BioShock shouldn't have worked

By Robert Purchese Published 8 July, 2008

"No frigging way," says Damnation dev.

Damnation developer Blue Omega reckons there was "no frigging way" BioShock should have ended up being successful.

Game designer Jason Minkoff was comparing it to Damnation to illustrate that all you can do in the shooter genre is pour your heart into a project and hope it gets noticed.

"We're just making the best we can, because a good game is a good game. And if you make a good game, somebody is going to notice and somebody is going to play it," Jason Minkoff told Eurogamer on our trip to see Damnation.

"Take BioShock: no frigging way that thing should have actually worked out. Fantastic game, awesome design, and beautiful artwork, but the thing is a damn underwater Steampunk 1930s combo thing. How should that ever have done well?

"But it's a damn good game. They just put their hearts into it and happened to hit the mark. And that's what we're trying to do."

Minkoff went on to talk about the lottery of launching and finding you're maybe not in fashion that season, or launching and hitting it "right on the nose" and winding up as successful someone like Valve.

Whatever the result, Minkoff firmly believes a good game will not go unnoticed by a publisher and hey presto you get your next project commissioned.

Damnation is due out on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 this winter.

Head over to our hands-on with Damnation to find out much the shooter described as Gears of War meets Prince of Persia with a splash of Quake 3.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (62) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • Tzetrik #1 4 years ago

    Sheesh. Why is this news?

    And yes it was bound to "work". They had the momentum and fans from System Shock, not to mention a lot of marketing money from Microsoft.

  • Skywise #2 4 years ago

    "Whatever the result, Minkoff firmly believes a good game will not go unnoticed by a publisher and hey presto you get your next project commissioned."

    Best don't tell this to the Sega Rally Revo team :((

  • ZuluHero #3 4 years ago

    at least he pulled it back. Sometimes EG are the most misleading :p

  • That_Happy_Cat #4 4 years ago

    Clearly great PR... pats back

  • penhalion #5 4 years ago

    @Tzetrik

    +1

    exactly. Having played system shock 1 and 2 (still in my opinion not bettered by any sci-fi themed games yet). I would have bought a carton of milk if it had been pulled from the cow by the same author. Just on the off chance it contained a usb stick with his latest game on it.

  • ZuluHero #6 4 years ago

    although im now alittle bit appauled by this. Im sure most Devs 'pour their hearts' into their latest game, by this logic, surely everyone should reap the rewards for their hard work?

  • Schiraman #7 4 years ago

    Honestly what a pile of crap. Bioshock isn't some kind of oddball indie success story, it was a mainstream game with a huge development and marketing budget. The fact that it was pretty good helped it to succeed well, but it would have had to be pretty bad not to sell well with the massive backing it had from Microsoft.

    So basically this is just a way for some no-name dev to hype their own game. Thanks for that EG.

  • anomagnus #8 4 years ago

    never found it that good to being with
    enjoyable enough, but never replayed it

  • cyber_nicco #9 4 years ago

    ^^ SPOILER ALERT ^^

  • timberwolf #10 4 years ago

    bioshock shouldn't have worked because it was a fundamentally shallow and short experience. It succeeded because of hype, good reveiws, clever advertising and people for some reason thinking it was cleverer and deeper than it was. i played bioshock for 20 hours finished it, got bored. damnation wil be much the same... without the success part.

  • Physically_Insane #11 4 years ago

    +1 @ timberwolf

  • Vice.Destroyer #12 4 years ago

    -2 @ Timberwolf and Physically_insane.
    :)
    Different games mean different things to different people. Personally speaking, I thought that Bioshock was THE highlight of my gaming year in 2007. I had more fun with that game than Halo 3 or COD4. Or any other shooter that I played that year.

  • Anthony_UK #13 4 years ago

    +2 @ Timberwolf & Pysically_insane

    Bioshock is good, the graphics and design were great, and it was fun just to wander around at times and explore, but what alot of people failed to miss is that under all that was a basic shooter with slight RPG elements, and when it came down the actual combat it really was average at best......

