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LucasArts finds replacement for creative director role
LucasArts has appointed journeyman Frederic Markus to its vacant studio creative director position, reports IndustryGamers. Markus brings with him a long career of credits -- in more than 35 games -- from a variety of positions and publishers, including most recently director of game design at Disney Interactive. He's also served as director of pre-production at Ubisoft and consulted on game design and pre-production for Atari, Microsoft and Rockstar, among others. Markus leaves Disney in the midst of its restructuring away from console development, and he joins LucasArts following a difficult end of 2010 for the studio. Clint Hocking's arrival at LucasArts last fall brought a new hope in the wake of Haden Blackman's resignation, but two rounds of layoffs closed out the year with an "Episode V" type of feel. Prior to Markus' appointment, former BioShock senior designer Joe McDonagh held the creative director position at LucasArts. In December, McDonagh joined PopCap as the company's new director of production. [Image source: MMArchive]
BioShock started as a 'tropical island with Nazis'
CVG has released another morsel of information from their talks with BioShock senior designer Joe McDonagh. In addition to the game being turned down by countless publishers, McDonagh also talked about the game's origins, providing the interesting note that "BioShock for instance started out on a tropical island with Nazis."We're trying to imagine our surviving protagonist facing off against countless evil soldiers hell-bent on creating superhumans enemies. We envision something of an amalgam between Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Gilligan's Island. The Little Buddy collects life essence while Big Daddy Skipper keeps him protected with coconut-fueled weaponry.
Plenty of publishers turned down Bioshock
While the unbearably long time it's taking to download the Bioshock demo (65% and counting, baby!) is pretty much excruciating to us who are hotly anticipating the game, one has to imagine there's at least one guy who's got a smile on his face: Designer Ken Levine. According to a new interview, he and his team have had quite the struggle to get the shooter to this point.Senior designer Joe McDonagh detailed the long journey for CVG, saying that Levine had taken the game to several publishers who decided that the cerebral FPS wasn't a fit for their company. McDonagh rails, "Something I realized 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." If the response to the demo is any indication of earning potential, there are a few execs out there who had better keep mum about meeting with Levine.
