"I think aside from all of that," Gaynor continued, "the biggest thing was I was just sort of—I got to that point where I was working on Infinite and it was such a huge production and I just realized that I didn't—it was like I don't think I want to work on stuff that's this huge anymore."He went on to describe his experience working on such a large project like BioShock Infinite, saying, "it's such a giant ship... turns really slowly, there's so many dependencies on everything that happens." So Gaynor looked at the situation and said, "Am I going to ship this game?" and since he wasn't confident in committing to that, he believed it was best he leave the project.
"If I don't feel confident in that, the responsible thing to do is just say, 'Alright, I don't think that I can be here for ship so I've just gotta make a clean break now,'" he explained. Gaynor noted that oftentimes in development, if you decide to leave a project six months before launch, "you're putting the rest of the team in a way worse place than if you leave early enough so that they can find somebody to replace you."
So he decided to leave the project after a year, feeling good about the contribution he made to BioShock Infinite, and returned home to Portland, which Gaynor acknowledged was also a contributing factor. "My wife and I were homesick for the Pacific Northwest, so it was just kind of time," he said.Before working on BioShock Infinite, Gaynor helped create the critically acclaimed Minera's Den DLC for BioShock 2. Don't miss our full IGN Unfiltered interview with the Fullbright founder to find out how System Shock 2 inspired what is widely regarded as BioShock 2's best DLC, as well as insight from Gaynor into the development of his studio's latest game, Tacoma.