Big Daddy speaks

There's no doubt. I remember 10 years ago, I was watching all those FMV video games, and I was like, 'Oh God'. And then I think GTA really blew the wheels off all of that. The games we were doing at Looking Glass when I was there, like System Shock 2, we just didn't have the money. We had the ideas, but not the money or the time to really go out with it.

Now, ironically, because of GTA and Take-Two and the money, they gave us the time and money to take these ideas we had about first-person shooters and people-powered gaming and just run with it.

I think it's interesting, because it's a game that actually talks in depth about morality; it's centred around morality. Every theme of the game is about morality, and you can't deal with morality without moral choice, so if we're going to make a morality play... and the difference between a game and a movie and a book, is we don't tell you what the answer is.

For someone figuring their way out with morality, a young adult, whose parents are comfortable with them playing it, I don't want to tell them what to do. I want to put them in the place where they can make the decisions. This is a morally ambiguous place; Atlas is saying: 'These aren't even little girls anymore - if you're going to survive, if my family's going to survive, we're going to need to do this thing.'

And Tenenbaum's saying: 'No, they're little girls!' And Atlas says to you, 'she's the one that created them in the first place.' And you're like, what do I do? The whole world is grey. And to me that's the real world. And yes, people will try to simplify things, and want to say things are in black and white. It's always the same people who are telling you what to do morally, that I always worry about.

I have a lot of faith in people. The books... the Brave New Worlds, the Animal Farms, movies like Fight Club, are things that challenge me morally and don't tell me what the answer is. So we don't tell people what the answer is, but we're going to put them in a world where they understand the consequences of what they choose. And the consequences are very clearly defined.

I love little rewards. I'm a World of Warcraft whore and I love getting commendations and stuff, so to make a system-wide thing was a stroke of brilliance. As a game developer I love it as it's not complicated to implement. Doing clever ones is complicated, so we've gone back and forth. I remember the first time it happened to me in BioShock, and I was like, 'Oh cool!' It's that magical little tingle you get from an achievement. I love it and I think it's just one of those brilliant little things that some smart guy thought of, a combination that tickles you and is easy to implement - it's a win all around.

On BioShock I've had the real reward of being satisfied on many occasions, because we have for the first time at Irrational the time and the money, and a team. To make a great game you need talented people and a lot of time. We've never had as talented a group as we have now and we've had more time that we ever had, and I was able to make mistakes.

First prototype I made I said was a piece of crap. Take-Two didn't freak out. Greg said, 'fix it', and I said, 'okay'. And we went and worked on it. I think most of the team are perfectionists - so when I said we've got two more months, they didn't say 'Ohhh...' they said, 'excellent!' And these guys have been working 60, 70, 80-hour weeks. They were psyched. We're all tired, but they want this to be great.

Not as much as I usually do. WoW's nice because you don't have to put a disc in, you just run it for a few minutes. And I got my new Blood Elf, and I go out for 10 minutes, and I kill some bears and get some meat and cook up my cooking skills a little bit.

Played a little Crackdown... I play everything, I'm a total whore. I can't wait to go home tomorrow and download a new WWII strategy game from Battlefront. I'm playing a Marvel trading card game on my PSP; I play everything.

I'm a total slut. I get ideas from everywhere - games, movies, books, I play everything. There's a lot of Ratchet and Clank in this game, that it gives you this huge toolset and says go to town. I play almost every game, and I think that's really important for a designer. I hear these guys in the industry say they don't really play games, and I'm like, dude, what the hell are you doing in this industry?

My colleagues all around the world inspire me with great ideas and inspire the team. I'm constantly looking at other games. To me it's free ideas.

The two things are: that it is really a game that says yes to the gamer and validates all his attentions. And I think the relationship between the Big Daddy and the Little Sister, two characters that have an immediately understandable and an immediately gettable, game-able relationship. It works emotionally, it works visually and it works from a gameplay perspective.

The biggest reward is people talking at the watercooler. This is the first watercooler moment here tonight, and people are saying, 'oh I did this, and I did that'. To me that's what we want - it's a game designed for the gamer to drive the experience; to give him this incredible playground and let him loose.

I'm way more interested in watching what people do that I am in watching them follow a linear path and a proscribed experience.

A nap! A very long nap, a vacation, and we're working on something else that's very cool that we're just not talking about yet, but it's awesome.

That's up to the corporate overlords; not for a little while yet.