In 2006, Take-Two Interactive announced it had acquired acclaimed developer Irrational Games. Founded by Ken Levine, Jon Chey, and Robert Fermier, the company had made its name developing the PC games System Shock 2, Freedom Force, and SWAT 4. All three were former employees of the legendary Looking Glass Studios, which gave the world the beloved System Shock, Ultima Underworld, and Thief franchises.
You might be curious why a developer of such caliber would choose to sell itself to a publisher. I wish I could tell you; unfortunately, I don’t have any special insight. Every acquisition is different. That said, if I owned my own development studio, I can tell you why I would want to be acquired.
Developing games is hard. As an independent developer, even a successful one, you’re reliant on contracts and other companies for publishing, marketing, distribution, and more. It’s exhausting, and can feel like you’re always on the verge of collapse. There’s stability in being acquired. You’ll always have projects to work on and enough cash flow to cover payroll. It removes some of the pressures of being a salesperson for your company and its games, as the publisher now becomes your advocate. More importantly, you gain access to their marketing, distribution, and sales force, which in theory should lead to more success for everyone involved. There are trade-offs, of course. You might give up some creative control, along with any intellectual property and franchises you might own, but that’s not necessarily a given. Like I said, every acquisition is different. It all comes down to the contract.
Once acquired, Irrational’s latest project, BioShock, became part of 2K’s lineup. The game was a story-driven first-person shooter (FPS) set in Rapture, a city of scientific wonder founded on Objectivist ideals by industrialist character Andrew Ryan. For a video game, that wasn’t nearly enough of a hook. Rapture wasn’t just a fantastical city; it was also an impossible one, having been built at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the late 1940s. And while it would have been fun to shoot your way through a city of cultural elites who ran away to live in a private ocean paradise, it wouldn’t have been much of a challenge. Luckily, those upper-class hoity-toities had been transformed into superpowered drug addicts who killed little girls to feed their need for ADAM, an addictive, gene-altering wonder goo.
BioShock merged the intellectual elitism of Ayn Rand with the low-class entertainment of beating things to death with a wrench. It walked the line between serious and absurd, and in doing so embodied exactly what I love about video games. I couldn’t wait to work on it.
BioShock was planned as a spiritual successor to Irrational’s first and most celebrated game, System Shock 2. Set aboard a spaceship in the year 2114, System Shock 2 is a first-person shooter/survival game about a soldier who teams up with an evil computer named SHODAN to destroy the Many, an alien hive mind that threatens to consume every living thing it encounters. System Shock 2 is a celebrated game for many reasons, first and foremost being the game’s terrifying villain. It’s also beloved for its unforgiving level of difficulty. Your in-game character is physically weak, while the enemies you encounter can often kill you in just a few hits. Your weapons degrade every time you use them, until they become worthless. Even if you manage to kill all the enemies in a given area, you’re not safe; they can respawn anywhere, anytime.
To play System Shock 2 is to understand that you are a fragile, mortal being whose life could end at any moment. I’ve never played System Shock 2—and probably never will—and this is the reason why. As I see it, life is hard enough. I don’t need to be tortured in my free time. I’m sure System Shock 2 is a fantastic game, it’s just for a different type of gamer. I want the games I play to be fun; other people want games that hate them on a primal level.
With BioShock, Irrational promised to bring the dark narrative and immersive gameplay of System Shock 2 into the modern console era. This terrified the Fox. Games had changed a lot since 1999. Console games were far less difficult than the PC games of old. The Fox knew BioShock would be phenomenal, but he was afraid it would be too punishing for a mainstream audience. He wanted to keep an eye on the game, just to make sure it didn’t become insanely difficult.
“We’re going to Boston next week to meet with the team,” said the Fox. “You’re invited to come, but on one condition.” Anything. “I need you to not do that thing you do during meetings.” Thing? What thing? “You know, the look you give to whoever is speaking. The one that says, ‘You are the dumbest person I’ve ever met.’ ”
“Do I give you this look?” I asked.
“All the time.”
Oh, shit. “. . . Am I giving it to you right now?”
“No. Right now, you look scared.”
Of course I was scared. I’d just learned my face was constantly telling my boss to fuck off. “So, here’s the thing about my face—”
The Fox waved off my explanation. “It’s fine; I’m used to it. Just don’t do it to Ken.”
I wasn’t going to be part of the difficulty discussion. The only reason I tagged along was so I could meet the team and discuss the creation of promotional assets, aka screenshots.
When you think about screenshots, you probably think of fakery: pictures of a game, purported to accurately convey its look and feel, taken from impossibly dramatic angles, touched up using Photoshop—all to make you think a game looks better than it actually does. They call this a bullshot. It’s an appropriate term, but if we’re being honest, even an accurate screenshot is a lie.
