THE MAKING OF BIOSHOCK

Let’s address that elephant in the room. We know what you’re thinking: BioShock isn’t a retro game. It’s a fair standpoint, but the underwater FPS is celebrating its 15th anniversary this month, which falls within our own remit, and regardless, no one can discount its status as an utter classic. And the fact is, when it comes to selecting games from the pile of ‘recently retro’ to cover, only the very best, most innovative, most impactful games can make the cut… and that basically defines BioShock. But what’s interesting about the game’s development is how so much of its essence is owed to a much older, equally beloved release.

“We didn’t think we were done with some of the ideas that we worked with on and we wanted to keep working in that genre,” says Jonathan Chey. Many will know Jon as one of the cofounders of Irrational Games, and he was the director of development on the game. “We didn’t feel that anyone had picked up on those ideas. At least for the next few years after it had been released, there wasn’t a flood of clones on the market because it hadn’t been a huge hit. So we didn’t feel like that space had really still been explored. We, the team’s desire to create something , but something that could have a much broader appeal. “We recognised that there were things in that were holding it back, that were excessively complicated, that were opaque or hard for people to understand or that they simply didn’t like.” Jon lists fiddly controls, excessive menu navigation and a reliance on mouse and keyboard input as just some of the things that needed fixing if they wanted to become mainstream.