15 years of Bioshock: The chaotic creation of a classic
In 2022, fans look back on the first part of the Bioshock saga with nostalgic feelings: The dystopian underwater station Rapture is still one of the most impressive and at the same time most disturbing locations in computer and video game history. The interaction of the Little Sisters and the Big Daddys, the fanatical creator Andrew Ryan and a dense background story made for a unique scenario, albeit one that was viewed critically again and again. We look back at the making of Bioshock (buy now €17.99). Because one thing is clear: the development of the role-playing shooter was highly unusual and pushed the team behind it to its limits more than once.
The failure of System Shock 2
The story of Bioshock begins with the classic action game System Shock 2 and its developer Irrational Games. Former Looking Glass employees Ken Levine, Jonathan Chey and Robert Fermier founded the company in 1997 in Quincy, Massachusetts. In cooperation with his former employer, the still young team developed the successor to the cult science fiction shooter that had inspired the gaming world in 1994.
Electronic Arts, which owned the rights to the System Shock series at the time, acted as the publisher. However, the production of System Shock 2 was anything but smooth.
The entrance to Rapture sets a clear sign: Man or in this case Andrew Ryan is a creator, it doesn’t need gods or kings.
Source: Moby Games
The Dark Engine used, first used in Dark Project: The Master Thief (1998), presented the crew with enormous technical challenges. Even with the cooperation between Looking Glass and Irrational Games, there was always a spanner in the works. The discrepancies between the studios even caused staff to leave.
Despite all the difficulties, System Shock 2 was finally released on August 11, 1999 and became a critics’ favourite. Nevertheless, high ratings and lavish reporting did not generate any hype. System Shock 2 sold poorly and was a financial disappointment for publisher Electronic Arts.
Similar to System Shock, you wake up in a so-called vita chamber after screen death. There is no break within the story.
Source: Moby Games
This failure also destroyed trust in irrational games. System Shock 2 was to be the first and last game for the fledgling studio under the EA flag.
Good ideas, but no plan
The conception of Bioshock started in the early 2000s. Surprisingly, the idea behind it didn’t start with the setting, the story, or its characters. When asked how the creators came up with Rapture as the location for the action role-playing game, Ken Levine quipped interviewed by Rock Paper Shotgun from: “(…) I don’t start with the story. Because games are not stories. Games are gameplay.
They’re interactive.” By 2002, Irrational Games had just completed a skeleton of what would become Bioshock. More specifically, there were three AI archetypes: the drones, the protectors, and the harvesters. Drones carried the raw materials while the harvesters should steal them.
The protectors had to prevent this in turn. Anyone who knows Bioshock will see the first parallels to the Little Sisters, the Big Daddys and the Splicers.
But the trappings were in limbo for a long time and the search for a publisher was correspondingly difficult. Irrational Games needed the support of a financially strong investor. At the beginning of the cold calling, there was a hail of rejections: Electronic Arts, Codemasters and also Atari refused. It wasn’t until 2004, two years after the start of the conception phase, that a suitable partner was found in the Take Two subsidiary 2K Games.
Reference-www.pcgames.de