Let’s see how far I can take it.’” So far, Kick has taken it all the way to a lavish, ground-up remake of System Shock, built by his own game studio, the remaster specialists Nightdive.īut his journey with System Shock, the series that kickstarted Nightdive and ultimately led to its purchase by Atari for an initial consideration of $10 million, didn’t start in the jungle. And it really ignited this passion for, ‘Hey, I’ve got this far. “The intent of the trip was to expose myself to things that were brand new, so that my brain could connect some new synapses and make some new experiences and maybe find inspiration in things that previously I may not have known about. “From then on, I felt like I had just jumped into the ocean,” he says. “It’s not really in my near future, you know?” And yet, finding himself at an existential crossroads, Kick pitched the insurance company on re-releasing System Shock 2. “I’m in the middle of the jungle on satellite internet,” he recalls now. Hardly the foundation for a follow-up to two of the most acclaimed PC games of all time. More to the point, he had no more than $5,000 to his name. He had no business background, and none of the acumen required to understand contracts or negotiate licensing fees.

Up until that point, Kick had dedicated his life to creative pursuits. Instead, it was asked of Stephen Kick - at the time, a recently unemployed videogame artist holidaying in a Guatemalan hostel. It’s a question you could imagine being posed to Ken Levine, or Warren Spector, or several other notable designers who could reasonably lay claim to the legacy of Looking Glass and Irrational’s legendary immersive sims.

“What do you want to do with it? Do you want to make a sequel?” “Oh yeah, we’ve got the System Shock IP,” said the insurance company.

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