INSIDE THE STUDIO:

'THREE SISTERS' - HOW I CAME TO 2K MARIN

So, you’re 10 years old and playing in the surf, deep as you dare. Your whole world is the shape of the swell, and the cold burn of salt in your throat.

You slosh around, whirling in the sheer protean force before it abandons you like driftwood in the shallows. Then, against the gentle seaward pull, you heave yourself up. Dripping from your face, the ocean catches the sun – and for a moment, you smile, luminous.

This is what happens until a real wave comes along.

In your fledgling view of the world, this wave is a rogue. A freak. The kind that eats mountains and puts squids in your living room. Now your chance of staying vertical drops to zero, which is exactly what you want – to be lifted and rolled by a pattern far bigger and older than you’ll ever be. The point of this exercise is the loss of control.

Just hold your breath, and let go…

 *          *           *

Oh, hi there! Um, wow, you’re The Internet, aren’t you? I didn’t see you come in, and now you’re here, looking at me with your big ol’ constellation of eyes. That’s … that’s intimidating.

Names! Right. I’m Jordan Thomas, Creative Director for the 2K Marin studio. I was asked by 2K to scribble down some thoughts on the impending BioShock release for PLAYSTATION 3, but I think they’re still getting to know me, because they left the exact topic open to my choice. So sweet. So naïve. I’d kiss them, but you know, it’d get weird. My point is, now I’ve got carte blanche to vent my word gland all over the place.  No take-backs. Here we go. Buckle up.

Yeah, so about that beach thing – today I’m attempting to blog about how it felt when I heard that BioShock needed another designer, and how that wacky chain of causality ended up with me arriving here at 2K Marin, working on BioShock PS3 and directing the BioShock 2 project. I’m from the west coast originally, so marine metaphor kind of leaks out of me unbidden.

I came here after working directly at both the 2K Boston and 2K Australia studios, respectively, and all three – along with Digital Extremes – helped to bring the PS3 version to life. My journey sort of mirrors the multiple studio development path of the game itself in a fairly unique way, so remember: if you’re bored, you’re just not multi-cultural enough!

Flashback time. I had been turning into delicious nerd jerky in the Texas sun for the better part of 5 years, and I needed a change of scenery. I had managed to finish Thief 3 before the swan song of Ion Storm Austin, but it had been awhile since then and I was burning to work on something real. A friend at Take 2 eventually referred me to the 2K Boston team, and I flew out to meet with them about a contract gig.

Sounds casual and professional, right? Cool and detached, all Have Gun, Will Travel – I imagine there’d be tumbleweeds. But what you have to understand is that to me, the Boston guys are like the illicit love child of Kubrick and frickin’ Yoda. Between the Thief and Shock games they touched, we’re talking about a crack squad of learned humans who had a direct artistic influence on my career arc when it was still just a shrimpy little point in space. You may or may not remember those, but I’m old and wizened now, and allowed to refer to ancient history.

So Ken & co. had surrounded themselves with like minds, who had this very specific breed of game in their blood. For them, BioShock was an utterly natural act – the pain, and the love, immutable – like having a child. It’d be a big move. I’d have to drop everything, haul my pitiful array of worldly goods into storage, and commit to living in Boston for the rest of the game’s life cycle.

But after having seen BioShock firsthand – which was promising to be the direct descendant of those games I held so dear – I couldn’t have said no. It would be like kicking some non-specific deity in the junk. I agreed, and never looked back.

That was the first wave.

Before I knew it, I was awake at some perverse, imaginary hour of the night, working away on an art-themed BioShock level called Fort Frolic. I won’t pull off my face and reveal hateful-spoiler-guy on you or anything, but suffice it to say, the 2K Boston crew were extremely indulgent of the strange meats under my hat. From Ken, in particular, I learned more about stories for games in my short stint working there than I did in all the earlier years I spent trying to shoe-horn traditional narrative into them.

The Boston team actively encouraged me to embrace the wildest ideas I could generate, as long as I could translate them into a readable player experience. This is a group for whom you never regret giving up a single late night.

Gradually I became aware that team heroism was being imported from overseas from the guys in the 2K Australia shop, who would dive in and continue the open-heart surgery on levels and code when we were all at home dreaming of high priority bugs and running in our beds, like really tall dogs.

When the time came to release BioShock in its original form, we were excited but tremulous. There were a few options for more experienced players that we’d have loved to include – which, incidentally, now come standard with the PS3 version. There are Plasmids and Gene Tonics which the original release didn’t feature, along with the optional challenge to play without Vita-Chambers. That’s especially brutal in the new Survivor difficulty mode we’ve touched on before, which pits the player against truly superior genetically altered foes. Yes, this is me plugging a bit as I ramble, because I fancy that some of you have never played the thing, and I should totally make with the “All This Can Be Yours”, because I actually dig the game in question!

The Survivor experience is far more desperate; no environmental opportunity can go unexploited, or you become first-person lunch. You may have read previously about the trophies for both. I’m interested to see who lives through it first.

But I digress – 2K Australia. After the focused, concrete work on Fort Frolic, I was itching to return to a leadership role, but I wanted to stay within the organization that saw something special in BioShock and helped it take wing. A chance emerged for me to consult for them on a very different kind of project, even further from home.

As you might imagine, that was the second wave – I harbored enormous love for the Aussie hep cats from a distance, reinforced by the talent of some of their designers (who were acting as guest stars with charming accents) for a few months at a time in Boston. That respect only grew when we were working together on their side of the pond.

Also, all their flora & fauna have been dipped in rainbow soup, or are so camouflaged as to be nearly invisible – and each one is the evolutionary equivalent of the nuclear option in its niche. Do not step on the toes of free-range Australia. It will feed you to its young with no hard feelings. After the first month, I was ready to cast caution to the wind again and move there permanently.

Then, from back in the US, Alyssa Finley (Project Lead of BioShock, who I had worked very closely with on the first game, and whose charming fireside chat you’ve already enjoyed as a previous entry in this series) – contacted me. She said that she had heard that the Canberra studio I was consulting for wasn’t in the market for a full-time Creative Director yet, but she herself was heading up a newly created 2K studio in Marin County, just outside San Francisco.

The west coast. Home. I was so flooded by imagery along the lines of how this blog began that I didn’t fully process at first that she was saying we’d be working on the BioShock series. First, with a deluxe PS3 version of BioShock, and then we’d move on to BioShock 2, which had yet to be announced. Ken & co were moving on to a new project – and with my background, coupled with my antics in Fort Frolic, 2K was apparently interested in seeing where I’d go with a BioShock game.

The third wave. Among those who study them, a trio of inexplicably large swells in a row like this are called “Three Sisters”. In hindsight, I can’t help but think that in my case, the sisters in question were the three Fates, keeping an eye on me. Call me sentimental.

As work on the PS3 version draws to a close, I just wanted to tell you proud I am to have been involved with something as rare as BioShock. From having worked directly with the staggering brains at each studio that has laid their hands on it, I can tell you without hyperbole that this series is a labor of love.

I hope you enjoy it, and I’m honored to help guide it forward.

- Jordan Thomas, Creative Director, 2K Marin