Video games are kinetic. They are expressed through motion and sound, interaction and reaction. A screenshot is cold, dead, frozen. You’re taking a moment—one frame out of sixty; not even a full second—and presenting it as an accurate representation of a living, breathing interactive experience. It exists only to be seen; nothing more. And yet, when produced properly, a screenshot can embody the full spirit of the game.
A bad screenshot is a blatant lie. It shows you a game that doesn’t exist, and sells you on a promise it will never fulfill. A good screenshot is art. It lies truthfully by capturing the emotional essence of playing the game. The image won’t be something you’ll see in-game because it will utilize common techniques such as dramatic lighting and framing. But when you look at it, you will know how it feels to be locked in deadly combat with an ironclad behemoth who has a drill instead of a hand. And yes, you read that correctly. Screenshots may be promotional assets, but they are still art. It’s called photography, and it’s a medium that happens to be older and more sophisticated than ours. It doesn’t matter if the photograph is being used to sell sixty dollars’ worth of first-person shooting; there is an art to capturing a single moment capable of conveying all that is unseen, unheard, and unknown.
Ahead of our visit, I put together a screenshot portfolio for Irrational to review. My work had already been used for advertisements, retail boxes, and featured magazine articles. I wasn’t worried; my screenshots were solid.
It wasn’t long after we arrived at Irrational that I was approached by someone I’d never met. “You’re Walt, right? The screenshot guy?”
I nodded, unsure of where the conversation was going.
“Your screenshots are . . .” he searched for the words. “Well, they’re not good.”
“Oh. That’s . . . okay. Is there something specific you don’t like?”
“Everything, really. Sorry, I know that’s not helpful.” He kept turning to look down the hallway. I got the impression he was supposed to have been somewhere five minutes ago.
“No, that’s fine. Just let me know what you’re looking for, and I can do that.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to give feedback that might constrain your creativity.”
“Ken!” shouted someone from down the hall.
It dawned on me who this was.
Ken Levine poked his head down the hall and shouted back, “Yeah, on my way.” I took the opportunity to vigorously rub my face. Had I been giving him the look? I had no idea. If I had been, maybe I could massage it away and he’d forget all about it.
“Sorry.” Ken turned back to face me. “I have to go to a meeting. Just give it another shot. And whatever you did last time, don’t do that.” Then he was gone.
Left alone to ponder our brief interaction, I started thinking about Ken’s feedback. Like he said, it wasn’t very helpful. Still, his blunt, honest response clicked with me. He hadn’t found the words to articulate his criticism, but he’d left me with a clear direction—do something different.
My first round of screenshots had tried to capture BioShock’s first-person combat. That must have been my mistake. Combat was too frenetic; the particle effects caused by weapons looked unnatural in freeze-frame. For the second round, I chose to ignore gameplay entirely. I would pretend I was photographing a place instead of a game. My focus would be on framing, composition, lighting, and most of all, telling a story using a single image.
A video game is more than a challenge; it’s an experience. The presence of gameplay is not the only appeal. Our digital worlds can feel as real as the one we inhabit. If we treat them as such, players will come. If all we do is present a game, then we’re just telling players what they already know.
The next day, Ken hurried past my desk as he was being led to another meeting by Alyssa Finley, the project lead. He saw me and stopped.
“The screenshots. They’re amazing; beautiful. I don’t understand. What did you do?”
“You wanted me to do something different. I just did what you told me to.”
“No, no. I’ve never given feedback that made someone go from terrible to genius. This . . . this is something else.”
Alyssa put a hand on his shoulder. “Ken, we’re already late.”
“I know, I know.” He turned back to me. “You’re my screenshot guy. Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s great. Amazing stuff.” And then he was gone.
In a minute and a half, Ken had given me more positive reinforcement than I’d received from the Fox in two years. The Fox thrives on creating conflict. He sees it as a catalyst for creation, like the heat of a kiln, melting iron so it can be crafted into something purposeful and strong. The Fox is no fool, though. He knows fire is hot, and prefers to keep his distance. If you asked, he’d say he’s more of a lover than a fighter. Really, he just wants you to do the fighting for him. That’s why he avoids positive reinforcement. He wants you uncertain, striving.
As a management strategy, I almost buy it. Almost. As it were, all it took was a sincere “attaboy” from Ken, and I was ready to follow him to hell, snapping screenshots all the way down.
I WOKE UP EVERY morning around 7:00 a.m., when my floor began to vibrate. There was a laundromat directly beneath my apartment. The vibration caused by the washing machines would make my apartment tremble and hum well into the night. It was a small price to pay for living in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, a block away from Central Park and the D train. My room was large enough to hold a twin bed, a folding chair that doubled as a nightstand, and the plastic bin I used for a dresser. My lone window faced a brick wall five feet away. If my room ever saw sunlight, I was never around enough to know.
