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Proof that there is still hope left in the gaming industry..
13 years ago
>Bioshock Infinite Delayed again
Ken Levine: "You know, 'let’s make that narrative scene that much better. Let’s do another pass on the timing of that scene. Let’s do another balance pass.’ It’s a game we could have shipped in February. It just wouldn’t be the game that we think the fans deserve. And that doesn’t mean it was far off from that, but they deserve what they deserve. And when we ask people to pony up a lot of money for this game, we have to feel confident that we’re giving them something that they deserve.”"
>Bioshock Infinite reveals boring/bland action-y cover/box art http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/g.....68-660x647.png
Ken Levine: “I looked at the cover art for BioShock 1, which I was heavily involved with and love, I adored. And I tried to step back and say, if I’m just some guy, some frat guy, I love games but don’t pay attention to them… if I saw the cover of that box, what would I think? And I would think, this is a game about a robot and a little girl. That’s what I would think. I was trying to be honest with myself. Trust me, I was heavily involved with the creation of those characters and I love them.”
“Would I buy that game if I had 60 bucks and I bought three games a year… would I even pick up the box? I went back to the box for System Shock 1, which was obviously incredibly imporatnt — that game was incredibly influential on me, System Shock 2 was the first game I ever made. I remember I picked it up… looked at it and I said, I have no idea what this game is. And I didn’t have a lot of money back then. So, back on the shelf. And I was a gamer.”
“I wanted the uninformed, the person who doesn’t read IGN… to pick up the box and say, okay, this looks kind of cool, let me turn it over. Oh, a flying city. Look at this girl, Elizabeth on the back. Look at that creature. And start to read about it, start to think about it.”
“I understand that our fan says, that’s great Ken, what’s in it for me? One, we need to be successful to make these types of games, and I think it’s important, and I think the cover is a small price for the hardcore gamer to pay. I think also when we do something for the hardcore gamer, there’s something we’re talking about and something we’re sure about. The thing we’re sure about is that we’re going to be releasing a whole set of alternate covers that you can download and print. We’re going to be working with the community to see what they’re interested in.”
I fucking love this guy. Why can't everyone else in the industry be as thoughtful to fans as him?
Here's a little something-something I made for you , Casey. It's rich with artisitic integrity :D <3
http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums.....an93/13132.png
Ken Levine: "You know, 'let’s make that narrative scene that much better. Let’s do another pass on the timing of that scene. Let’s do another balance pass.’ It’s a game we could have shipped in February. It just wouldn’t be the game that we think the fans deserve. And that doesn’t mean it was far off from that, but they deserve what they deserve. And when we ask people to pony up a lot of money for this game, we have to feel confident that we’re giving them something that they deserve.”"
>Bioshock Infinite reveals boring/bland action-y cover/box art http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/g.....68-660x647.png
Ken Levine: “I looked at the cover art for BioShock 1, which I was heavily involved with and love, I adored. And I tried to step back and say, if I’m just some guy, some frat guy, I love games but don’t pay attention to them… if I saw the cover of that box, what would I think? And I would think, this is a game about a robot and a little girl. That’s what I would think. I was trying to be honest with myself. Trust me, I was heavily involved with the creation of those characters and I love them.”
“Would I buy that game if I had 60 bucks and I bought three games a year… would I even pick up the box? I went back to the box for System Shock 1, which was obviously incredibly imporatnt — that game was incredibly influential on me, System Shock 2 was the first game I ever made. I remember I picked it up… looked at it and I said, I have no idea what this game is. And I didn’t have a lot of money back then. So, back on the shelf. And I was a gamer.”
“I wanted the uninformed, the person who doesn’t read IGN… to pick up the box and say, okay, this looks kind of cool, let me turn it over. Oh, a flying city. Look at this girl, Elizabeth on the back. Look at that creature. And start to read about it, start to think about it.”
“I understand that our fan says, that’s great Ken, what’s in it for me? One, we need to be successful to make these types of games, and I think it’s important, and I think the cover is a small price for the hardcore gamer to pay. I think also when we do something for the hardcore gamer, there’s something we’re talking about and something we’re sure about. The thing we’re sure about is that we’re going to be releasing a whole set of alternate covers that you can download and print. We’re going to be working with the community to see what they’re interested in.”
I fucking love this guy. Why can't everyone else in the industry be as thoughtful to fans as him?
