Chris Kline, the lead designer on the game BioShock (perhaps you’ve heard of it), recently spoke in Paris at a game developers conference. During his talk he told everyone that BioShock should have been a magnificent failure but wasn’t. "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."
What failures cropped up, you ask? Everything from the original concept being a remake of System Shock 2 to missed ship dates to their initial idea that the world should interact with itself and not the player.
And what did all those failures get you? Dozens of Game of the Year awards. "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." It’s a statement I’ve been preaching for years and one that I’ve had to defend more often this generation, with seemingly every game I’m interested in getting delayed for months at a time.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I like playing good games. And I’d rather wait an extra month or two, or three to play a good game, one with polish, than a decent game that was clearly rushed out the door. So next time the game you’re really anticipating slips back a couple of months, think about how more disappointed you’d be if it hadn’t been pushed back.
[via CVG]