The Fox had told me I should be at work by 9:00 a.m. Even though my bed was only a fifteen-minute subway ride from my desk, I wouldn’t arrive until sometime after eleven. I promised to try harder. It wasn’t a lie; I meant it. I just never did it. Those extra hours in the morning were my time. Eventually, the Fox stopped bringing it up. I think it helped that, on a slow day, I wouldn’t leave work until 8:00 p.m. Normally, I would be there well after midnight, taking screenshots and editing videos. Whatever it took to get the job done.
I might enjoy taking screenshots more than I do writing. It gives me the chance to experience a game without having to hunt, survive, or kill. When I play a game at home, I’m interacting with it according to its design. Enemies fight me, and I fight back. I use the tools at my disposal to vanquish them, which in turn makes me feel clever and powerful. The problem is, not everyone shares the same power fantasy. Some of us find strength in going unnoticed, watching from the sidelines. That’s the fantasy I experienced as I searched the game for screenshots. Walking the halls of Rapture, BioShock’s underwater city, I was unseen and untouched. It allowed me to see a world most players never would.
The residents—Splicers, as they’re called—were insane. They had been normal, once—as normal as you can be, living in a city at the bottom of the ocean. When you live a fantastical life, it’s hard not to view the world through a lens of your own hubris. Egged on by their mastery of the world around them, Rapture’s citizens turned their focus to personal perfection. Genetic splicing granted them extraordinary abilities, at the cost of their minds and bodies. The Splicers looked and acted like monsters, but in truth they were sick. ADAM, the miraculous substance used to alter their genetic makeup, was highly addictive. Once these people began splicing, they couldn’t stop. The need was so strong, they would literally rip people apart on the chance their organs might contain just a drop of ADAM. Left alone, the Splicers would stroll through their crumbling metropolis, whistling to themselves, twirling a pipe or pistol as if it were anything other than a murder weapon. They roamed where they pleased, choosing to dwell where they felt most comfortable—like the sprawling gardens of Arcadia, or Fort Frolic, the city’s entertainment district—locations tied to who they once were. These poor souls, robbed of humanity, were desperately trying to recapture what they could.
I was the ghost in their midst. Using debug commands, I passed through walls and floors, flew through the air, and even became invisible. It was freedom, but it was also necessary. One glimpse of me, and the Splicers would explode into a murderous rage. Once that switch was flipped in their brains, there was no going back. No longer would I be a silent observer; instead I would become just another target.
During my daily trips to Rapture, I would snap nearly one thousand photographs. Almost all of them were worthless. Relying on the godlike power of debug commands, I would slow down time to a snail’s pace. The game would creep into frame, exactly where I needed it to be. A defensive turret in the background, a Splicer in the foreground, a burning corpse just offscreen, its flame giving the room some proper mood lighting. When everything was in place, I’d spam the screen capture button on my desktop. I grabbed every frame available to me; freezing them, so I could pore over them later, in search of that one perfect shot.
At the end of the day, I’d send fifteen to twenty screenshots to the PR department. Maybe a fourth of them would be approved.
This was my life from morning until night, five days a week, for more months than I can remember. I never ran out of things to photograph.
By the time I would finally head home, my train would have switched from local to express, meaning I had to get off at Seventy-Second and Broadway and walk seventeen more blocks to my apartment. Just outside the station was Gray’s Papaya, a twenty-four-hour restaurant known for cheap hot dogs, which are three words I find irresistible. I rolled into Gray’s every weeknight around 2:00 a.m. and bought as many dogs as I could carry. Munching happily, I’d head north, walking straight down the middle of Amsterdam Avenue. At that time of night, there was no one to bother me, no cars to run me down. Those seventeen blocks were mine. I passed through them like a ghost, unseen and untouched.
But with hot dogs.
TAKING SCREENSHOTS FORCED ME to play BioShock using every possible weapon, tactic, and Plasmid. Plasmids were like super powers. The Electro Bolt Plasmid gave players the ability to fire electricity from their hands. Sonic Boom would create a powerful gust of wind to knock back enemies. Cyclone Trap spawned a miniature tornado that would fling Splicers into the air. There were eleven Plasmids in all. Irrational thought that might be too many. Designers were reporting that they didn’t use all the Plasmids, because they just weren’t useful.
I had to agree. During my daily excursions to Rapture, I’d perfected the one-two punch—stunning a Splicer with Electro Bolt, then killing them with a quick shot to the head with my revolver. I only used other Plasmids if I needed them for a screenshot. My familiarity with the gameplay made me a valuable resource, so when Irrational called a design meeting to review the Plasmids, the Fox wanted me involved.
