Behind the Pitch

Behind the Pitch is the second of the collectible Golden Film Reels, featuring director's commentary with Ken Levine and Shawn Robertson, hosted by Geoff Keighley. The Golden Film Reels are exclusive to the remastered version of BioShock, part of BioShock: The Collection.
==Location==
Next to the Gatherer's Garden in the Surgery Lounge in the Medical Pavilion.
==Transcript==
Finding the film reel in-game gives the following warning: SPOILER WARNING: The commentary contains in-depth discussion of plot details, including the ending. First-time players may wish to complete the game before viewing.
The host is Geoff Keighley.
Ken Levine's given credits are: Creative Director: System Shock 2, BioShock, BioShock, BioShock Infinite.
Shawn Robertson's given credits are: Animation Lead / Director: BioShock, BioShock Infinite.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Going through the door to the Lower Wharf in Neptune's Bounty; player attacks a Bouncer in the Funeral Services area of the Medical Pavilion; player enters the control console room in the Office of Andrew Ryan in Rapture Central Control; Bathysphere ride through the "All Good Things of This Earth Flow into the City" archways during the descent into Rapture; player encounters Little Sister and Bouncer after regaining consciousness in Welcome to Rapture]
KEIGHLEY: BioShock was groundbreaking in many regards when it released in 2007, though fundamentally it shared many consistencies with Irrational’s System Shock series. What elements of System Shock translated into BioShock and what was refined, altered, and innovated upon to create the world of Rapture? Let’s take a look at the long road from System Shock to BioShock.
[TITLE SCREEN: IMAGINING BIOSHOCK - BEHIND THE PITCH - HOSTED BY GEOFF KEIGHLEY]
KEIGHLEY: Everyone knows where the game ended up, but, uh, I think fans would be interested to learn where this game or, or the idea of doing this game started. And I think, you know, folks know System Shock and the, the legacy of that game. Huge fan base. Did this game, did it start as a System Shock game initially?
LEVINE: No. Uh, we, we didn't have...
KEIGHLEY: Okay.
LEVINE: ...we didn't have, uh, the-the rights to that, right. We kind of felt that, um-er, there was more game design to-to mine there, you know that it was sort of we did that one game and it was sort of the first game that really combined shooting and RPG and it was a very small budget, you know, it was a very small team. It was the first game that we had ever done, so we got pretty lucky I think in terms of how well it came out, but, you know, but the odds are sort of stacked against it and, um, the team, you know, was really enthusiastic about doing a game like that, you know. And time had evolved and the team was much more h- we had done a bunch of games together and we were, you know, we had a stable technology base and we were like, 'Okay well let's - Which should be - which System Shock 2 was not. I mean that that engine barely [trails off]' No game had ever shipped on that engine. It was a very crude piece of technology. Most of us had never shipped a game at the time, so like well, what if we had a stable technology base and we had a team that was more experienced and more seasoned and we had, you know, an actual like art director, and you know, which we didn't really have on System Shock 2. You know, what-what could we do? And so I think there was a lot of enthusiasm with the team to really try do a more mature version of that kind of game.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player shocks Splicers with Electro Bolt as they jump down the flooded staircase in the Transit Hub in Welcome to Rapture during the lockdown sequence, another Splicer is shot with the Pistol
LEVINE: Yeah, we the, this is before we sold the company to Take Two and we were an independent developer, right. We were sitting there, we were using the money we made from other development deals we had. And we would try to scrape together whatever time and money we had to work on this thing. And it was not actually something I was particularly keen on doing. The team was much more keen on doing uh, um sort of, uh, a System Shock-ish game then I was because...
KEIGHLEY: Because you were pitching "I like System Shock 3" at one point, right?
LEVINE: Well, I-I mean there was an actual System Shock 3 that we were pitching back in the day...
KEIGHLEY: Right. Okay.
LEVINE: ...when we were right after System Shock 2, but that never happened.
KEIGHLEY: Right, right, right.
