Developer/publisher Irrational Games Format PC, PS3, Xbox 360 Release 2013
The intervening years having tarnished its reputation a little, it can be difficult now to appreciate the kinds of hopes on which Columbia was hoisted into the sky – even for those who had helped to lay the groundwork. “It’s funny to look back now,” 2K Marin alumnus Johnnemann Nordhagen told us in a recent interview. “I feel a little silly about it. But when BioShock came out, it felt like someone taking big, art-game kind of concepts and putting them into commercial products. I wouldn’t necessarily stand by that today, but at the time it was really exciting for me. Someone is making a philosophical statement – and also you can shoot guys.”
This was the context of 2013 release: an industry newly hopeful that, guided by a handful of triple-A auteurs, it could make the argument for the medium as an artform on a global stage. Thanks to Irrational boss Ken Levine, the world of videogames would have its Inception –
