BioShock and BioShock Infinite director Ken Levine has opened up about early troubles that the series faced when it came to budgets, low sales expectations based on the genre, and a close call with cancelation.
Speaking to Edge Magazine's 400th Issue, Levine recalls that many of the original developers came to Irrational Games "because they liked" immersive sim classic System Shock 2 and wanted to make something similar to the 'get bullied by AI' shooter, but Levine supposedly vetoed the idea early on because of financial concerns. "'We can't make those games because they don't sell,'" he supposedly said to the new coming staff. "Finally, they wore me down."
Irrational Games then made a "cheap prototype" to pitch to publishers, who had an expected response at the time and rejected the game because games like System Shock didn't "make any money." Eventually, the team came up with the idea of pitching BioShock to journalists instead, who covered the game as part of a retrospective on System Shock 2. "The next day, people saw the article, and we started getting phone calls," Levin says. "I think it created a sense of demand in the publisher."
Lucky for Take-Two, the project wasn't canceled. In fact, it became a bonafide hit, spawning two sequels and selling over 41 million copies. Netflix is also working on a live-action film adaptation that promises some "new little twists" on the series about utopias turned to shit. A fourth game in the series is also "ramping up" development without Levine at the helm, since Irrational Games shut down about a decade ago and the director left to make another BioShock-like called Judas.
