It’s funny to think that back when System Shock first launched, it wasn’t met with such a big audience. That’s not to say that those who played it didn’t love it, in fact to those people it was immediately captivating and unlike anything they had ever experienced before. It was even wellreceived by critics, so it wasn’t like there weren’t people raving about it. Yet while it did manage to sell enough to be considered a worthwhile effort, it was termed by those involved at the time a ‘disappointment’ in terms of sales. So it’s funny to think, because now if you say the name System Shock to a gamer, not only will they likely know what you mean, but there’s a high chance that you’ll elicit a rather excitable response from them. So what happened to turn it around? How did System Shock go from limited adoration by a cult fanbase to a broad recognition as one of PC gaming’s most important releases?
The start of it all came from Looking Glass Studios, then known as Looking Glass Technologies, the developer that essentially pioneered the player-driven gameplay of the immersive sim genre. The inklings of this new open-ended approach to RPGs was already there in , Looking Glass’ first release with publisher Origin Systems in 1992. It wasn’t until close to the end of the sequel to this game in 1993, however, that discussions started to happen around what was next. It was an imperative from Origin, in fact, that started down the route that would become , with the publisher concernedheavily on dungeon crawling for its line-up of games. From there, lead programmer and designer Doug Church led the creation of this new sci-fi adventure. While the core underlying gameplay would still retain some of the DNA, the new sci-fi setting naturally changed the potential scope somewhat. In some ways, it was the burgeoning capabilities of 3D and the potential for exploration of a fictional, interactive world that gave birth to , which was an answer in part to the frustrations that team members at Looking Glass had with their fantasy RPG. “It was kind of clear that the range of things that could happen in the 3D game – interacting with the objects and the combat systems – was much more varied and different each time you played,” Austin Grossman, game designer and writer on both and , once said on a podcast with Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.
