I guess I shouldn't have engaged you in your fallacy since you are quite willing to predict the future and presuppose facts to suit your opinion. You supposition that the budget can't support developers doing things right. I supposition that it can. You yourself have claimed BioShock to be a resounding success financially, so they could have spent twice the budget and still have come out ahead. That sounds like my supposition would be the correct one according to your own testimony.
It is because that nobody can predict the future that a development budget cannot assume that a game will be a resounding success. Budgeting is inherently a zero-sum game. Money spent on one thing means less to spend somewhere else. There will always be compromises, things that could have been done better given unlimited money and time. Spend money optimizing a different FOV for 4:3? Or use the same money to add another plasmid or a few more rooms to a level?
Take a 4:3 display 1600x1200 pixels high and show a game screenshot on it. Add 160 pixels to each side to give you 1920x1200. What do you do with the extra pixels?
Add information to the sides of the screenshot?
Or crop off the top and bottom of the screenshot and then expand the frame until it fills in the new area?
The 4:3 display is lower resolution than the 16:9 display, because the same FOV is spread across fewer pixels. So if you simply expand the FOV, you end up with a 16:9 image than is lower quality the game currently has. As I said, different games will use the additional resolution of a 16:9 display differently--a game where the emphasis is on shooting may choose to favor FOV at the expense of image quality. A game that really wants to achieve an immersive experience may choose to favor higher resolution at the expense of FOV.
With a 3D game doing real-time rendering, one of them keeps the detail level the same and adds information to the sides while keeping the same zoom level relative to the original frame, the other zooms in and increases detail relative to the original frame. Understand now?
The "original" frame for Bioshock is the 16:9 frame. So the options for 4:3 were to reduce the FOV and retain resolution or to retain the FOV and sacrifice resolution. The latter is also the least costly in terms of playtesting. Considering the absence of complaints from 4:3 players, it seems like it was a reasonable decision.
Refer to the previous posts regarding the FOV on this forum and 2K's boards, I don't feel like reiterating yet again.
As nobody on either board has refuted my point that the FOV chosen for Bioshock provides a perspective-correct, actual size window into the game (it can't really be refuted; it is a geometric fact, and can be verified in just about any reference on 3D graphics), I think that we can regard this as established. I accept that it may not be to everybody's personal taste, but it is a reasonable design decision, and given the game's stellar reviews and sales, it seems that this approach is working for a large number of people.
The two cannot be separated. A game like Bioshock requires a huge investment of labor from a highly skilled team of artists, writers, game designers and programmers. Those guys have to feed their families, so this kind of game costs millions of dollars to make. That means that games like Bioshock would not exist if they did not make money for their investors. And the way they make money is by being fun to play in a way that is appreciated by a large number of people.
Sure they can be separate. A great game can be a letdown financially. Refer to Psychonauts for example. Some poor games hit it big, some great games don't.
A game that is great artistically can certainly flop in the marketplace, because it appeals to too small a market segment. As I said, it must be fun to play in a way that is appreciated by a large number of people. On the other hand, if it is not fun to play, it will never be a success. I don't think any poor games hit it big. If a game that you don't like hits it big, it is probably just that for some reason you are unable to perceive the qualities that make it enjoyable to others.
Some poor games hit it big, some great games don't. Investments are risky, and there are always going to be people willing to take a bit of risk so games are in very little danger of losing their investors.
I certainly know of examples of games that never were made because their developers could not line up investors. Finding over a million dollars to invest in something as risky as a game is not easy. Games are not a small risk; it is a hit-driven industry and many games are not profitable.
Not all games even need investors, some start small and work their way up. See Crimsonland for example.
There are certainly game designs that do not require a huge investment. It is still possible for one guy to produce a 2D arcade game like Crimsonland or Geometry Wars. But 3D FPS games do not fall into this category. These are inherently big budget projects, requiring big teams. And to attract those investors, the members of the development team have to be skilled and experienced, which means that they have to be reasonably well paid.
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Now back onto the main topic.
First I want to comment on the vein that 2K made these decisions based on financial decisions.
I think that it is clear that the decision on 16:9 FOV was made for reasons of providing the best possible game experience, based on playtesting of different FOVs. 2K has stated this, and there is no rational reason to disbelieve them. It beggars the imagination to think that an experienced developer would fail to playtest something as basic as FOV in a crucial product that represents a major investment for the firm.
Since the game was developed with 16:9 as the target aspect ratio, the question for the firm was clearly how to handle narrower aspect ratios: crop of the sides (horiz-) or expand the top (vert+). So there never was a point at which "horiz+" was even considered, because the 16:9 version was developed first.
In this case, they made the decision to expand the vertical. It was clearly the most economical approach. It is clear from public statements made by 2K that they did not deliberate over the 4:3 display to the same extent as the 16:9 display, but considering the lack of any complaints from 4:3 owners, it was probably also the best choice for gameplay. It is likely that other developers of games produced initially for 16:9 have made (and will continue to make) the same decision for the same reasons. So one cannot point at other games that have made similar design choices as evidence that it is somehow the "default" of the EPIC engine, even if one were willing to make the absurd assumption that experienced 3D developers would not think to adjust the FOV to fit their own game.
You may believe that, however I hold other beliefs as do a lot of other avid gamers who have felt they have been affected on this matter, and these feelings are valid and deserve to be voiced. That belief is still that the widescreen support was implemented poorly.
Yes, I'm aware that a lot of people would like to believe otherwise, despite any real evidence. There are always people looking to cast blame.
Poor widescreen implementation decisions are not restricted to 2K and certainly not restricted to recent trends in widescreen sales. There have been VERT+ implementations years in the past way before the recent major shift in widescreen sales and the decline of 4:3. It is no surprise that developers back then also had a limited development budget however they still made VERT+ decisions even when widescreen times hadn't changed.
I have not tried to argue that there is no valid reason for vert+; I think that it was probably the best choice for Bioshock, even if it was also the most cost-effective. I have, however, pointed out that as development moves to 16:9, economic reasons join esthetic ones in favoring this approach for some games. So it hardly makes sense to point to other recent games using this approach as "evidence" that developers, abandoning years of experience working with FOVs, simply decided to accept the default of a 3D graphics engine.
That adds weight to my argument of poor implementation. HOR+ has empirically and still is a sound economic design choice in relation to many games as has been seen with the majority of developers. These developers still identify it as the better “shortcutâ€
