good things there.
This guy's the limit!
Ah, nothing like developing for the lowest common denominator to screw potential!
--- Do you believe in the day?
I just pirated the damned thing.
Spent the money I was going to spend on it on STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl instead. Bioshock deserved the money more, but I won't pay to fuck up my machine, ESPECIALLY when the game's already on Steam. I also won't miss an opportunity to play a (reputedly) great game over principles, and paying money for a legit copy while having to pirate it anyway just to make it usable is retarded.. *shrug*
I just finished it last week. It looked cool but even that was overrated. After you've seen the basic lighting/color scheme and art-deco look they're going to use, it doesn't vary a whole lot. All those mods and junk you could do to yourself was just boring, there was never a compelling reason to mess with any of it. Beyond that it was just the same game mechanic over and over again until it's over -- not even a good ending to the story they seemed so proud of! just my opinion, but overall in the year I've had an XBox, gears of war and portal have been the best games.
In the interest of fairness, as my designer friend told me, it's not the developers who want DRM and activation (most hate it) it's the publishers.
Given that Valve has gone independent, Steam is quite obviously a development shop's idea of what DRM should be.
I actually don't have a problem with Steam, since at least it seems to work, and after playing through single-player, I'm going to mostly want it for Internet-enabled games, like Counter-Strike.
And then there's things like playgreenhouse.com, which seems to need single-activation. I really could care less, then -- I'm going to be online at least once to patch it, adding an activation step is pretty harmless.
No, where I draw the line is adding a layer on top of Steam -- and having that layer actually damage your OS.
I would say, don't boycott all DRM. Instead, boycott the truly damaging DRM in favor of stuff you can live with.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I wish I could take credit for this, but it comes from this post on the 2K Froums in the thread about removing the install limits, but not the DRM, and I think it's pretty applicable here: