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."

Comments

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:that's nice

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

Re:that's nice

[SanityInAnarchy]

I think DRM has been covered extensively enough about this game,

Has it been removed?

No? Then it hasn't been covered extensively enough.

focus on what they did RIGHT?

Unfortunately, because of the DRM, at least one customer won't be able to see what they did right. I know I would have loved to play the game, but I flat refuse to buy it because of that DRM -- so that's another potential customer, ready to pay full price ($60 even), but I don't know what they did right, because of the DRM.

Hear that, developers? It doesn't matter how hard you work, or how many long hours and weekends you put in. It doesn't matter how much you love your project, or how much of a piece of art it is. None of that matters if people actually avoid playing your game because of the DRM on it.

Life is too short, and there are too many games that don't treat me like a criminal for me to waste my time on yours.

What I found odd...

[polyomninym]

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!

Re:What I found odd...

[tylernt]

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!

Indeed. The first time I had a Big Daddy come after me, something happened that I had never before experienced by playing a mere computer game: I ran and hid (in the game) not to avoid the annoyance of having my character get killed and having to respawn or reload, but just out of simple raw terror.

I also found it pretty difficult to "game" the AI. You know how you can exploit the computer's tendency to do dumb things so you can wipe out your enemies effortlessly? I didn't find many weaknesses in this game's AI. About the best I could do was set them on fire from afar and then hide until the fire went out, then repeat or do a normal frontal assault after they were weakened enough. Any other cheap tactics were pretty much intended by the game designers, like zap'n'whack or hacking security systems. And the Big Daddy AI was pretty tenacious; even if you ran through multiple doors, no matter where you tried to hide, they would pursue you relentlessly. This actually worked to your advantage if you set traps for them, but otherwise made them pretty tough to beat without lots of med kits and big weapons.

I should also mention that I appreciated the fact that the beginning weapon, the pipe wrench, remained a viable weapon (with upgrades) right up to the final boss.

Exploring was fun too. If you went through each level completing only the necessary objectives, you'd miss about half of the map. Lots of hidey holes with powerups, and many of them nonobvious. I liked the subtlety -- it was refreshing not to have the game designers hit me over the head to show off everything they did, instead I had to go looking.

Aside from the DRM, it's hard to point out where Bioshock went wrong. Yes, the supposed "choices" (rescue or harvest the Little Sisters) were somewhat limited, but the other complexities like gathering scrap for the U-Invent, the variety of widely disparate Plasmids, and the variety of methods for dispatching enemies (brute force, hacking, or sneaky tactics) still made it interesting.

I think I found it!

[soupforare]

...what went wrong...focus groups...

Ah, nothing like developing for the lowest common denominator to screw potential!