We reached and exceeded our goal on that and then began the work of actually creating the game. The fact that we were showing what people were backing and what we hoped the finished version would look like led to the success of Kickstarter's success. We put together a team and we created a demo running in Unity.

Larry Kuperman: Yes, and one of the reasons it was so successful was we had a clear vision. In order to do that, we needed to do a Kickstarter. The next question is, what do we do with it? That takes us up to the point where we announced that we would do a remake of the original System Shock game. I kept calling the attorney, saying, are we ready to do business? Finally, we acquired the remaining rights. I will tell you that for a long time, I have had weekly phone calls every Friday.

That took well over a year of working with that insurance company's attorneys. My first task was to acquire the remaining System Shock rights so we could do more with the games. A year later, right after GDC 2014, I joined the company. Larry Kuperman: That starts off Nightdive Studios. It was a smash hit, and it opened up the possibility of going out and spending my time doing the same for other games you can no longer commercially purchase or run on modern machines. I had to convince friends and family to lend me enough money to pay for the license and the game went on sale on Valentine's Day 2013. There was a very quick back and forth with the contract. I recommended that we just re-release the games on digital storefronts like GOG and Steam. But, being miles into a jungle with $5,000 to my name, it was out of the question. I reached out to their general counsel and discovered that they had not only the rights but had recently acquired the trademark and were looking for some way to commercialize the game so they could hold on to those rights.Īt first, they asked me if I wanted to do a System Shock game. So, I decided to do some digging and found that the rights had been transferred to the Meadowbrook Insurance Group. I discovered that it was the most requested title in GOG's catalog.

I figured it's one of the best games ever made it's got to be available for purchase. I tried to boot up System Shock 2 and I couldn't get it to run, so I went, like any normal person would do, to GOG.com. They were what originally inspired me to become part of the industry and are still a big love of mine. One night, when I was in Guatemala, I decided to play some classic video games. We spent the next ten months going through the entirety of Mexico and Central America. Back in 2012, I was still working at Sony as a character artist and my girlfriend at the time, who was also a character artist, decided that she was pretty much done with the video game industry after a pretty short stint and convinced me to pack up everything we owned into a Honda Civic and drive across the border in Mexico. Stephen Kick: System Shock has been in development not for seven years but closer to 11 years. People have been waiting to play this System Shock remake for a very long time due to multiple delays. Let's begin by addressing the elephant in the room. It was a long and interesting chat, during which we also touched upon the current schedule for the console ports, some possible post-launch additions like New Game+, what's next after this remake, the impact of the recent acquisition by Atari, and even a brief update on the live action TV adaptation. Related Story Wccftech’s Best Horror Games of 2023 – A Delightfully Dreadful Year

System shock remake switches to unreal