Here's a little something-something I made for you , Casey. It's rich with artisitic integrity :D <3
http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums.....an93/13132.png
Though with that said its still a bit of a copy game, im a full on PC gamer but i have all of the modern consoles (and old too!)
Activision in the company in as a whole is no better than EA though, now they are doing the CoD thing where you get a company to release a similar game one year than another the next. I used to like watching that spinning activision logo but now...its a embarrassing to see what they become. (also auto-correct is trying to get me to spell activision as vivsection >.>)
Brain cells commit suicide quite happily when i play most new games
Bad part, I fell short of the sale price by 20 bucks, so curse Black Ops II forever. Biggest waste of 20 dollars. XD
Y'know, like a bunch of upper class snobs.
MW2's campaign got stupid (multiplayer wasn't too bad though), Black Ops was... idk what to call it, MW3 went back to the basics (though repetitive it felt like CoD 2 with a slightly better developed story; so it was a good bad), and then Black Ops II took a dump on the definition of poop. I mean, I didn't even like the soundtrack to Black Ops II, which no matter how annoyed at CoD I got I always liked the soundtracks.
Who wants to fix this FPS problem and make one for Activision? I call dibs on the sniper :P
It was a semi-free roam FPS with survival horror elements, a save-anywhere system, and non-linear game completion. It was basically Doom, and Resident Evil, with the structuring of Metroid Prime before that last game even existed. Nobody was doing anything like that back in 1995, and nobody has done anything like it since.
What reason would you really have for them to remake something as obscure as this? It makes as much sense to do this one as it does to remake PO'ed (PSX)
we need to know how she got onto that escape pod!
The obscurity is the by-product of the failed console they chose to launch it on. If this game had been on PS1 or Saturn, it would have been a hit. The 3DO was already toast by 1995, so the game was effectively stillborn. You can get abandonware of the PC version online, and it's a phenomenal game in terms of gameplay. yeah, the engine it was on is standard for the Dooms and Dukes of the time period, but the essential core mechanics and plot were unique. Maybe not as profound as SS2, but nobody was doing horror, FPS, and free-roam all in one game, and there still really isn't a game with those elements.
Honestly with only 5 guns to choose from I'm not sure gamers would have caught on to it, even with the more unique style/feel.
The whole idea of outdated futurism was cool too, with retro-tech made to do things that we now know would never actually work if done that way, Admittedly, gameplay was strait out 1995 (like my aforementioned comments about Killing Time), but I think everyone went so crazy over plasmids that they didn't notice the antiquated mechanics. That's what splicing will get you....
By your logic, your immersion in SS2 should have been violently thrown out the window the moment you were shooting worms out of an annelid cannon. But you didn't lose immersion. WHY? Because it was well presented and well-explained via one of the audio logs from the scientist researching annelid tech (forgot his name, he's the one that gets dragged into the hive by a rumber in one of his logs). That's why I love Bioshock and SS2, they explain almost EVERYTHING so that it feels believable....to an extent of course.
WHAT WAS immersion breaking was the last level and final boss of Bioshock. The linear Big Daddy-wanna-be sections were half assed as shit, pure action, and had total disregard for its ideologies of atmosphere (I WANTED TO EXPLORE THE MUSEUM BUT NOOOOOO, A WHALE SKELETON FELL FROM THE CEILING AND I CANT GO ANYWHERE ELSE). And I get that Ken wanted him to look like "Atlas" from The Fountainhead, but the boss fight was lame, poorly played, came out of nowhere, and not well explained in the game. These are the only parts I hate about the game because they pull you right out the experience, almost feeling like a different game.
Its also the same reason we hated the ending of ME3, it was sprung out of nowhere, poorly explained, not presented well, and its incredibly illogical nature pulled you out of the experience as also because it hardly offered player choice (the whole game hardly offered much player choice actually).
TL;DR So you see, immersion is all about a well implemented and well explained presentation, not the looks, impossibilities, or "ridiculousness". But when you go against your own lore/rules (last moments of Bioshock/ME 3), THAT's when its ridiculous.
WHY it is how it is, not just WHAT it is.
I hate the game. Period. I hate the stupid weapons. I hate picking up giant impractical tape decks that everyone records on. I hate the movements, the boring human enemy types, forced mini-boss Big Daddy encounters that all play out the same. I hate the fact death means NOTHING AT ALL IN BIOSHOCK. AT ALL. PERIOD. That fucking angers me the most.
I personally hated everything about it. That's not going to change because someone else found it fun.
