The Escapist recently published a hilarious video review of Bioshock, shining some light on the flaws of this mucho-hyped game. Would you kindly take a look at it, it’s worth it.
Bioshock is the best game I’ve played in a long time, but it’s also quite a bit over-hyped. No game is perfect and this video points out the game’s few problems. In fact, Bioshock isn’t leaps and bounds over other games, it’s just a bit better – other games have had good stories and emergent gameplay – but that bit counts for a lot.
Let’s say you want to buy a game and you have the choice between game A and game B. According to internet buzz, game A is pretty good, but game B is a bit better. Which game will you buy? Barring any other factor, you’re going to buy game B – why buy the inferior alternative, even if it’s still pretty good? If you were to buy both, which game would you talk most about? Game B, of course – why recommend the inferior game?
You’re not the only one making those decisions, millions of players do. If millions of players decide to play game B instead of game A, and recommend game B over game A – even if they’re almost, but not quite, of the same level of quality – that’s a huge difference in popularity and sales number.
That’s what’s happening to Bioshock: a small increase in quality has an exponential effect on sales and buzz. Making a game 10% better does much more than increasing sales by 10%. That’s why “good enough” isn’t good enough – settling for mediocrity has a huge impact on a game’s popularity. And who wouldn’t prefer working on games everybody’s talking about?