5/16/2023 0 Comments Ad infinitum game 2019“In the wake of The Magic Circle, we knew we needed to maximise the overlap of things we love and things people will actually buy,” Thomas explains. It was completely uncompromising.”Īfter blowing off some steam with The Magic Circle, work is now well underway for The Blackout Club, which the team is hoping has more mass appeal than their cathartic-yet-niche debut. People warned us, but we needed to do it. “It continues to make money, but it wasn't a hit. “We called it a palate cleanser,” Thomas says. So the pair set off to create something for - and about - themselves with The Magic Circle, a caustic piece of interactive satire where the antagonist is the creative director of a video game and the protagonist is a self-aware video game protagonist. Unity had exploded and the cheapness of engine tools made it clear we could do this.” He had access to a house in the San Francisco Bay Area. “With triple-A to an extent, but also with very bloody, very serious first-person shooters. “We were pretty done, honestly,” Thomas recalls. He fell back in with Alexander, and it was clear they both felt the same way. Once work wrapped on Infinite, Thomas was at a crossroads. “Towards the end, particularly with all the moving parts of triple-A, you need someone to come in and say, ‘Are you willing to kill your darlings?’.” and that’s not how pillars work,” Thomas laughs. “The game had many creative pillars and we had to knock out a few to make others work. If the project hadn’t been reined in, however, we may never have broken through the clouds of Columbia to the tones of a heavenly choir at all. I was like a shadow design lead - it was amorphous.”īioShock Infinite’s development issues are well documented the game we ended up with was massively scaled back from its original vision. I had been on the series, I had dealt with the sequel problem before. “I helped bring the team more in line with an achievable vision,” Thomas explains. "This ethos is what lets you strap a mine to a decapitated head in Dishonored before flinging it into a crowd like a macabre, makeshift grenade." It was on that project that Thomas formed a reputation as a closer. I basically didn’t sleep.”Īfter stepping into Ken Levine’s shoes to create a sequel many deemed unnecessary at the time (though a growing portion of players now see it as the series’ best game), Thomas was asked by Levine to come back and help with BioShock Infinite. “It was my first game as a writer and my first game as a director. “I was then recruited by 2K to start a studio and build BioShock 2 in basically two years,” Thomas remembers. Both shared the same tastes and they became good friends by the time development wrapped up. While working on BioShock, Thomas met another developer called Stephen Alexander. The Blackout Club - the next game from Thomas and his indie development studio, Question - retains those qualities. Both are games with consistent rulesets that encourage experimentation, and both these sections stand out because of their spine-tingling creepiness. As well as creating the infamously unsettling Shalebridge Cradle level in Thief: Deadly Shadows, he is the designer responsible for Fort Frolic in the original BioShock. Thomas has always worked on these kinds of experiences. Players poking at systems, seeing what is possible, is why this unique game creation process feels like a collaboration - a “glorious duet”. These same principles are bleeding into other genres, too - if you have ever used metal weapons to conduct electrical currents and ‘cheat’ your way through puzzles in Breath of the Wild, you will know what I mean. This ethos is what lets you strap a mine to a decapitated head in Dishonored before flinging it into a crowd like a macabre, makeshift grenade. It is a design philosophy that powers experimental play, where the developers work to ensure every system in the game interacts. He’s talking about titles such as BioShock, Deus Ex, Thief, and Dishonored - games that allow you to do things even their creators didn’t anticipate. “It’s this sort of glorious duet,” Jordan Thomas says as we discuss the type of game he loves making.
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