“I think we should cut Cyclone Trap,” said one designer. “It’s just Sonic Boom, but it throws Splicers in the air instead of shoving them backwards.”
“No way,” said another. “I use Cyclone Trap all the time. I’ll lure Splicers down a hallway, use Inferno to set a fire on the ceiling, then launch them into it with Cyclone Trap.”
A third designer leaned forward. “Really? I just use Inferno to light Splicers on fire, and then when they jump into water to put themselves out, I fry them with Electro Bolt.”
If one designer thought a Plasmid was useless, at least two others thought it was indispensable. There wasn’t a problem with the Plasmids; they had been perfectly designed to give players a choice in how they played the game. This was brilliant design.
After that meeting, the Fox had D. T. and me review BioShock for opportunities to “say yes to the player.” Saying yes to the player is a design mantra, built on the idea that every action the player takes is a question—“Do my actions affect this world?”
A lot of our feedback was focused on the question “What can I do with a dead cat?”
In the fiction of BioShock, cats were smuggled into Rapture as a means of pest control. When the game starts, the cats are all dead. Their corpses can be found lying throughout the city.
“Can I pick up a dead cat using Telekinesis and use it to kill a Splicer by throwing the dead cat at its head?”
A bit obvious, but yes. You can do that.
“Could I set a dead cat on fire and use it to light a bunch of other things on fire?”
Hah! That’s more like it. The only better torch than a dead cat is an actual torch, and we don’t have those in the game.
“Would it be possible for me to cover every inch of a dead cat with highly explosive adhesive grenades, thereby turning said kitty’s corpse into a pressure-detonated weapon of mass destruction?”
Yes, you beautiful bastard! A thousand times yes!
“If I freeze the dead cat using the Winter Blast Plasmid, will it shatter into a cloud of blinding ice dust when I throw it?”
No.
“Well, why the hell not?”
Ice doesn’t work that way in the game.
“Splicers shatter if I freeze them and then smack ’em with my wrench.”
Right, but that’s because the enemy AI has a frozen state which is triggered by the use of the Winter Blast Plasmid, allowing for the AI model to be replaced with the shattering ice particle effect when you hit it. Since the dead cat isn’t an AI, it doesn’t have a frozen state. You can hit it with Winter Blast, and it will appear to be frozen due to a temporary texture layover, but it won’t actually be frozen in the way you want it to be. Does that make sense?
“ . . .”
You still want exploding catcicles, don’t you?
“You’re goddamn right I do.”
D. T. was adamant. Every list we presented to the Fox had those cats right at the top—FROZEN CATS SHOULD SHATTER WHEN HIT.
After one week, the Fox had had enough. He demanded frozen cats be removed from any future lists. When D. T. refused, it sparked a shouting match.
“Why do you care so much about these damn cats?”
“I don’t!” said D. T. “But you told us to make a list of ways we can say yes to the player, and some players will want to shatter a dead, frozen cat!”
“Why, huh? Why should they be able to do that? What is the point?”
“The point is that we’re selling this game on the premise that players can do whatever they want!”
The Fox scoffed. “We have never said such a thing! Not once!”
“Really? Because I’m pretty damn sure we just released a bunch of T-shirts that say ‘BioShock: What Would You Do?’ across the back in big, bold letters!” He was right. We were gearing up for E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, one of our industry’s largest, most visible trade shows. We’d produced a lot of new swag for the event. That shirt was a fan favorite.
“Oh shit. We did, didn’t we?” The Fox sat down, the fight having completely left him. “We need to look into what it would take to freeze those cats.”
D. T. and I continued thinking of ways we could ask the game, “Can I do this?” We strove to answer that question in the affirmative as often as possible. We’d finish a list and send it to the Fox, and he’d forward it to Irrational. It was a thrill to see our ideas manifest in later versions of the game, but some never appeared. Sadly, shattering catcicles was an idea too pure for this world.
Where saying yes to the player got tricky was in BioShock’s moral choices. If you say players should be able to shoot out a light bulb, people might think that’s kind of cool. If you say players should be able to murder kids in order to gain superpowers, those same people will probably stare at you in horrified silence while slowly backing out of the room.
Stick with me, okay? This part’s going to get weird.
In the world of BioShock, ADAM is the chief currency of power. According to the game’s fiction, it is excreted by rare sea slugs found on the ocean floor. However, the sea slugs are incapable of producing enough ADAM to meet the demand of Rapture’s citizens. The only way to increase the slugs’ output is for them to be surgically implanted into the digestive tract of a young girl between the ages of five and eight. Unsurprisingly, not many families were willing to fork over their daughters for the purpose of slug bonding. So, the necessary girls were either kidnapped or bought from orphanages, so they could undergo unspeakable medical procedures, transforming them into brainwashed slaves known as Little Sisters.
