I love developers with a passion for keeping fans involved

Some developers give you the feeling that they like churning out new games year in year out just to make a profit, but then if you look deeper you will find companies like Irrational Games. After a few seconds of being on the Bioshock creators website your quickly able to realize that these developers love games and love all their fans. There you can find podcasts, interviews, the games the devs are playing, as well as much much more.

The section which I personally love the most has to be the vault. It is here that Irrational Games shows off information about games that were never created as well as items which were cut from games that have been released. In the past we have seen part of the original design document for Bioshock to show how different the game was when first proposed to what we all came to know and love upon its release. Along with that came multiple enemies that never made it into the game. Not only are we given images of all this but in depth descriptions of everything that is posted which shows how much Irrational wants to give back to the fans. 

It is also very interesting to see the games which never made it out of the studio. After creating SWAT Irrational started working on a strategic cooperative zombie game that never ended up going far. It would appear that game was ahead of its time because only a few years ago Left 4 Dead would be released and become a huge success off the same concept. 

The most recent game to come out of the vault is Monster Island which in essence gave the player the ability to play as a Godzilla type character or control humans to try and defeat the monster. Interesting premise but the thing that caught my attention the most was what I saw right under the title in the design document. In all the design books I have read it is always mentioned that if you have a game idea which can not be described in a sentence then you do not have a good design. Well moments into reading the document I see "Rampage meets Black and White Creatures in a Fully Destructible Environment", when I read the vault posting which consisted of a few paragraphs thats pretty much what I was thinking but that sentence sums it up perfectly. The concept of this game is great but considering it was proposed in 2001 it is hard to believe technology would have been advanced enough at the time to allow this game to truly shine. This may have led to why it would end up being scrapped in the first place. If this game were to be released this year it could certainly be a top seller because we are now able to create fully destructible physics based environments and online play would make this game very popular. 

As a person who is hoping to become a designer out of college I love seeing things like this because as a fan it is fun to read but when looking at it all in an analytical sense I get to enjoy it all even more. I have so much respect for this company it is unbelievable, Ken Levine is an amazing designer and even the games which do not make it out of his studio appear better than a majority of games that are released each year. I would highly recommend taking a look at www.irrationalgames.com to take a look at all they have to offer.