When Dauch first started talking with Levine, it was clear from the start that BioShock's creator knew board games well.
"They made it very clear that they weren't interested in a cash-in. It was clear to me that this was kind of a prestige project for them. ... And the fact that these people thought it was cool to have a board game out speaks to the kind of people that they are."
But after that initial info-dump in 2011, when he and his designers had gorged on all the inside information about Columbia and its inhabitants, Dauch began to see less and less of Levine. He would come by mostly to inspect the miniatures.
There came a point in the summer of 2012 when there was no new information on the game, on the art, on the story available to share with the Plaid Hat team. Dauch and company realized that they still didn't know what Columbia looked like.
Area-control games are very much about the board they're played on, and playtesting could only go so far without one. Vega's combat and economic systems began to gel. The fiction of the board game was able to take, at times, a different path than the fiction of the video game. Handymen, turrets and upgrades worked elegantly in ways that mirrored how the video game played. But there was still no board.
Dauch and his designers were reduced to picking through video game news sites for information, taking screenshots from trailers as they were released to the public.
Not long after, Irrational announced that BioShock Infinite would be delayed. It was a shock for fans of the series, but for Plaid Hat it was a blessing. There was more time now to finish the game board, and it allowed Dauch and his team to release their game during the biggest weekend in the hobby games calendar, the weekend of GenCon in August 2013.
In the end, Dauch convinced Irrational to let him, along with Vega and Concept Artist John Ariosa, to come into its studios to play an early beta of BioShock Infinite. In December 2012 they were finally allowed hands-on time with the game.
The three met before the play session in Boston at a coffee shop outside Irrational's studio.
Retelling the story, Dauch lets go of a nervous laugh. "I had very much prepped [Ariosa] for the worst, saying 'I don't know what we're going to be able to look at. ... Whatever we go in there and see you've gotta make a board out of this; this is what it comes down to.'"
They were lead into an empty playtest area, under continuous supervision from Irrational staff. Even their trips to and from the bathroom were escorted.
What they saw surprised them.
Dauch's team could only laugh. Columbia, for all its richness and immersive quality, was actually paper-thin.
"They didn't have ... a map of Columbia," Dauch says. "They just built [levels]. ... And the halls [were] just built from the point of view of Booker. There's no master layout and plan and size, even for the first BioShock to this day."
With developer debug codes turned on they were floating above what looked like a Hollywood backlot. The facades of buildings existed, the shells of their main rooms protruding behind them, but with nothing more. There wasn't even a logical connection between the various areas. Where was Finkton in relation to Battleship Bay? No one could tell them.
Dauch's team could only laugh. Columbia, for all its richness and immersive quality, was actually paper-thin. All this time they'd been waiting for the answers to their questions, when in the end they could have their game board pretty much however they wanted.
They spent their time capturing the landmarks of Columbia, with Ariosa making colorful sketches on his Wacom tablet as they went. Dauch had just been to Walt Disney World a few months before with his family, and the parallels to the way Levine's team had designed Columbia jumped out at him. He and Ariosa began to work on a game board that looked a lot like the map visitors get when they first arrive at the Magic Kingdom.
