In 1989, game designer Paul Neurath finished the game Space Rogue, which he developed at Origin System, a well-known studio for the creation of the Ultima saga, created by Richard Garriott. Inspired by games like Wizardry(1981) for its immersive feel and Dungeon Master(1987) for its detailed and colorful graphics, Neurath iterates the idea of Underworld, a first-person RPG game set in a dark cavern where you're free to move as wanted. In 1990 Neurath started Blue Sky Productions, in Salem. The study was made up of Doug Church (programmer), Doug Wike (artist), and himself as a designer, he would begin to create Underworld. In the summer of the same year, they showed a demo of them at the Consumer Electronics Show, and Warren Spector became interested in it, and Origin agreed to be the game's publisher, with the only change being that the game would take part in the universe from Ultima, and that's how Ultima Underworld: The Stigma Abyss began to thrive. After losing 2 producers and Origin losing interest in the game, Spector came in as a producer and helped the studio release the game in March 1992. Ultima was a critical and commercial success, there was no experience the same in a 3D game from a first-person perspective. The game offered an immersion thanks to certain elements never seen before, and that would mark the beginning of the Immersive Sims [4,1].
After launch, Blue Sky Productions teamed up with Lener Research, a 3D simulation focused company that had already worked on Ultima Underworld, the merger of these 2 companies created Looking Glass Technologies[1,1]its name changed to Studio in 1996[5]. With this new line-up they would make the sequel to Ultima, but this time they would have to recycle many things from the first to be able to have it ready in 9 months, but that time was invested in putting 4 expert people in a D&D campaign and designing a wide range of possibilities that the player could do. Even with all the failures, bugs, and requirements that it asked for to be able to play correctly, it was a critical success, but not in sales, falling short of its predecessor, and while the studio worked on fixing the bugs in the game, Warren Spector, Austin Grossman, Paul Neurath, and Doug Church started working on a new idea, collecting everything done in the previous game to be able to translate it into a science fiction environment [1,2].
System Shock would come out in 1994, and you will take on the role of a hacker who has to stop an artificial intelligence that has taken over the Saturn space station. Although they took things from Ultima, this time they would have a new world to work in where they could continue with their design philosophy but with different possibilities, each area of the game will have its own tools to deal with them and they would increase[4,2], which is a fundamental part of Immersive, being able to choose how to solve a problem.
The cascading or menu conversations will be eliminated and would give way to one of the most important features of the game, all the information would be available on station devices, in the form of emails, audio diaries, or crew conversations, all this helped to enrich the immersion, in this way the history of the ship would be told and it would give clues about discoveries that we can make, and in a non-linear way, we will enter its world. The game interface would be customizable, since the protagonist has cybernetic implants and can display all the information he wants on the screen, making it diegetic[1,3] .
All these points help to immerse the game but it would be Shodan, the terrifying artificial intelligence and antagonist, who would give it the final touch, Shodan is alive, controls the entire station, communicates with you, and will be aware of everything you do by the station, and the station is responsive and interactive. Despite critical praise, the game did not sell as expected, but enough to keep the studio afloat.
After System Shock, Looking Glass developed more games and were self-published, such as Flight Unlimited (1995) an aircraft simulator that sold very well, and the critically acclaimed Terra Nova (1996) a mech combat game. but that it was a financial flop, things got worse when after 18 months of development the Star Trek game was canceled, and it was no better with their 3 self-published games, British Open Championship(1997), which was another commercial disaster[4,2]. That's when Thief: The Dark Project will start to take on more importance.
The idea of Thief began in 1996, as some prototypes of a game that wanted to be set in the world of King Arthur, but changing the good guys for the bad guys, Spector, Levine, and Church were the first to start devising the Dark Camelot project, they wanted that it was a game where you infiltrate Camelot and perform spy tasks, convince others to join your faction, find clues and maps, steal things… [1,4] Pau Neurath emphasized the stealing mechanic, and the game went further down that path.
After the last financial failures of the studio, such as Terra Nova or the British Open Championship, many of the workers left, such as Warren Spector and Ken Levine, the latter was appointed to make a Star Trek graphic adventure (which ended up being canceled) and Thief publisher Edios thought about canceling the game twice, but after all the trouble Thief: The Dark Project came out and was a resounding success. One of the keys to its success was thanks to the new studio engine, Thief had it's core clear, that the player decides how to face the challenges, and that is what The Dark Engine provided, an engine that allowed the environment and the NPC respond to the player's stimuli, such as sounds or actions performed by the player, as well as allowing interaction with the stage through the creation of objects by joining different elements collected in it. Other points were the simulation of realistic physics like those of the arch [1,5].
The engine had such an impact that they continue to use it in subsequent games, even fans continue to use it to make new levels for those games. This is where the idea that the player can meet the challenge in different ways, as Spector wanted with his games of D&D.
In 1997 Looking Glass Studios collaborated with Irrational Games to develop a game together, it would be a science-fiction game called Junction Point. In those first contacts, it was thought to create a massively multiplayer online, but that idea was discarded. Finally, he got a publisher, EA, and this one had the intellectual property of System Shock, since he bought Origin Systems, the publisher of the aforementioned. The publisher commented that this game could be a sequel to the first System Shock, and that's how System Shock 2 was released in 1999[1,6].
