Arkane Studios - The Mirror Men @ The Verge
The Verge has a fantastic article titled The Mirror Men of Arkane that examines the formative times of Raf Colantonio and Harvey Smith, their similarities and how their lives eventually intersected. This is a great read, both as a games article and a human interest story:
It is 1993. It is a time of great change.
Bill Clinton is the President of the United States. A bomb explodes in a parking garage at the World Trade Center. Intel introduces the new Pentium processors. Computer scientists at CERN invent the World Wide Web.
Jurassic Park is in theaters. Nirvana is on the radio.
Doom is on computers.
Meanwhile, a company called Origin Systems is making a game called System Shock. Like Doom, it will change the way games are made forever, but in a different way and for different reasons.
Where Doom is brash, bold, massively popular, and a harbinger of the blockbuster multiplayer games to come, System Shock is introspective, narratively rich, and technologically innovative. Aggressively single-player. It will spawn a lineage of direct and spiritual sequels that are still revered among gamers today, and will inspire game makers for decades to come.
Two of those game makers are Raphael Colantonio and Harvey Smith.
Both men will fall in love with a game called Ultima Underworld. Both men will assume it was made by Origin Systems (it wasn't). Both men will decide to break into games so that they make one just like it.
Over the next 20 years, their resumes will include stints working with companies like EA, Valve, Origin, Ion Storm, 2K Games, Activision, Ubisoft, Looking Glass, and Midway. Separately, they will help build games like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Thief, Dark Messiah, Relentless and Arx Fatalis.
Twenty years later, along with a team of like-minded folks, they will build a game called Dishonored.This is their story. It begins in 1993.