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4. Inefficient processes and tools.
Many of the processes and tools
we used to develop BioShock were inefficient or confusing in
implementation, leading to slow iteration cycles and bugs. Using a
modified version of the Unreal engine, which the team had already used
to ship two previous games, gave us a huge head start in developing
BioShock. The gameplay team was able to mock up a playable version of
the core game mechanics in just a few months, and the team's
familiarity with the tools allowed us to get new gameplay spaces up and
running quickly.
However, the ease and familiarity of the workflow often led us to
accept a solution that was faster to implement but slower to use rather
than taking the time for a more efficient implementation.
For example,
there was no good convention for how to name script actions. Depending
on the system, one script action might be called "Change <
SystemProperty > " while another would be called "Set <
SystemProperty > " or "Modify < SystemProperty > ". With
hundreds of scripting actions available, designers often spent way too
much time searching for the right tool to use. This could have been
avoided with a scripting code standard.
The content baking process for the console was time-consuming and
difficult to troubleshoot. Frequently the only way to either identify
or resolve a bake problem was to re-bake at the cost of up to an hour
of work, and if the tools were actually broken in some way, it would
take at least another bake cycle to be able to work effectively again.
Once we reached crunch time, it was extremely painful to have to wait
for the bake process to complete when people could have been working
productively instead. We should have put more energy and time into
speeding up the bake process sooner.
5. Poor data collection.
One of the most frustrating things about our
decision to be more data-driven in tuning the game was the lack of
actual good data to base that tuning on. Our game log system was barely
adequate to analyze single play-throughs and became completely unwieldy
when trying to analyze a single log file containing data from multiple
play-throughs. We had no good methodology to define what information
was logged and at what level of detail, so the job of parsing out the
logs into understandable "gameplay metrics" was painful, slow, and
ended with inadequate results.
To further complicate the problem, most
people in the office used shortcuts or cheat codes at the start of a
level rather than playing from the beginning of the game, which caused
us to base a tremendous amount of early tuning on a shaky set of
assumptions about how players would choose to build their characters.
Blockbusting
Our goal when we set out to make BioShock was very clear. We wanted
to get to the next level, moving beyond our suite of critically
acclaimed games to make a blockbuster. A lot of factors aligned to make
this possible: the commercial backing of 2K; the game design knowledge
we'd acquired from building System Shock 2; the technological
familiarity with our Unreal-based engine that we'd built with previous
games. But we still had to figure out how to make it all
big-blockbuster big.
A lot of our problems came from underestimating how big the task of
making a triple-A product for multiple platforms and multiple regions
really is. And other problems came from over-estimating our capacity to
solve those problems using our existing procedures and staffing levels.
If there's an over-arching theme of our development, it's that we,
like many other developers, believe that ultimate success in this
industry comes from iteration. You have to build, evaluate (and have
others evaluate) and be prepared to throw things away and rebuild.
The
products we make are just too complex and our industry reinvents itself
too rapidly to do anything else. But we believe that if you are truly
prepared to turn a critical eye on your own product and honestly
respond to that criticism you'll get quality at the end. As to whether
you get a blockbuster, only time will tell.
Game Data
Developer: 2K Boston and 2K Australia
Publisher: 2K Games
Platform: Xbox 360 & PC
Release date: August 21, 2007
Development time: 3 years
Number of full time developers at peak: 93 in-house developers, 30
contractors, 8 on-site publisher testers (see the sidebar on pg. 22 for
details)
Hardware: PC; AMD Athlon X2 dual core or Pentium 4 Intel-Duo dual
core processors; NVidia Geforce 8800 graphics cards; Xbox 360 dev and
test kits
Software: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Perforce, Xbox 360 SDK,
Xoreax Incredibuild, Visual Assist X, Araxis Merge, BoundsChecker,
Purify, VTune, 3ds Max 8, Photoshop CS2, ZBrush, Flash 8, SoundForge 8,
Sony Vegas, Acid, Ableton Live
Technology: Unreal Engine, Bink, Havok, Fmod
Number of files: 3,775
Lines of native C++ code: 75,8903
Lines of script code: 187,114
Team Breakdown
In the Boston studio:
Programmer: 1
Artists And Animators: 15, plus 2 borrowed from Firaxis
Designers: 6 in-house, 1 contract
Audio Developers: 2 in-house, 7 contract
Producers: 3 in-house, 2 contract
Testers: 13 contract, plus 8 on-site publisher testers
In the Australia studio:
Programmers: 12
Artists And Animators: 10
Designers: 5
Audio Developer: 1
Producers: 2
Testers: 1 in-house, 7 contract
In the Shanghai studio:
Artists And Animators: 12
Designers: 3
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The liberty about what and how to do is the best in the whole game... that`s really an action RPG like I was missing for years...
