At Paris GDC, we took the opportunity to sit down with Kline and delve into the programmer’s experiences with team dynamics, and sort through some apparent rumors about BioShock daddy Ken Levine.

Kline says BioShock started with a very small team. “Maybe 20 people around the project.” But by the end of development, he says, things had grown. “Including contractors and people at the publishers…you’re looking at well over a hundred people working on it.”

Kline reports that many people have asked him if things were difficult on the team, and he always responds that, fortunately, nothing changed, that everyone likes working together. “Still fight all of the time, but it’s a kind of a creative process.”

Kline estimates half the team in Boston, half in Australia. “We’re like a mosh pit or something, creatively, at least.  We don’t have offices, no one has a door. We have three big rooms. Ken’s desk is…next to a QA guy. Everyone has the opportunity to get up and tell people what they think about the product.”

If Kline were to sum it up, it would be: doubt everything you’re doing, listen to everyone’s opinion, and have intense honesty among the people you’re working with, “Because that’s the only thing that’s going to keep you together through the hard times.”

There were many changes to the game during development, but Kline thinks the reason people do stay is “because it’s all hands on deck.”

Kline says that the San Francisco office was started about six months ago, but as an occasional visitor, he isn’t familiar with their working style.  He starts to say that it’s filled with the 2K Sports group, and the centralization of publishing operations.

There is BioShock 2 development going on there, too, of course. But how many of them are original developers? “A couple people wanted to move out to the West Coast after BioShock, maybe three or four. A couple of our mid-level guys. So they went out there, now they’re working there.”

Next: On Levine