A new BioShock game is in development. While that's not official yet, we've known as much for quite some time thanks to Kotaku's Jason Schreier, who mentioned last year how the new 2K Novato studio (neighbors of Hangar 13, the makers of Mafia III) was working on a new installment in the story-driven first-person shooter franchise.
As it turns out, this BioShock title could be structured very differently from the previous entries. 2K Novato is seeking an 'End Game Design Lead' developer, suggesting that the game could be following the live service formula seen in so many other games recently.
The job listing actually contains a fair amount of information. Apparently, the goal is to provide a 'post-narrative set of systems, quests and player progression', evidently to keep users engaged for far longer than they would otherwise be if the game was structured as previous BioShock titles.
What We Need:
Our formula for success is Fantastic World + Incredible Story = Fanatical Fans.
In the game we’re making, the story itself will come to a conclusion. The world, by contrast, is something we are designing to be alive and engaging past the main narrative arc. To leverage this, we want to build a post-narrative set of systems, quests and player progression that gives our fanatic fangirls and fanboys more content to experience on an ongoing, live-services basis. We need a senior game designer with strong ideas and communication skills who can own the endgame design for this title. What cool tasks are our players digging into as they keep playing? What short, medium and long-term goals are they focused on? What kind of player skill progression and loot are keeping people attached to gameplay? We need someone to start answering these questions.
BioShock 2 actually featured a separate multiplayer mode, as some readers will recall, though what's being described here sounds different. Hopefully, we'll get some official information before too long straight from 2K, with Take-Two Strauss Zelnick boasting the 'strongest development pipeline' in the history of the publisher just yesterday.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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