Lead Programmer Chris Kline was obviously delighted when BioShock turned out to be such a success, gathering many Game of the Year awards, but admits that he didn't actually expect the game to do very well at all in a recent interview.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Kline says that when he was working on BioShock, he was convinced the game was going to die of mismanagement.
Apparently for the first few years of development, the team had little more of an aim than to remake System Shock 2 and the development of the game stalled more than once.
"The very first failure was that we wanted to base this whole thing on System Shock 2," says Kline. "After a couple false starts, it wasn't until the E3 2006 demo that the team really had to think about things like making the game work and creating a "compelling user experience."
"BioShock should’ve failed... In fact, it did fail a lot, over the course of time. A series of big mistakes and corrections and slipped ship dates, but all of these helped make it a good game... Some people think that constantly messing up, and pushing dates isn’t a good way to make a game, but as far as I’m concerned it’s the only way to make a good game."
So, there you have it - proof that beauty can sometimes come from chaos after all.
What did you think to BioShock? Was it really all it was cracked up to be, or did the polarising endings and weak final boss ruin the final stretch for you? Let us know what you think in the forums.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Kline says that when he was working on BioShock, he was convinced the game was going to die of mismanagement.
Apparently for the first few years of development, the team had little more of an aim than to remake System Shock 2 and the development of the game stalled more than once.
"The very first failure was that we wanted to base this whole thing on System Shock 2," says Kline. "After a couple false starts, it wasn't until the E3 2006 demo that the team really had to think about things like making the game work and creating a "compelling user experience."
"BioShock should’ve failed... In fact, it did fail a lot, over the course of time. A series of big mistakes and corrections and slipped ship dates, but all of these helped make it a good game... Some people think that constantly messing up, and pushing dates isn’t a good way to make a game, but as far as I’m concerned it’s the only way to make a good game."
So, there you have it - proof that beauty can sometimes come from chaos after all.
What did you think to BioShock? Was it really all it was cracked up to be, or did the polarising endings and weak final boss ruin the final stretch for you? Let us know what you think in the forums.
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