    /Hides

  • Nithron #14 4 years ago

    I think Bioshock would have been improved 200% if only they added a "music off" option in the menu. Jesus christ, some of that music was like audio cancer. How many times in one play session did you really have to hear that awful jingle and some guy shouting WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS OF VALUUUUUUUUE!?

    Answer: None. It was horrible. They probably use it as a torture device in Gitmo.

  • Eagle5 #15 4 years ago

    Valve have made 2 of the best fps games in history. Their success wasn't the flavour of the month, it came from creating truly fantastic games.

    Bioshock is amazing aswell. Make a good enough game, you WILL get success. Even if only in the long term.

  • Grim... #16 4 years ago

    "Valve have made 2 of the best fps games in history. Their success wasn't the flavour of the month, it came from creating truly fantastic games. "

    Counter Strike and, er... Portal?

    Please tell me you're not counting that over-long tech-demo they did.

  • dsmx #17 4 years ago

    Bioshock is a good game but is a lot shallower and shorter than it could or should of been, which is odd considering the game is set at the bottom of the ocean.

  • paketep #18 4 years ago

    I agree. With that DRM scheme, Bioshock should have crashed and burned.

    BTW, the Damnation guys should be careful. There's a line between sexy dressed and totally ridiculous when skinning your female avatars.

  • SimonM7 #19 4 years ago

    I think it goes more like.. without the 1930s steampunk motif and the underwater setting it WOULDN'T have worked. Without those things it's basically just a rediculously depth-stripped System Shock rerun.

    If anything it goes to show just how important it is to mix things up and not have every game set in space base X or real world location Y.

  • dsmx #20 4 years ago

    Also it's strange that they could of done so much more with bioshock but they chose to make what ended up as a corridor shooter with slight larger corridors every now and then. That's not to say it was bad just that your left with a feeling that it could of been so much better.
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 18:08

  • Krelle #21 4 years ago

    Bioshock must be the most overrated game of last year. I dont think the people who claim to like it realize theyve just been fooled.

    Dont get me wrong, its a good/polished game. You can do worse as a developer, no doubt!
    But..I was SO PUMPED for this game, due to reviews/hype/SystemShock2/etc, and I thought it was amazing for about an hour or two, but then..maybe I just saw past the layer of hype. It did nothing for me after that.

  • nick_f Verified Senior Producer, Microsoft #22 4 years ago

    I think a lot of Bioshock's success was down to timing... it came during a long, dull summer and ended a drought of decent games.

    At the same time, it came out before the hype machines for COD4, Halo 3 and all the other mega-games of last Christmas had really geared up.

    Obviously it was a good game and it wouldn't have succeeded otherwise, but I really think the timing (and the demo) had a lot to do with the game's success. I imagine at least 50% of the 360 sales came from people who played the demo and thought "finally, a 360 game worth getting!"

  • Ryze #23 4 years ago

    I'm sure that System Shock helped.

    I was reading about Bioshock over 2 years ago in GamesTM. That helped, as I bought a 360 copy even though I don't 'do' console FPS.

  • Krelle #24 4 years ago

    lolz, anyon else with Grim on the HL-hate-train?

    Imo(omg), HL/HL2 are the peaks of PC-gaming. (Add some Blizzard/BlackIsle to the mix for lulz aswell)

  • Harmonica #25 4 years ago

    ...at least half of BioShock was good enough (the first half). Then it sort of repeated itself over again without changing any of the mechanics. Can't say I will ever bother to fully complete it.

    I hope Damnantion is any good. We really don't need another shitty cowboy game (I love the Western genre).
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 18:50

  • bigshot316 #26 4 years ago

    This gimp should f**k off and refrain from passing judgement on successful game design studios and come back when hes got a success on his own hands....tosser

  • SleepyMagpie #27 4 years ago

    People here write about "seeing past Bioshock's hype", and then realizing it was shit.

    Well, to me, those of you who feel that way didn't get it, much less saw past anything at all.

