"So most of the time we were just trying to stay afloat, and to come up with good ideas. "The whole development process was us pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, not a very big budget, and trying to put together a team and run a project and do things we’d never done before," says Chey. The team took a couple of rooms in Looking Glass’ office, some staff, the Dark engine, which was still under development for Thief, and a meagre budget of $700,000. Sure, it was critically lauded, but for Chey and his fellow founders, Ken Levine and Rob Fermier, it was simply enough. At the time, though, it didn’t quite light up the charts. System Shock 2’s sci-fi horror adventure made Irrational Games’ name, laying the foundation for a future in which it would make the likes of SWAT 4, Freedom Force and, of course, BioShock, and lately, Chey has found himself returning to it for inspiration.
Now, over 20 years later, Chey can say the gamble worked. "My strongest motivation was not wanting to look like a fool, because we’d never done anything like this before in our lives." "It was probably the most pressure I’ve felt in my life," says Jonathan Chey, one of its three lead developers. It was the first project by a new studio called Irrational Games, a chance to prove it could deliver a game that matched the calibre of Looking Glass, the developer of the original System Shock, Thief, and other PC classics. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US. This article was originally published in PC Gamer magazine.
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