Good job!
DRM junk is not really interesting from a post-mortem standpoint. This is all about the game design and the process of making the game which is very difficult and hard to get right.
DRM is tacked on publisher junk and not really interesting. It's also very easy to tack on after the fact and the real developers don't ever even see it. This is about the team that makes the game, not the DRM policy decisions. Totally different set of people calling shots for totally different things.
What went right: #1 is atmosphere. The Randian utopia is completely unique in gaming. The Fort Frolic level with the plaster statues was especially brilliant. #2 is AI and characterization. The way the splicers behaved made them feel very alive. There are still so many games still coming out where the enemies have perfect knowledge of your location at all times and follow a simple script of "move towards the player and fire" - not here.
What went wrong: Lack of choice. This was particularly galling for a game hyped as offering a "groundbreaking" level of choice. There are a lot of kinds of choice so let me break it down further. There's freedom of tactics, freedom of moral choice, and freedom of goals.
First, freedom of tactics assumes a set micro-goal and allows several methods to achieve it (such as force, stealth, diplomacy.) Bioshock offers pretty much the minimum standard options you'd expect in any shooter. Tripwires, exploding barrels, and hackable turrets are not groundbreaking. There are no situations to apply diplomacy. Very few locations have multiple points of entry. The other games in the Looking Glass tradition (System Shock, Thief, Deus Ex) set a standard for tactical choice that Bioshock makes no effort to approach.
Second, moral choice. To slaughter little girls or not is not a sophisticaed moral dilemma compared to say, evaluating the source of legitimacy of governments as it relates to the use of lethal force in a civil society. And yes, the latter can be the subject of an exciting and compelling game: Deus Ex. Bioshock presents similar social issues through the lens of its Randian utopia, but never invites the player to define their own position or choose their own goal until the final moments.
Finally, there is freedom of movement. Bioshock's interpretation of freedom of movement is that there are some shops you don't have to go in. On the macro scale, you follow a set sequence of levels. The levels are nonlinear compared to Half-Life 2 or Doom 3, but then Tom Cruise is tall compared to Verne Troyer. The reasons for visiting levels in a particular order were fairly arbitrary and could have been dispensed with, so that apart from a tutorial and coda the player would have been free to roam Rapture.
It's certainly not a requirement that every AAA game have the tactical options of Thief, the moral choice of Knights of the Old Republic, and the freedom of movement of GTA, but if the hype of your game is going to be about freedom, you should make a game that actually excels in offering some type of freedom. I don't know whether the focus grouping helped unit sales, but it certainly hurt any claims to originality or ground-breaking. If you make a game for the common denominator, your game will be the common denominator.
I don't want to sound completely down on Bioshock. It's a solid game, fun, and a moneymaker, but I think its destined to be a footnote to the greatness of the Looking Glass tradition, not the genre-defining experience its predecessors were. The official post-mortem here makes it clear that, hype aside, thats what its creators wanted.
Unfortunately, there's NOTHING that tells you whether you were thinking TOO MUCH about how to make a game accessible to a wide variety of players.
Ken Levine seems really empty eyed when he talks about his initial visions for the game, the things that he's capable of and how little he actually got to put into the game because of the reactionary handling of focus-group testing.
The games business starts to strangle its greatest visionaries and celebrates the (obviously commercially successful) results in post mortems. In the end, I think 2K was lucky. This could have ended in a "Deux Ex: Invisible War".
I couldent agree more on your points, concerning Bioshock.
The previews made the game sound like a sandbox-type FPS where the narrative unfolded by observing the occupants of Rapture, whom operate independent of the protagonist, and where each area was patrolled by a unique Big Daddy/Little sister. Upon playing the game, it was just a linear, scripted, FPS. While I was satisfied with the art direction, level design, and voice acting, I was completely disappointed with the gameplay.