    Bioshock was a grand gaming achievement because it transported you to this underwater steampunk dystopia. It was all about ambience.

    There are much tighter shooters than Bioshock. There are games that do upgrades much better. But for sheer audacity of vision in a GAME; the Ayn Rand connection, portrayal of a madman leading a society into a drowned ruin, what people will do to themselves genetically to progress or keep "clean" - All of this was great stuff, albeit handled a bit lightweight at times, but this IS a game, not a movie or a book, and given that it managed to place you relatively believably inside this vision, that is some achievement.

    If you don't get this, you're not seeing past anything, your just not getting it.

    And people, remember - Jon Stewart has said it's ok to be an intellectual and well read again.

    Maybe however, you want your games a bit less pretentious and a bit more Mario. That's cool too.

    As for the Damnation dev - he should learn to crawl before he tries on Ken Levine's shoes.

  • Krelle #28 4 years ago

    I think you should fuck off, bigshotxxx

  • Krelle #29 4 years ago

    Magpie:
    "It was all about ambience."
    The ambience was the exact thing that kept me hooked for 2 hours, but then just..died out. Alot of it had to fo with the anticlimax of fighting your first BigDaddy I think. Suddenly they were not so frightening anymore. Same thing with the kids/story/soundclips/setting.
    The further I got, more and more of the mystery/ambience was lost and with it my interest.

    So, did I really not "get it"?

  • dudefella #30 4 years ago

    Ugh some of you need reading comprehension class. This guy was in no way ragging on Bioshock, at all.

    EG - quit it with sensationalist headline bullshit. Fucking obnoxious. Do your writers get paid on amount of hits, like Kotaku, or something?

  • systems #31 4 years ago

    I bought it because every reviewer was whoring out 10/10 scores and it was made to be an underwater System Shock 2 sort of game. I kept playing it to the end waiting for the bit where it improved on SS2. It didn't in any way at all and could be played as a run&gun shooter. Apart from an early scene where water rushes in you can effectively forget that the game was underwater as it made no difference at all.

    I did like the intro part though, with the plane crash and finding the lighthouse. Then the door slamming behind you and the lights flickering on. Lovely. Then it became a game of superhero clown attack.

    Flogged it and made my money back. 8/10.

  • ChthonicEcho #32 4 years ago

    +3 @ Timberwolf & Pysically_insane
    Pretty much my thoughts.

  • DUFFKING #33 4 years ago

    /hands bigshot idiot of the week award

    Shit, it's only tuesday.

  • stoopidgreg #34 4 years ago

    i dont see why he sees the underwater steampunk art deco environment wouldn't sound appealing. personally i just thought it was a spark of genius and wondered why no one else had thought of it.

  • SleepyMagpie #35 4 years ago

    I see a lot of the people not liking Bioshock handing out "+1" and "+3" and "8/10", and so forth and so on.

    That figures.

  • Lin #36 4 years ago

    Was a time when you put out a shooter, it got 90+ ratings, and you knew it would be a big (relative success)

    I think it's more about marketing now then it ever was. Not necesarrily in the traditional sense, more word of mouth. There seems to be a certain level of popularity which games can achieve now, at which point "everyone is talking about it" and the number of players goes up exponentially. Look at WoW. It's a good MMO, with a few solid little innovations. But it's not ten times as good as the MMOs that only have a tenth of the number of players.

    The same thing was true of the record industry. In the sixties you put together a skiffle group with good looking members, wrote some catchy songs and success was assured. Nowadays there are plenty of bands that don't make if, for often completely arbitrary reasons. Same thing goes for films and other media.

    It's not enough to check the boxes anymore. It's much more of a gamble now.

  • Chalee #37 4 years ago

    Wait a sec...

    Hasn't it already been scientifically proven that bioshock is the best game of all time? What are all these liars doing over here?

  • Vice.Destroyer #38 4 years ago

    Don't worry, Magpie. It looks like when the sequel arrives, it will just be me and the non-EG reading crowd that will be first in line.

