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Bioshock Creative Director talks about problems with PC version

by Steven Williamson on 28 August 2007, 09:47

Tags: Bioshock, Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ:TTWO), PC, Xbox 360, FPS

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Bioshock may well have received full review marks across the board in terms of gameplay, but a number of gamers last week suffered issues due to activation problems currently plaguing the PC version. 2K Games responded with the following statement:

We will be raising the maximum amount of computers a user can have BioShock installed on simultaneously from 2 to 5, and allowing a user to reinstall BioShock on each of those computers from 3 times to 5 times. Also, we have in the works a revoke tool which you will be able to run on your machine if you want to free up that key and move it to to another computer (this works very much like Steam or iTunes system). We are also working with SecuROM and 2K customer service, so that when you do need to call in support problems, you get answers to your questions faster, without much waiting or being bounced around. SecuROM has been given much more autonomy to help fix your problems quickly and effectively. I am personally sorry for anyone who got bounced around in the past couple days (I even think I contributed to this problem) and we're going to make sure that does not happen in the future.

In an interview with Joystiq, Bioshock's Creative Director Ken Levine has also aired his views on the launch problems surrounding the first person shooter and talks about widescreen issues, copy protection and Unreal Engine 3.

On the recent widescreen issue that is being debated, Levine says that the team are working on a patch:

We started the game widescreen. We primarily designed it for widescreen. Then we had to ask, "How do we make it full screen." Your options are to put black bars at the top and bottom, keep same width perspective. Or you allow to ... add pixels to the top and the bottom if you can afford the frame rate -- we could. So the call was made to show those few more pixels. Now this is one of those things when you're making a game -- like I was making a game -- honestly, if somebody came from the future and told me this was an issue I would have laughed at them. I would have said, "Are you kidding me?" But that's what's interesting about gamers, they're an interesting and diverse group. Now that I know that there's this huge contingent out there that actually really cares about this, I wouldn't have laughed at them because they're stupid, I would have laughed because I couldn't have imagined that people are passionate about this. And now that we know they're passionate, we have a responsibility to respond to those people and give them what they want. It's their game, they paid money for it, they should be able to play in the way they want to play. We may disagree with them aesthetically, but sure, we'll make a patch and make if work for them.

He has also said that, contrary to popular belief, the team are not working on a PS3 version of the game.

Read the full interview over at : Joystiq


HEXUS Forums :: 2 Comments

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Its' funny - there are people all over the t'internet that want to punch Ken Levine's face off but I think he's an ok guy.
noTHINGface
Its' funny - there are people all over the t'internet that want to punch Ken Levine's face off but I think he's an ok guy.
Same. I think that I'd want to punch him in the face if he hadn't admitted that 2K had made mistakes. At least he's being open and talking about making patches for the FOV issue. Having played through most of the game now though I can honestly say that the display ‘issues’ haven't really affected me at all.