"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
2) I love Bioshock but I'm not biased. I called it out on its flaws and how the third act was a rushed piece of crap. And I was talking about immersion more than Bioshock. LOL I even said SS2 was the better game! So you can't say the whole point of that was that I was trying to defend it. It was about immersion in cyber/steampunk and how it could work.
3) You can turn off the vita-chambers in the options making you die for good. (There's an achievement for it)
4) Your opinion is yours. Mine is mine. I'm not going to try to change it, and I wasn't trying to. We have our own tastes. Everyone does.
I grew up playing games so far antiquated by today's standards that immersion and believability just simply were not part of the vocabulary. An Atari 2600 could not render anything in a believable manner, and the games offered for NES could barely muster enough of a believable story to foster any sort of attachment to the main characters (which probably started right around the time of the earliest RPGs for the system). I don't think immersion even become possible at least until the dawn of 3D polygon graphics, at least for me, because it was the first time anybody could literally "look around" in the game world as if actually there.
I guess this is why immersion and believability are not necessary for me to enjoy a game, because I didn't always have them, and don't always need them to enjoy a game. So long as the game is fun to play, and has something respectably artistic to enjoy visually, it could be a shooter set in Lewis Carrol's Wonderland for all I care. actually, getting to blow the Red Queen's head off sounds like fun right about now. Off with her head goddammit!!! lol
Gotham city imposters doesn't feel immersive for the same reason. (Genre difference aside)
You play games for the luls/fun. That's fine, I don't unless that's the type of game it's designed to be.
However, plot holes ensue in BioShock 2, buts that was 2K Marin's fault, and they fucked that one up big time. We wont need to talk about that garbage.
CANT HACK A VENDING MACHINE? NO PROBLEM. JUST BUY AN 'AUTO-HACK' IN SAID VENDING MACHINE :D
"You play games for the luls/fun."
The only games I play for fun (and mostly with friends) are shooters, though I still play them with a competitive attitude at times. In fact, its this competitiveness that drove me to stop playing those games and to get into fighting games, where it actually does require skill. (That and shooters brought out the worst side of me, so thats why I avoid taking them seriously)
When it comes to single player games, I pay close attention to them and take them seriously for what they are meant to be. I dissect them and learn what they try to teach me. I wouldnt review videogames if I thought otherwise.
And I feel like Gotham City Imposters was just a-less-violent-solution for CoD kids, lol
And it is also that very game that opened my eyes on what a game can really be and not just a OMGNOSCOPE360DROPSHOT SOMUCHSKILL! It gave me taste, set a new bar that I would compare games to. The atmosphere was my favorite... the art deco gave me a new appreciation for art direction and atmospheres in games (and in real life), something I cared less about beforehand. OH, and the fact how the game would explain everything from plasmids, to why there were bullets in vending machines. It gives you this impression that this city could maybe exist (maybe). Also, Bioshock caused me to curiously stumble upon System Shock 2 and play it (and I will say that I has much better gameplay and that it deserves more credit seeing as BS copied its story, technically making it the better game without a doubt).
So for all this, Bioshock has a special place in my heart and thats why its my favorite game of all time. It changed my life for the better. Whether or not the art style is favored, and although the story is copy-and-paste'd from SS2, its still art in its form, and it helped my build many memories with family, cousins, make new friends and such.
LOL I still use it as a "Holy Bible" to this day to convert (or exorcise) CoD kids into gamers that develop taste, haha. (Mass Effect 1 had a few pages in that "bible" as well but...we all know where that's headed)
Fun SS2 fact: The Super Monkeys were Ken Levine's idea. LOL
...So I played it for $8 to shut everyone up, got my "Cheese Mints", and traded that shit. LIKE A BOSS.
Crackdwon 2: promptly ignored.
The best thing about that game was the Halo 3 beta, and even that sucked. God, I'm such a fucking hipster. :(
Everyone has the right to their own opinion, as I've said before, I'm not one to judge.
and yes Metro:Last Light <3! I've forbidden myself from watching trailers for it (same with BSI). I want the entire game to be fresh for me when I get it. :D
So proud of them for scrapping out Multiplayer. We need more heads thinking like that. Seriously...
It wasn't until a few years back that I started to buy great games I missed, such as NWN, Deus Ex, Starcraft, System Shock, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and recently the Halo series, and I'm sure there are many more games I have yet to discover.
As for your journal topic,
The gaming industry needs to take a seat and follow a few classes from this guy, they might learn a thing or two about treating your fans, afterall it's upto us to decide whether or not to buy their game.