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Bioshock 4 Reportedly Facing Troubled Development, According to Leaker

Bioshock Promo Image



The development process of the upcoming Bioshock game appears to be fraught with difficulties, according to a series of tweets posted by the Twitter account, Oops Leaks. It must be noted, however, that these claims are yet to be verified, so they should be considered speculative until confirmed by official sources.

Oops Leaks, known for sharing information about the gaming industry, has expressed concern over the state of the new Bioshock game. The leaker reported that the game has gone through a series of complications, including frequent changes in development teams, multiple reboots, and numerous rewrites. According to the tweets, despite these efforts to revamp the game, the development process remains disorganized, leading to what the leaker terms as ‘development hell’.




Notably, the account pointed out the game’s unusual staff makeup, with a large number of employees apparently lacking the requisite experience for such an ambitious project. This situation, coupled with a high turnover of contract workers, has reportedly resulted in work being redone by less qualified specialists.

Additionally, Oops Leaks indicated that the narrative team has struggled significantly, unable to produce a script that meets the expectations of the acclaimed Bioshock franchise. This challenge has reportedly prompted a critical reboot.

The leaker also provided a timeline, noting that the project has been rebooted four times since the involvement of game developer Certain Affinity until the present day under Cloud Chamber. The most recent reboot occurred in the summer of 2022.

Despite these reported obstacles, signs suggest some progress in development. The Cloud Chamber trademark was re-applied in March, and during a recent T2 investor call, plans were reiterated to release the game in fiscal 2025. Job listings for the project also reportedly remain high.

However, Oops Leaks asserted that if the game is not announced this summer, it could be indicative of deeper development issues, which may jeopardize its intended 2025 release. The account attributed these problems to poor management, uncertainty about financial success, questionable staffing decisions, and the ongoing global pandemic.


 

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
I didn't even know Bioshock 4 was even announced.

Same. Didin't even Bioshock 4 was a thing. The closest thing I heard was Ken Levine's game.
Yeah it was talked about for quite some time now. Supposedly the game has two cities. One is above ground and the other one is underneath the first city but upside down. At least that's what they mentioned but that could be changed with all this trouble I'm hearing about.

I have a feeling this game is just going to get canned.
 
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HL3.exe

Banned
The classic Immersive Sim Curse strikes again.

Very complex simulations that just don't work, or realizing that it's just not fun when combining all these systems. Trimming them down makes it blend. Or technical issues due to experimental concepts. Etc. Most if these don't even release at all, or get cut down and closer by new producer lead, nerfing the ambition (like what happened with Bioshock Infinite)
 

MagnesD3

Member
Just don't make it, Bioshock 1 is the only one in the series that's a masterpiece. Bioshock infinite was good but lacking and 2 was only somewhat good but it just isn't the type of game that is easy to make extremely good. Just let the IP go I've had my fill of dissapointing follow-ups.
 
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GymWolf

Member
The classic Immersive Sim Curse strikes again.

Very complex simulations that just don't work, or realizing that it's just not fun when combining all these systems. Trimming them down makes it blend. Or technical issues due to experimental concepts. Etc. Most if these don't even release at all, or get cut down and closer by new producer lead, nerfing the ambition (like what happened with Bioshock Infinite)
The bioshocks are hardly pure immersive sims tho.
 

geary

Member
We arrived at a moment when the are rumors of dev hell for unannounced games....I bet in the near future we will found about problems at developers studios not created yet
 
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Brock2621

Member
Judas is the next Bioshock game I'm looking forward to
Judas is the next Bioshock game I'm looking forward to
This.

It’s really hard to chameleon your way into success on the shoulders of such unique narrative giants like Ken Levine. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but they would be more likely to succeed in a product if they chose a different narrative thread.

Ken is known for being obsessively meticulous and iterative on everything from story to design, with a very unique lens through which he writes.

I just don’t see this project becoming successful unless their goal is to unite the entire gaming community in acknowledging the fact that this will live in the shadow of the first two. Just my humble one cent…
 
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HL3.exe

Banned
The bioshocks are hardly pure immersive sims tho.
True, because they started as something like I mentioned in my previous post: If you read the old design doc from the 1st one, it was supposed to be more a immersive Sim, with reactive narrative depending on your playstyle, a more persistent ecology that incentivizes creative problem solving.

In the end it turned out te be more difficult to make it work and time and money ran out, so what remains is the big daddy little sister ecosystem which is rather shallow. These games are universally tricky to tackle.
 
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If Levine and Fergusson (he's currently on the Diablo IV team) ar not involved with this, this better not come out at all, as opposed to launching a cut/mellowed down broken tier garbage.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
I don’t know how much of that I believe. The company that owns BioShock, 2K Games, is huge. Couldn’t they find the right people? You would imagine that if the publisher/investors knew this was happening that they’d step in and tell them to stop wasting their time/money. That’s what these CEO’s at game companies do right, find the right talent.
 

kyussman

Member
Didn't we have Bioshock 4 in space,it was called Prey.....I doubt this game could ever maatch the quality of that anyway.
 

SHA

Member
Could they just stop being in denial state, cause it's expensive and there's no such thing as outsmarting or outrighting in business, there's only one true answer for every problem, I see no problem on bringing back the original team just like 343, let the news talk about xyz devs resigned from their positions,no one cares, we know they come when they need them.
 
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