Papy on 13/10/2008 at 00:41
Designing something new certainly takes time, but that would not be the case here. First there is a pretty good model to follow and second most of the system is already present with BioShock. A lot of time, there is a direct correspondence between SS2 stats and skills and BioShock plasmids. I guess some people will crucify my for saying this, but from a design point of view I'd say BioShock is really a spiritual successor to SS2. It's the gameplay which is severely dumbed down.
Chade on 13/10/2008 at 08:39
Quote Posted by Papy
To me, either you don't understand what I'm saying, or you really need to get down to earth a bit. Game design is not some kind of perfect engineering where all elements are unique and must be in perfect harmony with one another ...
You're right: my last post was afflicted with an unfortunate case of hyperbole. Clearly the elements of a game are neither completely independent or perfectly dependent on one another. Nonetheless, I believe my post is accurate enough to make it prohibitively hard to make games appealing to both a mainstream audience and the traditional hardcore game fan.
Let's keep talking about Bioshock. So sure: you found that simply removing vita chambers was enough to make you like the game. As someone who likes the game, I am actually sorta impressed by that, but I think you will find that this is not a typical reaction.
The changes made to Bioshock to target a mass audience go a lot deeper then vita chambers. People have complained about the level design (too easy to know where you have to go), the AI (not as interactive as "promised"), the role playing mechanics (or lack thereof), the scripted sequences (the game relied quite a bit on them). If you wanted to target the game to a hardcore audience you would have to tackle these issues. That's a lot of work (more on that later).
Maybe you could just tackle a couple of issues? Sure, you could tweak the game. That might be enough for a tiny fraction of the hardcore audience. But let's imagine you tried to something even remotely substantial. What if you changed the AI to be more like they were originally intended to be. How does the player observe their behaviour? Do you need to add more stealth elements? How does the player choose which monsters to interact with? Do you need to make the level design less linear?
Sure, you probably don't need to change the floor tiles (EDIT: what was in these brackets because it was pedantic and stupid), but you will still need to make major changes to the rest of the game to make the AI changes fit in.
Maybe you can just make a few tweaks and hope it will be "good enough". But then the game won't really be suited for the hardcore audience, and I don't think people would accept it. Perhaps I'm wrong. We already know I'm wrong in your specific case, and it's not like we've been spoiled for choice lately. But I really don't think that Bioshock sans vita chambers would have made much difference to the game's hardcore reception. And I think you can say the same for any trivial change you might make to the game. There is just too much that has been changed to target a mainstream audience.
Quote Posted by Papy
If you look a bit at the gaming history, maybe you'll realize that most games, from a gameplay point of view, are clones of others with, at best, only some slight variations from their predecessors. They vary a lot on other assets, but ultimately the gameplay is mostly the same.
And ain't that the truth. But it still doesn't stop game developers continually complaining that their games change completely from conception to finished product. The broad gameplay - as we perceive and appreciate it - may well stay the same, but you can't program with broad wishy washy statements about how the game will work. The details change all the time as game developers try different things out and see how they work. And this can affect other elements of the game. Just look at the bioshock art book to see how the little sisters changed to clearly show the relationship between big daddies and little sisters. We know that at least one reason for this change was to clearly show the relationship between little sisters and big daddies.
My final argument is nothing but an appeal to authority. If it's so easy to cater to multiple play styles, then why don't game designers do it? I've read enough game designer blogs and academic papers to know that catering a game to multiple audiences is something game designers are hugely interested in. Why alienate potential buyers if you don't have to?
Do you really genuinely think that this is not being done because game developers are all just short sighted? I think that attitude is ridiculous.
Silkworm on 13/10/2008 at 19:09
Chade, what you don't understand is that making gameplay changes are trivially easy as opposed to making any other changes to a game (graphics, sound, level design, etc.). There is some confusing lingo here: when Papy was talking about "gameplay" he mean the UI, balance, and mechanics of the game systems, not art, sound, or level design. Yes I know that level design actually plays a big role in gameplay and that BioShock's level design is severely lacking but that has little to do with his argument. Consider this:
It takes literally about 10 minutes of work to make the Big Daddies in BioShock die with one hit - just find the relevant lines of text in the .ini file and change them.
Compare this to changing the Big Daddies to Giant Mutant Squirrels. For one thing, you'd have to track down all of the relevant sound, model, texture, and animation files in the first place. Then you would have to create sound, model, textures, and animations for a giant squirrel and replace them. Even given a team of talented people in every necessary field, this would take more than 10 minutes to do, and given BioShock's extremely limited mod capability I doubt this is even possible without source code.
