Irrational Games Writer: Developing ‘BioShock Infinite’ Is An Iterative Process

We had the chance to catch up with Drew Holmes, one of the writers at Irrational Games, who’s currently working on the upcoming BioShock Infinite. 

Speaking to Gameranx’s Jordan Garland, Holmes had a good number of things to say about the game’s on-going development, and he shed some light on how the game came about throughout its creation over the years since the studio announced it at E3 a few years back.

Holmes, who only joined the team in March last year, said that much had changed with the game since Irrational Games showed it off publicly a year before then. 

“There are certain aspects that have changed a lot, and there are certain aspects that have changed very little,” he said, “I think one of the really inspiring things about working at Irrational is the willingness to throw stuff away and start over, make it better. It's an iterational process that I think I'm familiar with, being a writer, you write and then you rewrite and you throw things away and you rework.”

“I think that's pretty much the style of how we develop games at Irrational and I think it's due, largely in part to having Ken being the leader of the studio. He's a writer first and foremost and that's just what he's used to, he know that's how you make the quality of your product better. 

“I think that it's certainly not without its heartbreak or head-butting and I think often, sometimes people work on something and invest so much of themselves, to see it get thrown away.”

Holmes further explained his philosophy to us as a writer and how he treats the subjects of his creation and described the experiments Irrational Games performed for the game over the course of its development. You can read about that in part one of our interview.