LEVINE: Uh, we couldn't get, couldn't get anybody interested because System Shock 2 sold like 5 copies, right? And so as the business guy, the guy who had to not only just sort of write the content, but the guy who had to go out and get the deals and pay everybody, I wasn't particularly excited about doing this because it was very disappointing when we did System Shock 2 and nobody bought it. You know, it got great reviews. It got these insane reviews, and but it left us in a place where we, we, it didn't really move the needle for us in terms of making payroll. So I wasn't super excited about it because I didn't see how it, I didn't see a publisher being interested in it and I didn't see the audience actually being particularly interested in this kind of game. And it was really the team who convinced me to invest in this because their enthusiasm; a lot, I think a lot of them came to this studio because of System Shock 2. And so finally they, you know, they sort of battered me down and it was good they did because I-I-I was, I was not the first fan of, of doing this.
KEIGHLEY: And I know initially there was something called the Serene Dawn? That, that was a spaceship or what was that?
ROBERTSON: Name of a, it was the cult right?
LEVINE: No, that was the something, the cult...
KEIGHLEY: Cult! Oh, I'm sorry, okay.
LEVINE: Uh, yeah...
ROBERTSON: That one's, I think been lost to the ages, if I remember correctly, Serene Dawn was a cult. You were playing as a deprogrammer that was infiltrating the cult and your name happened to be Carlos Cuello who was our, one one of our programmers at the time.
LEVINE: Yeah. [laughs] It's named after him, yeah. There was an, a story notion that I always found really interesting which was that you have these cults and you have sometimes people who they're-these sort of characters who are really live on the edge of mmo-of the-mmm gray morality which is these guys who come in and essentially kidnap people out of these cults or rescue them depending on how you look at it because what you really, really is from a functional standpoint it's a kidnapping right? You're coming to an adult and you're saying, you know, you're hired by their parents or whoever and this was in the story was like a senator whose daughter was joined one of these religious movements called the Serene, Serene Dawn you said.
KEIGHLEY: Yeah, Serene Dawn.
LEVINE: And, and, and, I always thought that was a really interesting tension of this hero who is basically a kidnapper and who, taking a young woman against her will out of the place that she was in. Now you could arg-also make the other argument that well she was not really there by her will, but there's a really interesting conversation that goes on there. I think there's actually a Kate Winslet movie, a Harvey Keitel/Kate Winslet movie which dealt with a similar theme, um, 'cause usually you hear that story, the-these de-deprogrammers as a sort of heroic kind of notion, but I always thought there, well there's something, something interesting about agency going on there and about who's-are people entitled to make bad mistakes or, you know, or is it a bad mistake? It all depends on the person. You know, I-I'm not a fan of, you know, religious cults or religion in general but if-if, there seemed to be an interesting, uh, discussion of-of freedom there and-and independent decision-making. And I-I thought that idea was cool and, um, and that was sort of the basis of it for a while, but it was really mostly for the purpose of we needed something to go out and pitch to publishers.
KEIGHLEY: Okay.
LEVINE: And so we know we didn't have a ton of time to really develop it so that sounded like 'All right, this will do for now.
KEIGHLEY: And was that, was that pre-underwater city? I mean this was just like an idea for a story?
ROBERTSON: We may have stepped away from that to do the cult thing, but then we went back to the, to the underwater thing.
LEVINE: And we had that one room, remember?
[SCENE OVERLAY: BioShock Visual Concept Test footage: player enters a crowded laboratory with modern computers and green glass pillars]
ROBERTSON: We have the one World War 2 room with the, um, roaches on the ground and like these weird test tube things that you could walk around. I, yeah, I don't know where that fell. It could have been underwater, there was no windows. [laughs]
LEVINE: The thing is, the thing is we were a small business right? And we were trying to like figure out a way to sell this thing with the, with the spending the least amount of money because we didn't have any money.
ROBERTSON: We didn't.
LEVINE: We did-we didn't have a pot to piss in.
[SCENE OVERLAY: BioShock Visual Concept Test footage continues: player walks beyond green glass pillars, enters room with medical supplies, furniture, a standing chalkboard, and flickering overhead fluorescent lights
LEVINE: So we would do this demo that was one room basically just to show. And I'd write up a document and we'd take it around and I'd fly around the country and be like "Here's our room." Uh, it's a different time you know. And uh...
ROBERTSON: We had just come off of, uh, SWAT 4. One of the advantages we had is that we were so familiar with that engine at that point that we could really start cranking through, you know, small rooms, and lighting and, and making things look good. So...
