News
Bioshock 'was a sequence of failures and errors'
Ed Fear in Paris Jun 23 2008, 10:43pm
Comments (7)
PARIS GDC: 2K Boston's Chris Kline on how embracing bad decisions lead to one of 2007's biggest games
Chris Kline, 2K Boston's technical director, espoused the benefits of embracing failure during a postmortem of the Bioshock development process at the Paris GDC.
"Bioshock was basically a sequence of failures and errors," he said. "But every one of them was a good thing - it forced us to look at the game and reassess what we had, which worked in our favour."
Charting the development of the product back to 2002, Kline pinpointed almost a dozen points at which wrong decisions or wrong paths were taken, ranging from bad middleware decisions right at the start of the project to the team's original misguided decision to simply remake System Shock 2, a game that had failed commercially despite universal critical acclaim.
One of the original differential points for Bioshock was to be its self-sustained AI ecology, which Kline called "life around you, but also without you". While impressive results came from months of intensive focus on these interactions, it soon became apparent to the team that it was incredibly boring without any player involvement in this ecology. This forced the team to rethink not only the entire system but also the designs of the AI agents themselves to make them more interesting and empathic.
Kline also pointed at the team's desire to make a 'vertical slice' of the game as being a failure on their part, because the need to have every system working took focus away from the high-level, differential functions that needed the most attention - such as the AI ecology, environment and plasmids - and on to problems that the team had already solved before, such as quest systems, a workable inventory and audio logs.
The core message behind the talk, though, was that for all of the hubbub surrounding new development paradigms such as scrum and other eXtreme programming practices, the real thing that made Bioshock such a compelling experience was due to listening to and carefully considering all input, especially that which came from outside the team, and being able to accept mistakes and adapt to solve them.
"Iteration was responsible for all of the major things in Bioshock that people liked," he concluded, "but I don't think you can put any methodology behind it. The real thing that you have to realise is that mistakes aren't always a bad thing."
Comments
“only way to make great games”
Posted by: Jon Hare - Jun 24, 11:48am
Trial and error is the only way to make great games. What you throw away has always been as important as what you keep to get a great end product.
The main problem with today's general development processes is that they try to be too predictive and too controlled from the outset. (ie every design document or detailed milestone schedule that you ever saw) This may be good for business and the accounts department but it is extremely counter intuitive to making something original.
The big thing to remember here is that when a great game is finished no-one who buys the game (ie our customers) care how it was made. They don't care what production processes were used, how much over budget it was up to Alpha, and they certainly don't care if half the staff got divorced because of working so much overtime. They just know that they love the end product and thank God for that.
However the only way to develop games like this is when the people who fund the development really trust the developers, otherwise it is quite simply impossible to achieve.
“Re: only way to make great games”
Posted by: Anon - Jun 24, 1:36pm
Bioshock was a ****e game. Doesn't matter how much complicated Xtreme programming is in it. It's a duff game.
“Re: Re: only way to make great games”
Posted: Jun 24, 4:30pm
You're an idiot.
"Bioshock's a ****e game..." is a ridiculous statement. the end result is a polished, atmospheric and utterly engaging game. MY OPINION.
You should have said in your opinion for your comments too.
“RE: only way to make great games”
Posted by: Kyle - Jun 24, 6:14pm
Bioshock is certianly not the deserving GOTY, it was never anything special.
I hate the game becuase like every 360 exclsuive that ahs been good, it was the advertising that made the game a commercial success. Bobby Darren "Somehwere beyond the Sea" was used in the advertisement, and the rest was just interpretted by the media as 'clever' or 'intellectual'. Mainly ebcuase the onyl games this media had been open to accpeting were on the 360, and were mainstream shooters.
So Bioshock to me reeks of pretentious arrogant developers, that are taking the glory and reaping the financial rewards of a System Shock sequel.
Well done Ken Levine, for nothing.
“Re: RE: only way to make great games”
Posted by: Tom - Jun 24, 6:36pm
I cant believe you think bioshock wasn't one of the best games of 2007 either you didn't play it all the way through or you don't appreciate games properly. Bioshock was one of the most atmospheric games Ive played and one of the best story lines i played in a game. Although without the story it is not any where near as good, Its still far better than a lot of the single player shooters out there. You just have to appreciate it for the atmosphere
“Re: Re: RE: only way to make great games”
Posted by: woodins - Jun 27, 12:51pm
Only good due to typical 360 mass-marketing?
So . . . . What would you call the PS3 Assassins Creed ad with the tear-drop track (at least Bioshock has that song in it)? Or the unrelenting hype of MGS4 with its cut-scenes, and no game-play vids.
maybe I'm too much of an ex-PC gamer and having cut my teeth on games like Deus Ex, Half-life 1+2, I probably loved Bioshock because of its balanced gameplay, compelling storyline and brilliant visuals. I know, not exactly pre-requisites for a great game. Based on the "typical 360" comment I imagine your a PS3 owner. Got nothing against the machine itself, although i do laugh at the almost religous zeal that PS3'ers exhibit for their unproven, pricey purchase. You probably like lenghty cut-scenes, where the war-weary hero agonises for ages in toilets about the duality of man, and whether or not killing someone to complete a mission makes you a bad person or not, and the games developer is a historically confused, frustrated wanna-be film director. Oh yeah, thats a real gaming experience that is. A six-hour self-indulgent, manga, ****-a-thon.
“Re: Re: Re: RE: only way to make great games”
Posted by: damdevildog - Jul 3, 12:59am
Anyone who thinks Bioshock is "NOT" an amazing game should not reffer to themselves as a gamer, period!