Slashdot Mirror
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."
Fsck you, "The End Of Days"
You have no idea how many sales have been lost due to SecureROM. You have no idea how many more sales could have been obtained by not obsessing over the "hardcore gaming" crowd pirating games and instead focusing on making the "customer experience" as positive as possible.
Count me as one of the "not as important as you think you are" crowd. I've been around since the Pong days and have purchased quite a few games since then. I've not purchased Bioshock due to the DRM, nor any other game from the same publisher. And I haven't (and won't) illegally copied it either.
There seems to be quite a few of us out here. Perhaps not quite as insignificant as you think.