BioShock shouldn't have worked

[Shrygue]

via Eurogamer


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.

[iniquitous_beast]

This guy is full of himself. Bioshock's success was not a matter of luck. Aside from being a quality game, it was extremely well marketed both online and offline. The developers were consistently updating the game press about their progress to ensure the hype wave continued to build up right to Bioshock's launch day.

On the contrary, this is the first mention that I have heard about "Damnation". It worries me when a game developer seems to be making excuses for why some games don't succeed, while he is only months away from releasing a game of his own. It comes off as defensive.