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BioShock 2 PC Draws Protest over Lack of Official Gamepad Support
by Chris Faylor, Feb 10, 2010 8:35am PSTWhile it had been previously disclosed that BioShock 2 PC would forgo any sort of official gamepad support in favor of getting "the mouse and keyboard control absolutely right," the exclusion has now drawn ire from those that bought the game unaware.
A 2K Forums thread on the matter has exploded since the underwater shooter sequel was officially released yesterday, including mentions of buyers remorse, an unofficial workaround, demands for a patch, and links to the inevitable petition.
"Not supporting the controller was not a decision that we made lightly," community manager 2K Elizabeth responded, with the company having explained:
We made quite a number of significant changes to UI / HUD for the PC version of the game. The decision was made early on not to support controllers at all in order to ensure that we got the mouse and keyboard control absolutely right. This of course required a redesign of large parts of the UI and the player HUD. For example, we removed the Weapons and Plasmid Selection Radials in favor of a custom created Weapons Selection Strip which more accurately reflects the keyboard layout.
Central to the complaints is the fact that the original BioShock PC supported gamepads in addition to mouse and keyboard, complete with a UI for either control scheme.
As one would expect, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the sequel use the console's respective controller, but can not be played with mouse and keyboard.
The release of BioShock 2 also brought with it complaints that the PC version doesn't properly support widescreen resolutions, though a fix is already on the way.
Thanks to Chris (not the one who wrote this article) for the heads up.
Comments
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 38 replies.
I don't know if I made that comment before or after coming around, but your post about your roommate had a lot to do with me realizing that it's not ubsurd to WANT the gamepad on the PC, that was just my personal bias.
I still stand by the assertion that the assumption wasn't safe and shouldn't be considered safe. I don't consider you a whiner by any means, you are right that gamers should be allowed feedback, but what I disagree with is the frothing rage coming from others on your side of the fence. There are some that are behaving as if they had promised gamepad support in every PR release. Maybe assumption isn't the right word, perhaps the word I'm looking for is expectation. People are acting as if they more than assumed it would be there, they expected it blindly.
Developers need sensible, objective feedback. Given your tone, reasoning, arguement in general, I'd say that is exactly what you are leveraging, as long as you aren't saying you are wronged as if your were promised the gamepad support, you just really really think it should have been in there. I can get behind that, thats reasonable.
You should never expect anything blindly, not just in videogames, but ANYTHING. Its a flawed thought that one should not be responsible for collecting the information required to make a good decision, in something as inconsequential as video games to something as important as bank accounts. How many people get screwed over by fees and nonsense on thier checking account just because they didn't read the 2 page contract the people TELL you to read when opening an account? Then they go to the teller and bitch at them as if they had been swindled, but all the information was given to them, so their sense of being wronged is only out of their own willful ignorance.
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