BioShock’s lead programmer talks about the failures behind making the hit game
He says they started off by making a sequel to System Shock, since they had most of that done already. Then decided to scrap that and focus on making AI ecology and sweet looking monster models. After putting out a demo, they realized that even though the industry liked it, the end users seemed less than thrilled. So they came up with the idea of marketing it as a shooter, which sparked the interests of the gaming masses. After a few more mistakes they ended up with a great game.
Kline said, “Some people think that constantly messing up, and pushing dates isn’t a good way to make a game, but as far as I’m concerned it’s the only way to make a good game.”
So that’s how you make a good game, I guess the guys working on Spore knew this already.