Don't worry - you'll get your precious exclusive Bioshock preview in the pages of PCPP. It's just that, in order for us to get it to you, Tim has to fly to New York one day, go to a Bioshock event the next, then fly home. He will spend more time in the air than he does on the ground. Bring on the Farcasters I say.

This might not sound that crazy, until you factor in that this trip will cost about $3000 in fares and accommodation and whatnot, not to mention put extra strain on the various customs agencies of the various jurisdictions Tim must pass through. Meanwhile, I live in the same city as the Australian division of Irrational, and it would cost $3 in bus fare for me to get to any event held in their offices. Hell, I might even drive myself.

Of course PR agencies are powerful and wise and all-knowing, and to be fair there was a very decent attempt to get an Australian Bioshock event up and running. But it all came to naught - the US PR machine was just too powerful. And now Tim has to travel to probably the most inconvenient place on the planet to get his Bioshock goodness. I mean New York, man, no one flies direct to New York. New York is where you finish your exciting backpackers world tour, the city where you finally get around to buying a cream for the nasty rash you picked up in Barcelona.

Part of why this has happened has to do with the way game companies jealously guard their not particularly vital secrets. Politicians making life-and-death decisions for millions of their citizens guard their new policies with less zeal than some developers do the final vehicle lineup for their multiplayer modes.

Hell, I was once out at a pub with a guy from Microforte and he made a casual comment about how he was still working on BigWorld. I jokingly said "oh wow, so BigWorld is actually going to be released?" To which he spared me a withering glance and said, "Come now, you know I can't tell you that."

Okay, so he was hardly the project lead and if it somehow came out that he'd made me all these promises about features and release dates, he might have lost his job... or more likely been slightly reprimanded.

A lot of this "tell them nothing" attitude seems to be just de rigueur. Somebody once decided it was a bad idea to promise features or say anything about a game because then people could criticise you for not including that feature two years down the track. Look at Fable. Look at STALKER.

But do the readers of PCPP hate STALKER because it's not exactly what GDC said it would be four years ago? Not if this 100+ page thread is any indication.

STALKER is just a shadow of the game it promised to be, but because it promised so much even that shadow is still awesome. Hardcore PC gamers love STALKER. The game might not have vehicles anymore, but it's still a good game.

Consider Black & White. I know there are people who defend it to the death, but I thought it just wasn't a very good game. Not because it didn't have all the features Molyneux originally promised, but because of fundamental design elements that meant it didn't have any real focus or do the things it set out to do.

If Molyneux had delivered a really awesome and original RTS slash creature husbandry simulator, albeit one with only half the features he had promised, then we'd still have been happy. If the game had been good, we would have liked it even without a super-zoom or totally interactive environment. It's not the missing features that made Black & White disappointing. If we'd never been told about them, if the end feature set was what Molyneux had always promised, the game would still suck.

Of course, if you're disappointed with a game, and that game had promised you a bunch of stuff that never made it in, it's natural and logical to blame that missing stuff for making the game no good.

So what I'm saying is that I can see where the developers are coming from. Boast about a game too much, and the natural nerd reaction is to smash it into the ground. Look at this whole screenshot thing we've had going on for a few years now.

If a developer releases "work in progress" screens, the flamers say the game looks shit because there's no self-shadowing on the characters. If a developer photoshops some screens to represent what they believe the final build will look like, online "experts" use their 133+ Photoshop detecting skills to detect the Photoshop and then they scream "OMG PHOTOSHOP!"

PCPP has a ten-year-old policy when it comes to previews. We don't judge games in our previews. Okay, maybe we've slipped up in policing that policy here and there, but in the big dog-eared and much-postited Book of PCPP Lore it says "yea and verily shall ye not say a game suxors when you've only played a pre-Alpha build".

So why do so many people online seem to think it's okay to trash a game based on a few screens from the developer? Why, when Developer X says "I'm really sorry but we just don't have the cash to create individual AI behaviours for every insect in the mystical forest, in fact it's looking like the whole forest will have to go too" do people think it's reasonable to declare that the game will therefore suck?

A preview is a time for us to get excited about new titles. If there's preview material that looks shit, or indicates the game will not be something we think PCPP readers will want to play, well then we either ignore it or put it in Digital Curtain if it's very lucky.

After all, infamy is better than obscurity. And when we accidentally put a complete Alpha-build of Masters of Orion 3 on the PCPP coverdisc, did Quicksilver sue us? No, they decided that at least the build would get a few more people excited. Shame about the final release...