Not every aspect of the game evolved so effortlessly. At one point the team needed to create a demo for the American video game magazine Game Informer. The magazine was set to run a BioShock cover story. "The pressure was on to create something that would impress, and our deadline was looming," says LeBreton. "In a level review, there was some discussion of how an AI should be presented in the short demo. Someone mentioned System Shock 2's evasive cyborg ninjas as a reference point. Ken threw his glasses down and yelled: 'I don't want to hear anything about any f***ing cyborg ninjas!'"

When Paul Hellquist, lead level designer on the project tried to interject, Levine screamed: "Shut up!" "This stunned everyone into silence," recalls LeBreton. "This was still early in my time at Irrational, and I wasn't sure what to make of it. Other folks were upset, but in a way that indicated this was something that had happened before."

"One of the central themes of BioShock's development was the tension between our initial aim to make a spiritual sequel to System Shock 2 and the need to make a very successful mass-market console game," recalls Chey. "Shortly after the game's strong showing at E3 2006, Ken emerged from discussions with 2K marketing and announced to the team that we would be marketing the game as a shooter - but not to worry, we were still making the same smart FPS/RPG hybrid, we might just make a few small design adjustments here and there to make it accessible to the Halo crowd." Lead artist Shawn Robertson understands why 2K made the change. "At the time, creating a game that was set in an underwater failed utopia espousing objectivist values didn't really seem like something that the public at large would enjoy," he says.

As the game's budget swelled, the pressure to create something with mass-market appeal increased in kind. LeBreton considers that Levine's outburst derived not only from a desire for creative rigour, but also fear. "I think it stemmed from a growing lack of trust in the people he'd hired." Levine's strong objection to the reference to 'cyborg ninjas' may also have stemmed from a tension between his own formative nerd interests, and the desire for his work to reach a wide, mainstream audience and to be respected as a creator outside of the video game playing public. During a BAFTA interview in 2013, Levine talked candidly about how, as a lonely child, he would play Dungeons & Dragons by himself. Video games were "my only friend," he said at the time. "Anything that reminded Ken of the nerdy roots from which BioShock sprang was terrifying to him," says LeBreton.