THE RESTORATION MASTERS
Back in 2012, Stephen Kick was travelling around Central America with his partner and future Nightdive Studios co-founder Alix. The couple, who met while working as character artists at Sony Online Entertainment, were burned out on the games industry, and hit the road in search of adventure and discovery.
As well as having all the mind-opening experiences that come with travelling through new lands and cultures, Stephen began to rediscover his passion for gaming. One evening, in the midst of a tropical storm in Guatemala, he and a new friend he met at a hostel decided – fittingly, given the setting – to boot up the original Monkey Island. “We started playing, and it was all the sights and sounds that I hadn’t heard since 1997,” he recalls. “It really made me fall in love with videogames again.”
As the storm raged, giving Stephen and his friend an ongoing excuse to indulge their nostalgia, the pair decided to ramp up the horror. In the popular imagination, transformative experiences while travelling often come with the help of psychedelic cacti and shamans. And while Stephen doesn’t deny that some experiences along those lines took place on his travels, in this case his great transformation would come via an old CD copy of System Shock 2.
The game didn’t work on Stephen’s notebook, which perhaps dampened spirits on that tempestuous night, but inspired him to find out who was holding the IP rights
