Eric Carl

BioShock – I Can Has Best of Both Worlds?

For those of you wondering how BioShock will straddle PC and console interfaces when similar past games have famously failed to do so, Levine offers a novel but simple solution: Two separate teams of designers are working on the controls and interfaces for each version.

Via GameSpot’s hands-on with BioShock. I honestly felt this was blog-worthy because I can’t believe it took this long for a developer to realize this sort of treatment was necessary for cross-platform games. I am so pumped. I’m also thrilled to hear the audio-log style of narration will return in a similar manner as it existed in System Shock 2. The more I hear about this game, the more pumped I am getting! I think it’s about time for a new video card.

Difficult Questions About Videogames

In reference to the question, “What is gameplay?”

“There is no such thing as innovative gameplay, but there is such a thing as gameplay innovatively implemented. What gameplay does is to provide a competent stage for the aesthetic part of the game to shine through, nothing more. In this regard, it holds much the same functional relationship as plot to story.” – Tadhg Kelly

“A successful gameplay system should be transparent to the player, utterly intuitive in every way.” – Jon Harttrup

“Bad gameplay is meaningless choice, good gameplay is meaningful choice.” – Ryan Kelln

“The biggest fulfilments in playing games comes from bursts of creative thought, challenges that require new strategies, and successfuly taking ludicrously slim possiblities.” – David Hayward

From Difficult Questions About Videogames. I managed to snag a free copy of this book almost a year ago, and am digging back into it after discovering it in a pile of moving boxes (is it still easily available? I can’t seem to find any recent information on it). Highly recommended reading for creative nerds. For some reason Amazon.com has a used copy for the paltry sum of $93.08.

Also, writing this post up has introduced me to Tadhg Kelly’s blog, which is so far pretty interesting and worth checking out.