So we have 1) making the Big Daddies die with one shot or 2) turning the Big Daddies into Giant Mutant Squirrels that act and react exactly the same as Big Daddies, changing no gameplay whatsoever.
Which one takes more time/work? Which one actually effects the gameplay experience for any given player?
When you answer those questions you'll realize why actual game design requires only a tiny fraction of the capital necessary to actually make a game, and why TTLG isn't asking too much when we beg for the deeper gameplay of games like Deus Ex and SS2. The reason why we don't see games like that anymore is because developers who claim that they want to appeal to multiple audiences are lying: they want fanboi's who have no standards and buy games based on mass media and groupthink. In every other entertainment medium (music, movies, television, etc.) competition produces a race to the bottom where everyone has to appeal to the lowest common denominator and ignore the subtle, nuanced, and intelligent. Video games are no different.
Chade on 13/10/2008 at 19:32
Some gameplay changes are trivially easy. I guess what we are arguing about, is whether those changes are generally enough to take a mainstream game and target it towards the hardcore as well.
What I'm saying is that with Bioshock, you would need to change major parts of the way the game works. Level design (this is a massive part of gameplay), AI, etc ...
I don't think the easy changes are enough.
EDIT: actually, after further thought, this is quite a good of example of stuff I was saying in my earlier posts too. So let's say you nerfed the big daddy. Great. Simple change, right? Except that the big daddy is made to look big and strong and huge through it's art assets, in-game scripted sequences, and it's role as protector of the most precious resource in the game. A game with a huge strong hulk of a protector who died in one hit would suck.
So no, it's actually not an easy change. Not if you wanted to do it right. Because the game elements are all interconnected, and if you nerfed the big daddy, then you really should change it's art assets, change the in-game scripted sequences, change it's role in the gameplay, etc etc, to match the rest of the game.
Aja on 13/10/2008 at 20:50
Quote Posted by Silkworm
they want fanboi's who have no standards and buy games based on mass media and groupthink. In every other entertainment medium (music, movies, television, etc.) competition produces a race to the bottom where everyone has to appeal to the lowest common denominator and ignore the subtle, nuanced, and intelligent.
Bioshock IS subtle, nuanced, and intelligent, but in different ways than SS2. In terms of narrative, Bioshock is heads above its spiritual predecessor. Graphically, artistically, it is first-rate. The gameplay is simpler, but that hardly equals a bow to the lowest common denominator. I stumbled upon a rather (
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=37963&highlight=andrew+Ryan) in-depth discussion of the game's themes and major plot points, and it made me realize System Shock 2's plot and characterizations are not deep enough to support this sort of analysis. Bioshock's not exactly literature, but it comes closer than most games I've played, and certainly more than any FPS. So to call it dumbed-down is short-sighted. There's more to intelligent gaming than inventory management.
Zygoptera on 13/10/2008 at 21:37
Bioshock's plot is about as close to exactly the same as SS2's as you can get. It's even closer than {insert comparison of any 2 BioWare games post BG2}. The only difference is instead of a not all that subtle but it really doesn't matter depiction of Communism (the many) it has a not too subtle but it really doesn't matter depiction of Randism. The story is told in exactly the same way, too.
I also bet that actual game designers would be all a :picard: about people spouting off about how easy it is to alter game systems as if the basis of that is as simple as changing a few parameters around. It ain't that simple.
Aja on 13/10/2008 at 21:54
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
Bioshock's plot is about as close to exactly the same as SS2's as you can get.
Andrew Ryan's character is far more nuanced than any in SS2, and the idea of meta-narrative adds a complexity unheard of in any "blockbuster" game. The plot might follow the same template, but the emotional impact is quite different, particularly at that the climaxes.
Ryan's scene is devastating on a number of levels -- not so much for its surprise, but for its implications to the story and to the actual player, while SHODAN's reveal is intense but ultimately shallow and predictable. Polito was always an asshole, was there ever doubt? rachel on 13/10/2008 at 22:14
I'd like to kindly ask everyone not to mention anything in clear text about BioShock beyond title and superficial comparisons for those who have yet to play the game.
If you have to, put it in spoiler tags please.
Thanks. :)
Zygoptera on 13/10/2008 at 22:40
It's seriously off topic for here too. I might continue the discussion later, but in the right forum.
And apologies if anything I said was too specific.
rachel on 13/10/2008 at 22:57
Thanks guy :) I wouldn't say it's totally off-topic in this specific thread, as I understand it might be relevant to have it as reference as far as gameplay and plot development are concerned.