When BioShock opens, Rapture lies in ruin. ADAM addiction has turned its population of cultural elites into murderous junkies. Little Sisters roam the halls in search of corpses. The dead still carry ADAM-rich fluids capable of being harvested; they simply need to be extracted. To this end, the Little Sisters carry an oversize syringe which they use to draw fluid from a corpse—fluid they then drink, passing it through the sea slug in their stomach. The process is effective, but it turns the Little Sisters into walking treasure chests filled with liquid gold. That’s why everyone in Rapture, including the player, is dying to get their hands on a Little Sister. With her ADAM, the player can buy Plasmids—special genetic enhancements granting fantastical power. The question is, how far is the player willing to go in the name of power and survival?
If that was too confusing, let me break it down for you. In BioShock, there are special weapons that can only be purchased with special money, which can only be found inside the bodies of special brainwashed girls (ages five to eight).
The player acquires ADAM by way of a moral choice. They can “Rescue” a Little Sister, which sets her free but awards an insignificant amount of ADAM. However, for every three Little Sisters rescued, the player receives a gift containing a very substantial amount of ADAM. The player’s other option is to “Harvest” a Little Sister and rip the ADAM-rich sea slug from her body, earning a large amount of ADAM in the process. So, you know, it’s a trade-off.
D. T. and I were presenting BioShock to the PR team. They wanted to watch experienced players play the game, to get a better idea of what it was like.
The demo proceeded as you’d expect. D. T. fought his way through hordes of Splicers, showing off the game’s variety of weapons, both traditional and fantastic. The PR team was impressed, but wanted more.
“Can you show us a Big Daddy fight?” asked someone seated behind us.
D. T. wandered the level until the screen began to shake with the sound of heavy, metallic footsteps. We heard a sad moan, like a cross between a whale and Frankenstein’s monster. A Big Daddy was near. Turning the corner, we saw it—a hulking brute sealed into an old diving suit. It lumbered behind a Little Sister as she skipped down the hallway toward a tasty-looking corpse.
“Is that a Little Sister?”
“Oh yeah,” said D. T. “Check this out.” He equipped a machine gun and opened fire on the girl. The Big Daddy roared to life. The ironclad beast was no longer slow and docile; it was gripped with a berserker rage. It charged D. T., unrelenting in its brutality. The Big Daddy would not let up until one of them was dead.
When the battle was over, the Big Daddy’s body lay steaming on the ground. Its Little Sister stood over it, head in hands, crying tears for the protector she called “Mr. Bubbles.”
“Whoa,” said faceless PR person number two.
D. T. giggled to himself. He knew what was coming, and so did I. “If you think that was intense, wait until you get a load of this.”
He switched weapons, this time choosing a large adjustable wrench. The Little Sister didn’t even look up as he approached. With the touch of a single button, D. T. struck the girl on the head, killing her. Instantly limp, her body fell to the floor.
D. T. pressed another button. In the game, he lifted the girl’s body, cradling it close to the camera. Then, he took her ADAM-gathering syringe and plunged the needle into her chest. He sucked the ADAM from the corpse, then discarded her on the floor like an empty bottle.
“Ka-ching!”
Flush with cash, D. T. headed to the Gatherer’s Garden—a vending machine where he could buy new Plasmids. He selected Telekinesis, the ability to lift and throw objects using the power of your mind.
With his new Plasmid, D. T. lifted the Little Sister’s corpse into the air.
“Watch this.”
He entered the next room, where a Splicer was waiting. D. T. flung the dead girl at the ADAM junkie’s head, killing him. D. T. giggled as both bodies collapsed on the floor in a heap.
“If you think that’s cool, check this out.”
For the next five minutes, D. T. made full use of that dead girl’s body. He juggled her, froze her, turned her into a bomb by covering her with sticky grenades, and lit her on fire to use as a torch for lighting other people on fire.
D. T. was having a great time, and I’ll admit, so was I. One of the things I always admired about him was his ability to find his own fun within a game. What he was doing on-screen was terrible, but it was also just a game. None of it was real. On top of that, it was ridiculous. When you say, “I used the body of dead girl to bludgeon a man to death,” yeah, it’s a little messed up. But when you say, “I used the body of a dead girl to kill a teleporting fisherman while in an art deco city at the bottom of the Atlantic,” it’s hard to take seriously.
We couldn’t hear the PR team over the sound of our laughter. But even if we’d been silent, we would not have heard a peep. They were mortified. Looking back, I can’t blame them.
A few weeks later, the Fox gathered us together to see the new Little Sister design. Players would still acquire ADAM by way of a moral choice revolving around the Sisters. What changed was how the choice played out.