After passing your training, the game shows you a cinematic where they tell you about the Von Braun, the new ship that can travel faster than light, and that after waking up from your cryosleep, it has been taken by Shodan and The Crowd, two forces fighting each other to gain control of the ship. All this happens 42 years after the first game.
This sequel maintains the same format to tell you and delve into its story, but adds improvements in all aspects and gives the player more freedom in how they want to solve problems, apart from that, in this game horror plays a fundamental role, not only do you have Shodan an AI that is self-aware, but you add a ship full of crimes and atrocities, with a crew converted into cyborgs, and one of Shodan's creations called The Many, who turns against her and try to convince you to join them, with a voice that has nothing to envy Shodan, the entire scenario of System Shock 2 is taken care of so that you enter their world and fully exploit all the possibilities they offer.
System Shock 2 was a critical success but sold around 60,000 copies in the first 6 months.
Eidos wanted 4 more games about Thief, so first they made Thief gold(1998), an improvement on the first thief, with new maps and improvements on them.
Due to the situation of the studio, where on many occasions they were close to going bankrupt, many of the veteran employees left, but that gave the new ones who came in a chance to shine in this game. They moved away from the paranormal theme and focused on new forms of the idea of being a thief, although losing some variety along the way[3,3].
With Thief 2 the engine was in its 3rd iteration, making it enrich the experience, the guards could notice more details of the scenery and your actions, and the engine could generate new lights, rain, and fog for certain levels… The number of polygons increased and improved cinematics. The game took everything players loved about the first one and focused more on those parts, with more emphasis on stealth, and strategizing and less focus on combat[4,3].
Thief 2 was a commercial success, but due to the studio not receiving royalties for several months, their recent loss with Flight Unlimited III and their various commercial failures along with their time of self-publishing games caused the studio to close 2 months after the release. output[4,3].
As a final farewell, Mike Chrzanowski recorded a video of himself walking around the office and talking to employees[8].
Throughout the life of the studio, many left before the end, either because they had ideas of their own that they wanted to develop or because they saw that the studio could not stand forever
Warren Spector ended up having an office for himself in Looking Glass, but it had to be closed for the studio to survive. While Spector was negotiating with a studio called WestWood (which EA later acquired) he received a call from John Romero, a well-known developer who, together with John Carmak, would found Id Software in 1991 and make games like Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D. Romero offered him a job in his studio, but Spector already had a contract almost signed with another company, Romero traveled to his office and offered him the best offer he had ever seen, an unlimited budget, a marketing budget that exceeds everything is seen and the creative freedom to be able to make the game of your dreams.
Warren Spector joined Ion Storm in 1997 in the Austin office, where Spector is developing his iconic game, Deux Ex (2001), a video game whose mix of genres would make it a total success and which would show that shooting games still could contribute many things. The game ended up selling more than a million copies and was considered one of the best video games in history. Deus Ex added a lot of layers of depth to Immersive Sims, apart from another cult game within the [2,2] genre.
After 18 months of work, the point and click adventure Star Trek was canceled and the studio's financial problems caused Ken Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier to leave to create Irrational Games in 1997 [1,4], where their first game, System Shock 2, was a collaboration with Looking Glass, but years later they would release Bioshock(2007), a spiritual sequel to System Shock it would be a resounding success across the board.
Harvey Smith, after leaving Looking Glass and working on the first 2 Deus Ex and oter games, joined Arkane Studios, which before his arrival was already producing games with the idea of the Immersive Sims, but years later Smith would design and start the Dishonored saga, a clear successor to Thief and the studio's flagship game. To this day they continue betting on this type of game, Prey (2017) a clear return to System Shock. And although they are not usually best-selling games, they continue to be maintained and with a very good reviews in their games. His latest game, Death Loop (2021) continues with the studio's formulas, although with quite a lot of division of opinion as to whether he has strayed too far from it.
After the organizational disaster that was 2K Marin, the studio behind Bioshock 2 and its DLC, Steve Gaynor, Johnnemann Nordhagen, and Karla Zimonja founded Fullbright in 2012 [2,3] and with Gone Home, a Bioshock, but without violence, the “Walking Simulator” genre would have a lot of relevance in the medium and would be in the spotlight, and although they already existed before, The premise of living an immersive and generally personal experience fits perfectly with the genre.
The legacy left by Looking Glass studios is difficult to measure, it was a laboratory of geniuses who changed the world of video games, and if you trace the careers of some of its members, you will see that they have contributed a lot to video games, and not only that, although many games do not follow the structure of the Immersive Sims as much, as the Metro saga could be, the technological advances and design philosophies will make many in the industry inspired by it, causing them to either enter the industry or the get better being inside.
Today we would talk about the systemic crunch that was in Looking Glass, but the vast majority of workers talk about the great creative space that was the studio and adding that they were working on something that they were passionate about, which made everyone work more than they normally do. Many would sleep over at their workspace or even have an idea they needed to test and go to the office at 3am to implement it, only to find more people in the studio hanging out or working on those ideas. They explain that this was something unsustainable, and bad for health, but that it was a decision they made themselves, out of the desire to create something incredible, but never do this if the company has it as something within the planning and they are forcing it to [3,4].