You would think that Bioshock, a game which is so massively popular with the public and press, would have had no problems getting a publisher. Surprisingly, it turns out that the opposite is true. Bioshock’s senior designer, Joe McDonagh, said that the lack of commercial success caused plenty of publishers to turn Bioshock down, and that this sort of lack of risk taking is damaging the industry.

“This sort of attitude really pissed me off. System Shock II, for all its critical success, didn’t sell very well which turned buyers off. Something I realised very quickly was that as much as your boss won’t ever know that you turned down a future game of the year, he will know that you signed up a turkey. You don’t get fired for not taking risks. That kind of mentality is driving the industry into a creative cul de sac.”

McDonagh also said that when he was pitching it to publishers, there was a lack of interest because it was another PC shooter, and sometimes there was even hostility towards the game.

“I remember pitching the game to one publisher who later told a friend of mine that it was ‘just another f***ing PC FPS that’s going to sell 250,000 units.”