BioShock Developers Leave to Form New Game Studio

Three members of BioShock staff form a new indie game studio.

By Matt Mann /

Three BioShock developers who have also worked on XCOM have announced they are leaving to form their own indie video game studio called, "The Fullbright Company." The three people who left are Johnnemann Nordhagen, Karla Zimonja and Steve Gaynor, basically they all said they wanted to break away from "corporate game development". Here is how Gaynor describes the mission of the Fullbright Company:
"A memorable experience that you'll be drawn into, and keep thinking about after the game's turned off, and want to come back to again someday. An experience that gets away from the constraints of ossified game genres, while relying on what we're good at as a team: creating immersive places to inhabit, and a deep, personal story to explore at your own pace. A nonviolent game in an unfantastical locale; an experience that not many games provide, built out of techniques that only video games can employ."
I give them credit for trying to create a nonviolent video game that is story deep and immersive, this is not something easy to do and very few developers will go out of their way to make a game nonviolent. As for what made the three decide to move on from corporate game design; working on BioShock 2 DLC "Minerva's Den" actually:
...We got a chance to tell a story of our own in the world of Rapture when we collaborated closely on Minerva€™s Den, work we€™re very proud of. And basically, in our time apart after that project, we missed it. We missed working on a small team, on a small project, focused on telling a personal story in a player-driven way. We wanted to do that again. It was fun last time.
The three of them had been working on BioShock Infinite, which is one of the more inventive video games of this generation. So I would have to say that it is a little depressing that working on one of the most inventive video games of this console generation still has enough behind the scenes corporate issues that cause people to leave projects as unique as BioShock Infinite. Anyway I can't wait to see what these guys are developing and hopefully it can live up to their mission statement.