Of course, teams like Valve and 2K will sing the praises of focus groups and how instrumental they were in the success of their game -- Portal and, now, Bioshock -- but there has to be a point where you have to consider the passion and enthusiasm of the development team over the reviews of a focus group.
Would Bioshock have been better if they stuck to their guns and ignored the negative feedback? I'd insert Frost's The Road Not Taken here.
Comparing BioShock to what it "could have been" is a bit of a stretch. I'm certain it "could have been" the best game ever given clairvoyance and unlimited time and resources, but the reality is the guys were running way over on schedule and expenses.
The BioShock that we got was a fun game. Not a long game, or an overly complicated game, but enjoyable. I remember playing the demo on X360 and saying "Wow. This is awesome." The game was compelling and fun.
When I read books, I typically don't choose them solely because they are literary masterpieces. Nor do I blame the author for not creating something as robust or intricate as War and Peace. As long as the setting is right, the plot is decent, and the story takes me on an enjoyable ride, I've received what I set out to get.
What bothers me about this postmortem is not only that focus groups had a strong affect on the overall design of Bioshock -- even Ken Levine was quoted to say that the endings were not his plan -- but that what started out as a truly ground-breaking event ended up a (pardon the pun) watered-down experience. This is not a case of "coulda-shoulda-woulda" but a case of "didn't-because-someone-said-so." In other words, it clearly demonstrates how marketability trumps game design/narrative. It's a very worrying trend in this industry, and it made me feel like a sucker in the end.
If there will ever be a "director's cut" of Bioshock, I would be the first in line to pick it up; THAT would be the masterpiece.
It's not just a case of marketability trumping design and narrative, it's a case of *reality* doing some trumping as well. Games are incredibly expensive to make, and not only that very hard to make. What I mean is, (especially if you are doing something new) there is no standardised way of constructing games, every company does it a little different on every title, and it is a very complex a process involving a lot of people.
Part of what that means is you cannot give over power to one or two individuals, even if you think they are geniuses. People are just too fallible to turn over that much responsilbity to them. At the end of the day, you are responsible not just for a game but for peoples livelihoods, ultimately - something I wish some of the higher level staff in many games companies would realise.
Listening to focus groups *is* a great idea sometimes. They don't always (though often do) produce a diluted, selfish, lowest -common-denominator effect on everything they touch. High quality opinions from other people are worth their weight in gold and listening to others almost always gives a positive result. In this interview he goes over how many things the team initially got wrong and how they were only corrected when outside forces gave some input. The "directors cut" you envisage might have been a whole lot worse than what we got in the end. I thought Bioshock was compelling, interesting and visually brilliant. Yes it could have been better in hindsight, (which is always 20-20) but if you think about the complexity of making a modern AAA game and shaping that experience for the player and all the layers a designer has to go through to convey something effectively, we should be grateful for what we got. I would be extremely happy if there were more games of the quality of Bioshock.
Personlly I think the compexity of making a game (although the number of staff doesn't) sometimes exceeds that of making even a big movie. Game designers have far less control over players and what they see and experience than movie directors. Giving this directorial power to someone in making a game would be very dangerous, I haven't met anyone in the industry myself who I would want to work under in such a role. I'm sure it has been done many times in games in the past - and i'd bet the results were mostly crap.
I've played the game a second time to see the other ending scene, so I've gone through the whole game using only the wrench and telecinetic power, bullet for bigdaddies and one single firstaid in the full game...
The final boss was VERY easy even in the first time, once more in fact that he only repeat tha same things over and over... but, after the great game, the boss feeled to be there just filling the end of the game.
If the game was being made with a strong and deep gameplay style... depending on how that was advanced in development, why just throw the whole work in trash, why do not let the player choose if wanna play the game in basic or advanced mode?
I've showed the game to some friends and they disliked the style how the goals and gameplay works, so they forgave to keep playing (ok, they don't speak english, but can read somethings well), so even the "simple" remade gameplay was considered complex by some players. So the same players that enjoyed the game the way is was released, would probably easely figure out the first game was being made...
So I think, Bioshock is a really cool game. Although I'm really interested now, how the first rpg-like Bioshock would have been :)
Anyway, it's one of those games that I completed in a few marathon sessions, because I couldn't stop.
Then I put it on the shelf, until I have forgotten most of the story, and something like after half a year, play it again ... put it away, wait some months, play again ...
I'd still do that with games like System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, but think they don't run on Windows XP anymore.