The Fox approached a Little Sister and was presented with a choice. “Harvest” or “Rescue.” Selecting “Rescue” caused him to pick her up. The Little Sister struggled against his touch, but only until he laid a glowing hand on her head. A white light momentarily filled the screen. When it faded, the Little Sister had been healed, her deathly pallor replaced with the rosy cheeks of a living girl. The slug in her stomach had been dissolved, her mental conditioning undone. Finally free of her servitude, she scurried off into a dirty vent, as little girls are wont to do.
Next, the Fox chose “Harvest,” and a similar scene played out. The Little Sister struggled against his grasp, this time with good reason. Instead of raising a safe, soothing hand, he raised one that appeared evil and clawlike. The Little Sister recoiled in horror as the hand lunged at her. The screen went black. The sound of a dying heartbeat played over the darkness. When it finally receded, the Little Sister was gone. In her place, the Fox now held a writhing sea slug, the implication being that he had ripped it from the girl’s body with his bare hands.
“So, you killed her,” said D. T.
The Fox shook his head. “I harvested her.”
“You’re holding a slug that was inside her body. It stands to reason you killed her.”
“You don’t know that. If she’s dead, where’s the body? I don’t see a body. Do you?”
“You think the problem is we’re making a game that lets players kill little girls. The problem is we made a game where killing girls is so much fun, no one will want to save them.”
“Except we don’t kill girls; we harvest them. It’s completely different.”
“People aren’t that stupid.”
“You’re right. They’re smart enough to understand the difference you refuse to grasp.”
D. T. DIDN’T GET out of the office much after that. The Fox kept him in New York, working on BioShock and any other game that needed an extra hand. Meanwhile, I was flying around the country with Ken, demoing the game for the press. BioShock never failed to excite, even outside of our scheduled meetings.
One afternoon, I arrived in San Francisco, on the third leg of a multicity promotional tour. For whatever reason, Ken and I had ended up on different flights, so I arrived at the hotel before him. After settling into my room, I returned to the lobby to leave him a message at the check-in desk. “I’m in room blah-blah-blah, my number is one two three, etc . . .” That sort of thing.
As I turned to walk away, a voice called out to me.
“Excuse me?” It was the concierge. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but did you just leave a message for Ken Levine?” Strange, but not, like, creepy strange. Just unexpected. Maybe I was confused about the travel arrangements and Ken had already arrived.
“Uh, yeah.”
“As in Ken Levine, creator of System Shock 2?”
“Yessss?” Everything in my body clenched. My lips pulled back unnaturally and my eyes bulged outward as I tried to mimic the appearance of a happy, comfortable person. I’ve never been able to smile on cue; any attempt makes me look like a dehydrated corpse. No doubt it’s a defense mechanism left over from a more primal time, when my taut, terror-filled face might have discouraged predators from going to town on my scrumptious muscles and organs. Sadly, in our modern, civilized age, its effect is minimal.
“Oh my God, what is he working on? Does he have a new game coming out? What’s it called? Can you even tell me? Oh my God!”
“ItiscalledBioShockandiscomingoutinOctoberitisgreatyoushouldbuyitsorrygottagobye!” I scuttled away to the elevator, for some reason turning back to wave nervously at the man. It had finally happened—I’d run into a fan. It was off-putting, but also kind of invigorating. It was like being recognized, only one step removed. I got to experience the excitement of a fan and then go about my business, without any fear of being hounded or followed. Better than that, it showed me just how important BioShock would be. Knowing that made the endless hours and constant travel worth it. Even when I’d get worn down, I could fall back on that.
I wish I could say the same for D. T. Whenever I was in New York, I could see the stress wearing on him. Normally loud and off-putting, he had begun suffering in silence. After weeks of bottling up every ounce of stress, he was finally beginning to boil over.
One day, as I was taking more screenshots in the 2K office, I heard D. T. sigh in pain. I turned to see him hunched over his keyboard. “Are you okay?”
He pushed back his hair and looked at me with glazed, blinking eyes. “Yeah, why?”
“You just sighed, and it sounded like a sad balloon committing suicide.”
“Huh. Didn’t even notice.” It was the third time that day. He hadn’t noticed the other two, either.
That evening, we left work early to grab a drink. It was a Monday. I know because that was the only night we ever went out. Friday-night drinking was for suckers. After a hard week, the last thing we wanted was to fight a crowd for the privilege of gulping down overpriced cocktails. If we drank on a Friday, we did it at home. In the dark. Alone. Just as God intended.
Recently, whenever we did go drinking, D. T. would get sloshed within an hour and spend the rest of the night flicking peanuts into the faces of passing strangers. This led to us being banned from our usual haunt in favor of a bar that didn’t serve peanuts.
