BioShock is a game that I’ve had my eye on ever since it was announced. I was a fan of the games from Irrational, so the developer’s street cred alone was enough to get me excited. Sadly, I haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy of the game yet – which I suppose isn’t too painful for me since I’ve been too busy to have the adequate time to devote to it just yet.

Another challenge for me is to decide which platform to play BioShock on. I’ve played through the demos on both the Xbox 360 and PC, so I have a pretty good idea of how each will run the full game.

My PC with its Radeon X1950 is able to run the game quite well, and the option to play with a keyboard and mouse is pretty big plus. But then again, sitting on the comfy recliner to play the game on the big TV with the Xbox 360 could make for a more enjoyable experience.

Even though I do not own a copy of BioShock yet, I’ve been closely following the news of it since the release last week. Various messageboards have been filled with talk about BioShock, most of which is exceptionally positive, but there have been several issues that have a noticeable group of gamers in an uproar.

Fans of the game are already well aware of the issues I’m about to discuss, but for those of you who haven’t yet immersed yourself in what is a sure contender for game of the year, read on.

One issue that immediately caught my eye was the debate over the developer’s choice on how to implement various aspect ratios when playing the game on a widescreen or standard display. While the common expectation is that widescreen users would be privy to more information on the left and right sides of the display, the developers of BioShock instead chose to provide more vertical image for users of 4:3 displays. Another way that some gamers interpreted this is that the developers took the 4:3 image and cropped off the top and bottom parts to make the widescreen image.

The cropping point is debatable. If Lucasfilm mistakenly decided to bring Star Wars on high-definition by just taking the “full screen” version and cropping it to make the 16:9 image, then there’s definitely a reason to head to the pitchfork and torch store. On the other hand, Stanley Kubrick’s films were shot and framed with the wider theatrical aspect ratio in mind, and later open matted with additional picture on the top and bottom for the home video releases.

I’m thinking that the developers at Irrational (or 2K Boston/Australia) were thinking more along the lines of Kubrick’s method. 2K Games representative Elizabeth Tobey (who also participates in the excellent Played Podcast) explained on the official BioShock website, “Instead of cropping the FOV for 4:3 displays and making all 4:3 owners mad in doing so, we slightly extended the vertical FOV for standard def mode: we never wanted to have black bars on people’s displays. (This way, everybody is happy…) This does mean that people playing on a standard def display see slightly more vertical space, but, this does not significantly affect the game-play experience and, we felt that it best served our goal of keeping the game experience as close as possible to the original design and art vision on both types of displays.”

Despite that, the dedicated members of the Widescreen Gaming Forum weren’t satisfied at the notion of seeing less than their more traditional and square counterparts. Widescreen aficionado Racer_S created a hack for the PC version that expands the FOV, giving the keyboard and mouse crew a soother for all their moans. And guess what – both the developer and publisher of BioShock are supportive of the hack. 2K Games’ Elizabeth Tobey expressed her thanks and offered a GeForce 8800 to Racer_S.

Ken Levine of Irrational (which is now called 2K Boston) said in an interview, “It [widescreen] was the way we want it to be, but clearly not every gamer agrees with us or how the way it was implemented. Hey, they spent $50 on it, they should have the right to play the game to their atheistic pleasure, not our aesthetic pleasure... While this may make us cringe a bit to see people play at different FOV than we intended to, it's their game.” The developer is now working on an official patch for the PC version to open up more FOV options. As for patch for the Xbox 360 version, that could take a little longer.

From what I’ve played from the demo, it’s noticeable that the developers intentionally framed parts of BioShock for a specific horizontal FOV. For example, when taking the elevator down into Rapture, a slideshow of Andrew Ryan plays. The original FOV, perfectly frames the slides against the background – directing player’s full focus. With the expanded FOV hack applied, the gamer sees more peripheral information, which could take a little something away from the presentation of the slideshow.

I’m big on respecting the artists’ original intentions, which is why I’m such an evangelist of widescreen movies (or whatever the original aspect ratio is). For BioShock, however, it appears that the vertical view-deficient widescreen mode is the way the developers intended it to be.

Moving along, another issue plaguing only PC gamers of BioShock is its copy protection scheme. Rather than just using an easily crackable encrypted executable, 2K Games laced BioShock with an online-activation system that requires users to connect to the Internet before installation. Unfortunately, an authentication server went down for about six hours, leaving anxious new owners of the game denied of playing something they just paid for. Frustrating, I’d imagine.

Levine feels their pain, saying to 1UP, “It was a screw up on our part. I don't think we were ready. We didn't know the game was going to do as well as it did [and the] servers got overwhelmed. Well, we're geniuses, so we didn't have a plan in place, so that if it went down, we'd have a person quickly responding to it... So it went down 6 hours one night and that was really stupid. People had just bought the game, spent $50 and they go home and find out they can't run it. That ain't good.”

Furthermore, BioShock originally shipped with an allowance for two installations from a single copy. Apparently, this allowance was too few for some users, which 2K Games graciously responded by upping the total simultaneous installs to five. It seems like 2K Games is doing an excellent job of responding to its customers.

Alright, this blog is running a bit long. Just one more thing regarding BioShock woes and the support of the people behind the game: if your Big Daddy is broken, 2K Games will fix it all expenses paid and give you a free artbook for your troubles.

Kudos to the entire BioShock developer and publisher team – you have raised the bar not only with your game, but also for your care of your customer.