PODCAST 16:

BIOSHOCK PS3 RETROSPECTIVE

Elizabeth: Welcome to the BioShock Podcast Episode 16. I’m Elizabeth: Tobey, Community Manager here at 2K, and today we’re going to be giving a retrospective on BioShock for the PS3. I am joined today with two producers on the project, but I will let them introduce themselves a little bit more fully.

Alyssa: I’m Alyssa Finlay. I’m the executive producer at 2K Marin, and I was the project lead on BioShock 360 and PC.

Melissa: I’m Melissa Miller, not to be confused with Alyssa, and I am senior producer at 2K games, and I was the producer for BioShock on the 360/PC.

Elizabeth: You guys have worked on this title for a couple years now. Can you talk about what your roles have been through the entire life of BioShock, and exactly how long you have worked on this project.

Alyssa: Well, it’s about 4 years total for me (this is Alyssa). I was the project lead on the original BioShock and then carried through on to the PS3 version. So, I basically joined Irrational Boston before it was known as 2K Boston, I joined Irrational right after 2K signed the project. So I was on from when we were still in concept phase all the way through shipping the game and shipping the PS3.

Melissa: I was a late addition. I had really just finished up a bunch of titles at 2K, and they were like, “Hey, can you work on BioShock?” and I was like, “Sure!” So the next thing I know, I’m in Boston, and I’m hanging out with those guys at 2K Boston and 2K Australia, and they were super cool.

Elizabeth: What was it like being producers on the project, and how did you handle it differently from when you worked on BioShock for the 360 and PC vs. how you worked on the game now.

Alyssa: Well, the PS3 was a really different project, because whereas on the 360 and PC, we were coordinating between two different studios: Boston and Australia. For the PS3, we decided that we’d double the challenge and we had four studios working on it. So we had the 2K Marin guys, we had 2K Boston, we had 2K Australia, and Digital Extremes up in Canada all working on the project. So, there was a real different challenge just in terms of making sure everybody knew what everybody else was doing so we didn’t duplicate work or do the wrong work, or have three different people do something differently because they didn’t know they were working on it. So, I would say the challenge from a creative side was obviously much more constrained because there’s only a few new features in the PS2, but the challenge on the communications side was huge. I think we did a new job, but we had to learn some new skills to make that work really well.

Elizabeth: You guys both moved across the country last year, with the company (obviously from two different studios). How was that adjustment, and what was it like opening up a brand new studio, literally growing up while working on this project.

Alyssa: Well, Melissa, you moved first, so I’ll let you take first shot at that.

Melissa: I’m still adjusting *laughs*

Alyssa: *laughs*

Melissa: Um, no, it’s, uh, you know. I moved with 2K games when our publishing studio moved from NYC out here to Novato, and it’s been a big change. I lost my pedestrian lifestyle, that was a pretty cool thing. At the same time, the upside for coming out here is that I worked really closely with 2K Boston and 2K Australia studios, and now 2K Marin is literally down the hall. So, it’s really really cool for me to be able to work closer with these guys.

Alyssa: Not even down the hall anymore, we’ve absorbed you.

Melissa: Yes, yes. I just one day picked up my stuff and moved over into their office.

Alyssa: So, for me it was on one hand a pretty big change, but on the other hand, I lived out here before I moved to Boston, so it was coming back to something I understood. But we came, and when we started 2K Marin, we were eight people, and there was a lot of work to be done to take it from eight people to a company that could ship a PS3 game, and a company that can ship future games. We had a lot of hiring to do. We had a lot of building to do. It’s actually been terrific, we had a really great opportunity to hire a lot of fantastic people who work on, some of whom came on to work on the PS3. We have some fabulous programmers we picked up to work on the PS3 game. It also gave us the chance to work in four studios, so while we were still growing 2K Marin, we were able to collaborate with Digital Extremes, collaborate with our friends in Australia and Boston who we had already worked with. So, it was a really nice sort of soft landing to a new studio, where you start, you sorta look at the eight of us sitting there, and you go, “How are you guys going to get a game done?” but with the great support we had from those other resources, we were able to do it and do it fairly smoothly at the end of the game.

Elizabeth: Is producing an already existing game on a new platform a lot different from making a brand new title? What are, in particular, the specific challenges that are unique to that kind of situation.

Alyssa: Well, it’s really a different set of problems. The arch of the PS3 is very different than the arch on the 360, so a lot of what we had to do was figure out how to make stuff look the same on different hardware, because one of our key goals was to make it absolutely every bit as beautiful and every bit as polished as what we had done already on the previous platforms. So, it wasn’t a creative challenge of “what ought this game be?” It was much more a challenge of, “How can we take advantage of this hardware? How can we use this machine the best way possible to make a great gaming experience?”

Elizabeth: What’s it like working on the add-on content for the PS3? Is it drastically different than building the content that goes into a full game?