“Are you doing okay?” I asked.
“Honestly? I don’t think so.” He was picking through a bowl of standard bar mix in search of ammunition. The ratio of peanuts to other bits was low enough that I figured we could get a few rounds in before he caused any problems. “You know how I woke up this morning? I was on the couch—shirt and jacket on, pants off. Like a filthy animal. I don’t even remember how I got home. It was humiliating, Walter!”
D. T. found a large wasabi pea buried in the bar mix and flicked it at some guy’s face. He was too drunk to make contact, but it got close.
“What the hell, dude?”
D. T. shrugged. “Do something.”
Looking to me, the guy said, “Your friend needs to calm down.”
“Thank you. Have a good night.” I waved. I don’t know why; I just did. It must have been another one of those primal survival instincts—a way to let a predator know I was not a threat to his virile manhood and should be allowed to live, if only out of pity.
I punched D. T. in the shoulder. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
D. T. didn’t react; he just put his head down on the bar. “I’m tired.”
“Then take a vacation. Call in sick and take a mental health day.”
“No can do, Walter. There’s too much to do. A man chooses; a slave obeys.”
He was quoting Andrew Ryan in BioShock. Those six words—“A man chooses; a slave obeys”—were the line from the game’s big twist, and D. T. had taken to saying it whenever he felt completely helpless.
The twist occurs two-thirds of the way through BioShock. The player has fought through the underwater city of Rapture with the help of Atlas, a citizen seeking a way out. The player has been trying to reach Andrew Ryan, the city’s founder, in order to kill him and end the city’s lockdown. Ryan is no innocent man. He is a despot gone mad; a true antagonist. His death is warranted.
When the player finally confronts Ryan, he’s behind a glass window, unreachable. “The assassin has overcome my final defense. And now, he’s come to murder me.”
As Ryan speaks, the player watches him casually putt golf balls on a strip of green Astroturf. “In the end, what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No. A man chooses; a slave obeys.
“You think you have memories: a farm, a family, an airplane, a crash, and then this place. Was there really a family? Did that airplane crash, or was it hijacked? Forced down by something less than a man, something bred to sleepwalk through life until activated by a simple phrase from their kindly master? Was a man sent to kill, or a slave?
“A man chooses; a slave obeys.”
Ryan opens the door to his sanctum. The player enters.
“Stop, would you kindly?”
The player stops; the controller ceases to respond. All power has been stripped away. The player now moves only at the whim of Andrew Ryan, who proceeds to reveal the game’s untold truth.
The player is not the person they were led to believe they were. Instead of a being an unfortunate stranger from the outside world, they are actually a bioengineered slave created and artificially aged in Rapture, and then sent to live above the waves. It’s no accident the player has returned to the city of their birth; they were summoned back to complete their purpose—killing Andrew Ryan. To ensure the player complies, they have been programmed with the trigger phrase “Would you kindly.” It’s a phrase they’ve heard almost every time they’ve been given a goal to complete.
As a final act of control, Andrew Ryan hands his golf putter to the player. “Kill.”
The player can only watch as their hands beat Ryan to death. You can probably guess his final words: “A man chooses; a slave obeys.”
This was D. T.’s point in quoting Andrew Ryan—he could no more control his own life than the player could control theirs.
Everything Ryan says is true. Nothing you do in BioShock is of your own volition. Your goals, tools, and actions are all predetermined by the developer. Any sense of power and control you might have is just an illusion. Even the character you inhabit is a lie. What little you know of your character’s past only exists to support the illusion. As with every video-game character, the person you control in BioShock did not exist until you started playing.
Nothing you believe about video games is true.
A traditional game is a challenge in which a player’s skill comes up against a rigid set of rules. Turn-based strategy, multiplayer death match, platformers—these are traditional. The modern, high-end, blockbuster AAA game is not a skill challenge. If it were, the player might fail and be disappointed, and then we wouldn’t sell as many copies. The rules are fluid. We change them to create tension, surprise, or excitement. Saying yes to the player only goes so far, and that distance is the exact length required to make you feel in control.
Feel. That’s the key word. We can’t make you powerful, clever, or important, but we can design an experience that will make you feel that way. It’s a fantasy, though not a frivolous one. Our desires lead us to dream; our dreams lead us to create. If we can make you feel like the person you want to be, even just for a moment, then you might be inspired to go out and become that person. That’s the real strength behind what we do.
Fantasy is good.
BIOSHOCK WAS RELEASED AUGUST 21, 2007, for Xbox 360 and PC. The reviews were phenomenal. On the review website Metacritic, the console and PC versions both received an average score of ninety-six out of one hundred. The response was so positive that the value of Take-Two’s stock jumped nearly 20 percent the following week. The Xbox 360 version sold almost five hundred thousand copies its first week, making it the third-best-selling game of August 2007.