  • Vice.Destroyer #39 4 years ago

    @Nithron

    I don't remember whether there was an option to turn the sound effects off, but there is a cool little trick to turning off the music in games which don't have the option. Play a song from your HDD and then press the pause button on the mysic player. I realised that by accident playing GTA.

  • Bongo #40 4 years ago

    And this is precisely why when a developer is interviewed, they're usually careful not to express anything close to a personal opinion.
    What a tabloid headline.

    I work for a publisher / developer, and am interviewed a lot. We are really careful what to say for fear of some ridiculous quoting, or headline, that isn't actually what you said.
    EG. You're (usually) better than this.

  • EmiliasHorse #41 4 years ago

    Bioshock was the best game of 2007; it easily justified every single line of gushing praise heaped apon it by the world press and gamers alike. If Damnation wants to enjoy the same level of success make sure it is brilliant.

  • Pulsar_t #42 4 years ago

    Pfft as others already said Bioshock is overrated and I'm glad we're no longer the vocal minority in this debate.

    As for the news item itself wasn't this posted on MegaGames a few weeks ago? This guy keeps repeating himself.

  • Chufty #43 4 years ago

    Is Eurogamer becoming a red-top? Taking a few off-the-cuff words out of an interview and calling it a headline?

    Shame on you.

  • kangarootoo #44 4 years ago

    I was going to write something on this thread to try continue what I thought might be an decent discussion, based on the article at hand, but I see all is lost to the mire of fanboy Bioshock love/hate.

    Ah well. Charge it to the internet I guess.

  • kangarootoo #45 4 years ago

    "Pfft as others already said Bioshock is overrated and I'm glad we're no longer the vocal minority in this debate "

    Of course you are still in the vocal minority. Until the vocal anything outnumbers actual sales, you are in the minority. Seriously, the vocal minority does not increase their number just because they shout louder or for longer.

    On a more serious note though, everything that is written on this website is in the vocal minority when it comes to gamers at large. Welcome to the internet :)

  • timberwolf #46 4 years ago

    i tend to rely on pure game mechanics when rating a game because at the moment every game has groundbreaking and totally unique plastered all over it. in the name of selling a gimic usually.

  • Bulbatron #47 4 years ago

    Personally, I really enjoyed BioShock. What the hell does 'steampunk' actually mean anyway?

  • Nithron #48 4 years ago

    @Vice.Destroyer:
    If someone had told me that when i was playing it through first time, that would have solved a hell of a lot of annoyance.

    And yeah, for anyone who cares, I fall into the "bioshock is good but massively overrated" category. Everything was great, except the shooting. That was quite frankly pants and not very fun.

  • Lurks #49 4 years ago

    That is a disappointing headline, I'd hoped for better from EG.

    On Bioshock, this feels cathartically like an AA meet. OMG I'm not alone in being disappointed with Bioshock once the 'wow' wore off. They seem to be pretty up front with the dumbing down they did to get it to be a mass market hit on consoles. Hopefully having hooked people in they can put some fat back with the sequel. We can live in hope, right?

  • Krelle #50 4 years ago

    tbh, the real news here is how shitty EG has gotten lately.

  • muscleblade #51 4 years ago

    I personally liked the atmosphere in Bioshock. The gameplay i didnt like as much. It also should have had a tradional checkpoint system instead of the vita chambers. I didnt care if i died or not and that take away much of the fun. And the non Vita chambers option is just ridicilous because theres still no checkpoints. Making you go to save/load hell.

  • space_ace #52 4 years ago

    most genius works "shouldn't have worked" - great movies etc.

  • Hamflank #53 4 years ago

    "...but the thing is a damn underwater Steampunk 1930s combo thing."

    Yes, because all gamers care about is underdressed female heroes with gigantic boobs, that can (but won't) nip slip at anytime during gameplay.

  • Chufty #54 4 years ago

    tbh, the real news here is how shitty EG has gotten lately.