LEVINE: So I took it on the road to sell it to somebody and nobody cared. We go to a publisher and look they have to make money right and then we'd say and they s- and we, "Oh it's sort of a spiritual successor to System Shock 2" and they'd be like "Well, how did that sell?" And I'd be like "M-my mom likes it!", you know.
KEIGHLEY: Yes.
LEVINE: Um, and they would be like, "Well we can't", you know. And then usually we'd be talking to a fan. A lot of executives lecture junior executives were fans of System Shock and they were re- and they'd go to their boss and they'd be super excited and their boss would open up, you know, their Excel spreadsheet and be like, "No we can't do this." And I think the pitch probably evolved as we kept trying different permutations trying to sell, but we're also out there trying to sell like 2 or 3 other things at the time. We had a pitch for a game called Monster Island and then um...
ROBERTSON: Yup. Wall or SWAT 5 pitch was...
LEVINE: Oh, oh and Zombie SWAT!
ROBERTSON: Yeah. We-we had just come off of SWAT 4 which was like hardcore tactical and we decided they wanted us to do another SWAT and we didn't really want to do another hardcore tactical game so we were like "What if we added zombies to SWAT?"
LEVINE: This was before...
ROBERTSON: Like you're a SWAT team that fight zombies and werewolves. That sounds awesome and it was like, no it doesn't.
LEVINE: And this is before...
ROBERTSON: [laughs] We're not gonna...
LEVINE: ...this is like before zombies were a thing.
KEIGHLEY: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
LEVINE: We were, uh so we came up with this thing called Division 9.
ROBERTSON: Division 9, yeah.
LEVINE: That probably would have been even a bigger financial success than, than BioShock. But we couldn't get anybody interested in it. Um...
ROBERTSON: We didn't have enough werewolves in the demo.
LEVINE: That's right. We had zero werewolves in the demo.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
LEVINE: Yeah, we're gonna have werewolves aren't we?
ROBERTSON: Werewolves and vampires.
LEVINE: [laughs]
KEIGHLEY: Oh really? Werewolves and vampire zombies?
ROBERTSON: The whole like just throw it all, all the Universal Studios monsters from like...
LEVINE: [laughs]
KEIGHLEY: Oh wow. Yeah.
LEVINE: Um, so what happened was, is we couldn't sell it, but we were always sort of independent-minded and so I said "Well, what if we sort of did this in reverse? Instead of getting a publisher first thing then going doing a press tour on it, what if we sort of did the press first?"
KEIGHLEY: Yeah.
LEVINE: And we called up a guy, Andrew Park, who's at, uh, he was at GameSpot at the time who was a fan of System Shock 2 and uh, you know, a great guy. And he was like and I said "You come out and look at this thing we're doing and write a story on it?" and he was like "Sure."
[SCENE OVERLAY: Early BioShock demo footage, text on screen reads "IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS AND GROW YOUR CHARACTER AT PLASMID MACHINES", player walks on metal catwalk and archways with dripping water and a bluish light cast, moves towards warmly lit floor tiled room, text changes to "SCAVENGER DRONES ARE THE SOURCE OF ADAM (CREDITS)", player starts shooting at early version of ADAM slug, text changes to "OBJECTIVE: FIND TENNENBAUM'S CURE FOR CANCER"]
LEVINE: And Andrew flew out and we showed him what we had which was this very, you know,...
KEIGHLEY: Yeah.
LEVINE: ...very rudimentary thing about an underwater base. And he wrote up an article and sort of featured as this is the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 and the next day, the phone started ringing from publishers who now, all of a sudden, saw that the article was getting all this pick up and all these comments and people were excited and that really I think put it over the top in terms of being able to sell it even though it was not BioShock at that point. It was called BioShock, but it was not BioShock. It, there would have been no, I don't think there would have been a game. We never would have sold it without Andrew coming out and doing that.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player walks towards Eternal Flame Crematorium in the Medical Pavilion following a Bouncer and a Little Sister saying "My belly's full of angel's blood."]
==Behind the Scenes==
*The Harvey Keitel/Kate Winslet movie mentioned by Levine is likely the 1999 film Holy Smoke! about a man rescuing a young woman who had been indoctrinated in a foreign land by a religious movement.
*The GameSpot article mentioned by Levine is likely the article First Look by Andrew Park.
Category:Golden Film Reels