Melissa: It’s different in the sense that we had a lot more freedom, with the add-on content for the PS3. We were trying to think of new things for the BioShock for PS3 without altering that original experience. We didn’t want to fall into that trap of like, “Oh, we weren’t exactly happy with that so let’s go fiddle with it and see if we can make it better.” I think everybody’s extremely proud of the original BioShock experience, so when we were looking at add-on content, we wanted to find ways that would complement that original experience without altering it. So, with the Challenge Rooms, we were able to, I think, kinda hit on that complementary design, but at the same time, kinda explore some new things with it, that aren’t in the full game.

Elizabeth: Kind of piggybacking on that answer, you got to take a second look at a game and remake it for a brand new platform. Not everyone gets to do that. Did you do anything drastically different to BioShock this time around?

Melissa: No! I think the thing is that creative people sometimes fall into that, and I think that one of the great things about BioShock is that it still stands in its original experience as this really phenomenal and different gameplay experience. And so, I think messing with that or trying to alter that in any way would have been saying, “It wasn’t as good as we thought it was.”

Alyssa: Well, we did add a couple things, but what we added didn’t change the core game experience. The add-on content is one example, where it’s something that’s very outside of the game experience, but it offers you ways to play with the tools that exist in the BioShock universe in an interesting way. We added the Survivor difficulty mode, which gives you a chance to try an even more challenging level of BioShock, but it doesn’t change the story of the game. It doesn’t change what you do or what you find out in the course of the game, it just changes the way you approach those challenges. We think that’s, if you’re going to add things on, that’s the right thing for us to add on, because it adds value to the player, but it doesn’t change the core experience.

Elizabeth: What are you most proud of?

Alyssa: I think the Survivor difficulty mode. It was something we wanted to do all the way from the first game, and it was one of those things that was always just one feature down on the wish list, and I was really happy that we were able to bring that in and get that on the PS3, because, I think we’re some of the most hardcore players of our own game, and we wanted a challenge. And it’s nice to see that out there. I look forward to other people getting a chance to experience that.

Elizabeth: You guys deal with the team, the game, everything, on a daily basis. What are some of your personal favorite moments of the actual studio life?

Alyssa: I think in any studio, it’s really hard to describe, but there is just an intangible thing you get when you’re working with the same people, you’re solving problems with the same people day after day. And when you have a really good working relationship, it’s fun. Doesn’t matter what comes up: you can have hard problems come up, but it’s fun dealing with them because you’ve got people you like in there solving problems with you. So, we had…you know, the PS3 was a lot of work, and it took us, you know, it took four studios with what turned into a 24 hour day development cycle. We’d have a bug that would come up and we’d get it, and we’d think, “Oh, my gosh, this looks so complicated, we don’t know what’s going on here,” and then you’d wake up the next morning, and you’d find that it was fixed, because you’d start working on it, then Boston would start working on it first thing in the morning or Canada would start working on it first thing in the morning, and they’d pass it off to Marin, and then they’d pass it off to Australia, and you’d come out and find the bug is fixed. So those were really the best moments, because it was people working together towards a common goal and having fun doing it.

Melissa: For me, my favorite moment was when we started getting early add-on content builds, and seeing brand new spaces in Rapture was pretty cool. I think also, the moment when I actually beat the Challenge Room that’s focused on combat, because that was really hard.

Alyssa: That reminds me, a really good for the PS3 in general was when we had the very first QA guy beat Survivor Mode. And I’ll tell you, at that point, it was a lot harder than it is right now, and the game crashed frequently, so the day…he spent, I think, a couple days doing it, and was stuck on the boss fight for a really long time, and when he finally did it, it was an amazing moment, a great point for all of us to go, “This is cool. We’re going to do it and make it better. This is cool.”

Elizabeth: Let’s end talking about Survivor Mode. Have you guys both beaten it, and if so, do you have tips for the listeners?

Melissa: Oh, god no. I’ve already fully admitted I have no business being in that difficulty mode.

Alyssa: Yeah, I think that tips for the listeners – and I haven’t beaten it either, it’s harder core than I am – but I think the tips are that one, you don’t have to fight everybody you come across, and I think you have to make choices about whether you want to take on a battle or not, and what the risk/reward ratio is going to be for you. So, be cautious in the way you approach things, and use every tool in the game, because there’s a lot of tools in there that you don’t, like, some people ran through BioShock the first time and used their plasmids very little, really focused on their weapons. That’s not going to work for you in Survivor Mode. So, pulling out some of those crazy plasmids. You know, use your Target Dummy.

Melissa: Also, using Proximity Mines to make mega-bombs out of objects like barrels and especially exploding barrels, those things are uber uber powerful.

Alyssa: And trap bolts. Trap bolts are your friend. Use every weapon at your disposal. Don’t be limited in thinking about it just being about your guns, and you’ll do pretty well.

Elizabeth: I want to thank you guys for being here, and I’m sure we willl talk again the months to come.

Alyssa: Thank you.