It was a great moment for everyone at Irrational. Their hard work had paid off. Those of us in publishing were just as excited. BioShock was the game we’d been looking for, something we could point to and say, “This is who we are. This is what we can give you.”
In the following months, BioShock was nominated for awards all over the world, including an astounding twelve nominations by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, arguably the gaming equivalent of the Oscars. The award show was held at their annual summit, D.I.C.E., which stands for four pillars of game development—design, innovate, communicate, and entertain. As a thank-you for our hard work, 2K flew the publishing team to Las Vegas for the awards. Of its twelve nominations, BioShock won four—Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction, Story Development, Original Music Composition, and Sound Design. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I was a little disappointed we only won four out of twelve. The big award, Action Game of the Year, we lost to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. But it’s hard to be too upset when you lose to one of the most intense and visceral games of the last ten years. The open bar also didn’t hurt.
After the awards, I tried to slink away to a roulette table, but Geekjock grabbed me by the arm. “Come on. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine.” Damn that manly grip and artificially tanned bicep! There would be no escape.
He dragged me over to a circle of couches where a group of people was just ordering drinks. One man in particular looked up and smiled. Geekjock introduced us. “This is Walt, my game analyst. Walt, this is Mark Cerny.”
Mark Cerny is a bit of legend in game development. He’s done it all—design, programming, production, even business. He was the lead architect for Sony’s PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation Vita. If that’s not enough, his body of work includes more successful, beloved franchises than that of anyone else I can think of: God of War, Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted, Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot. But all these accomplishments paled in comparison to one.
“So, you’re the guy who made Marble Madness?”
“Oh God . . .” Mark cringed. “Are you seriously going to bring that up?”
Booze always loosens the tongue, but it has nothing on the freedom that comes in the aftermath of battle. And make no mistake, game development is a battle. Our universe is one of law and logic. To create is to shatter those laws, to reach inside yourself and produce a thing where once there was none. The universe doesn’t like that. It will set everything it has against you—time, space, and everything in between. When the fight is over, it’s easy to forget how hard it was. No one will fault you for speaking the truth. You’ve achieved the improbable, and they know how that feels.
I gave Mark a drunken, shit-eating grin. “You misunderstand. I’m not geeking out. Marble Madness was the first game I ever rented as a kid. I never got past the second level. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say ‘Fuck you.’ ”
Laughter. Clinked glasses. Cheers all around.
These are the moments that make it all worthwhile.
I’VE NEVER WORKED ON a game I didn’t hate.
As the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt, and there is no greater intimacy than that obtained through creation. By the time BioShock was released, I’d played the game more than two hundred times. My cursor had caressed every hair, blemish, and wart on its digital frame. I’d seen everything, except the final game 2K had shipped to stores across the world. BioShock had gone gold without me. I had no idea what changes had been made in the final stages of development. I didn’t want to know. When the Fox gave me my retail copy of the game, I tucked it away in a drawer. There was no way I could play it. The memory of working on BioShock was still too fresh.
A person is just an animal with a very high opinion of itself. We don’t like to think about it too much, but we’re as trainable as dogs. If an action is continuously repeated, our mind will build connections between the action and associated stimuli. Video games demand everything of their creators. With BioShock, I wasn’t even involved with its creation; I was just the guy taking pictures, and it still wrecked me. Three months passed before I found the energy to play it.
On a Saturday morning, I placed the game in the disc tray of my Xbox 360. The game spun up; the 2K and Irrational Games logos appeared and then faded from my TV screen. When the start menu appeared, I did nothing. It was night. Moonlight streaked the cloud-covered sky. The game’s logo—an iron-cast plate bearing its name and an abstraction of a city skyline—floated above the Atlantic Ocean, at the base of a lighthouse. The water rippled gently; the rays of moonlight moved in time with the clouds. It was the first time I’d seen the final menu, and it was beautiful. When I saw that, I knew I was finally ready.
I selected “New Game” and descended back into Rapture. Minutes later, as my bathysphere surfaced inside Rapture’s welcome terminal, the game froze. At first, I thought the game had simply crashed. Even with high-profile releases like BioShock, it wasn’t out of the question for a game to ship with bugs still inside. Then I noticed the power button of my Xbox 360. Normally green, it was now surrounded by three flashing red lights. My console had suffered a general hardware failure that the gaming community had dubbed the Red Ring of Death. I was ready to play BioShock, but my 360 clearly wasn’t. It had fatally shat itself and was now an expensive brick, broken beyond repair.
For the first time in a long while, I went outside and enjoyed the day.