    +1

    Real news plz thanks

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #55 4 years ago

    There's a line between sexy dressed and totally ridiculous when skinning your female avatars

    (looks at screenshots) Jaysus! I thought Soul Calibur 4 was pushing it. Is this guy just trying to say "Bioshock shouldn't have worked because it wasn't full of nearly-naked titties?".

    Bioshock worked because it was hailed as the second coming by the entire gaming press, and lavished with sumptuous previews for an entire year. The fact that they had a lot of beautiful ingame artwork in a fairly original style helped that considerably. Big daddies are a masterpiece of production design.

    That's pretty much the same reason Assasin's Creed was a success. The difference being that Bioshock was helped along on a wave of glowing reviews, rather than stifled a bit (but not that much) by stinging ones.


  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #56 4 years ago

    "What the hell does 'steampunk' actually mean anyway? "

    Steampunk is a sub-genre of Science Fiction where the information age (i.e. computers) have been invented in the age of steam, the 19th century. Generally, they start with the premise that Charles Babbage's analytical engine was built and successful, and spawned generations of steam-driven mechanical computers. It's a play on the term 'cyberpunk', and was pioneered by the liked of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's novel "The Difference Engine".

    Bioshock is NOT actually steampunk, since it's set after the second world war. But the sense it has of high-technology that has come before its time is a similar theme to 'proper' steampunk.

  • FooAtari #57 4 years ago

    I was going to write something on this thread to try continue what I thought might be an decent discussion, based on the article at hand, but I see all is lost to the mire of fanboy Bioshock love/hate.

    This.

    Why are people unable to accept others opinions? So one person thinks its the best game since ET on the 2600, great. Another thinks it's pretty average, thats great too. One one is right or wrong here.

    Anyone complaining about Bioshocks FPS mechanics is missing the point of Bioshock by a country mile.

    Hack security bots to fight for you, use plasmids to get enemies fighting each other, use the environment against the enemy, just dont bother playing the game if you want to run and gun as it's a waste of a brilliant game.

    Thing is, unlike Deus EX the game didn't really encourage it. There wasn't really any point. The RPG elements and other design features were pretty weak. To me Bioshock is a bit like Deus EX: IW. They took an awesome game and dumbed it down, wait, sorry "streamlined" it (got to keep with the PR buzzwords here), and removed what made SS2 so good.

    Personally I didn't really enjoy Bioshock at all. But I don't mind I just moved and played something else.

  • slivir #58 4 years ago

    EG's sensationalist BS is becoming really off-putting.

  • dsmx #59 4 years ago

    It's amazing how accurate Yahtzee's review of bioshock was.

  • jnewl #60 4 years ago

    "I bought it because every reviewer was whoring out 10/10 scores and it was made to be an underwater System Shock 2 sort of game."

    Who made it out to be an underwater System Shock 2? It sure wasn't Irrational. Ken Levine went to great lengths in every interview with him I ever read to emphasize that Bioshock was to be nothing more than a straight shooter (albeit, he hoped, a revolutionary one). It's the brain-dead gaming community, including many "journalists," who completely ignored what the man who was making the game said about it and now have the gall to accuse him and/or the game of somehow being deceitful or incompetent. What a bunch of idiots.

    Anyway, the game worked because it had Levine and Irrational behind it. They had the money and support, the talent, and the street cred to put out a product that people just assumed would be good. This guy in the article is not in that position. Let him build up some cred and maybe one day he, too, can get a leg up on the competition. That's just the way the business works.

    Btw, Mr. Dev, I'm about as inclined to buy a game named "Damnation" as I am to part with my family jewels. Right off, the name tells me it's an unimaginative, cookie-cutter money suck being marketed to fifteen-year-olds who think Hell cliches are teh kewl. if that's not what it is, you'd better learn your first lesson from Levine and Co. and change the name to something more interesting.

  • tuff #61 4 years ago

    Some of the english was terrible.

    Surely this is a publicity thing for their 'bit different' FPS.

  • Chalee #62 4 years ago

    The bioshock debate all boils down to what you want from games really.

    If you want atmosphere, style and cleverness you'll love it. If you want to chainsaw aliens, you play Gears instead.