BioShock is shaping up to be a real critical darling, with all of the early reviews coming back glowing � including a very rare 10 out of 10 from GameDaily. Most of them cite the game's unique retro-future looks, original setting and compelling plot. What will perk up the attention of most buyers � or the ones who aren't already sold on the game, that is � are the TV ad spots.

A good TV spot can really help make an ad campaign and BioShock has a doozy of an ad. Action packed, eerie and representative of the game, it may just be the best ad all year. It may take this once niche-looking title and help blow it up mainstream.

We talked with Limore Shur, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of EyeballNYC, to discuss what makes his company's BioShock ads so shocking.

Like most ad houses, EyeballNYC is probably unknown to you unless you deal directly with ads in your line of work. However, there's little doubt that you've seen their ads if you've turned on a TV in the past decade. Their wide variety of clientele includes Pringles, Target, Comedy Central, Heineken, Nike, Best Buy, G4, Jeep, Cingular, and Charles Schwab, but amazingly the agency has little experience in the gaming realm.

"We did an end tag once for PlayStation, but I'd say no [we haven't really worked with games]," said Shur. "I got into CGI in the late '80s and 3D has been hardcore in our business ever since then, but we never actively did some game stuff before. We've sort of run the gamut. Like most gamers we were child prodigies."

"I started this company in '93, and just to show the viability of this New York firm, we helped brand Country Music Television," he continued. "Our mentality with this was, 'Let's show what a design studio can do to make expectations greater.' We're always thrilled by new opportunities and I'm very happy with the results of the BioShock spot and we feel like we really made an impact on this."

The first image of the TV spot is that of a man in 1960 period clothes being thrown into the water by an explosion. Images of Rapture switch to that of the main character fighting a Big Daddy, while the Little Sister hangs back with eerily glowing red eyes. All of this is set to the oddly appropriate sound of Bobby Darin's classic pop-Jazz song Beyond the Sea, which plays hypnotically in the background. Descriptions can do it no justice, however, and it's recommended that you watch it at http://www.eyeballnyc.com/.

"Our approach was that we wanted to change the way people look at first-person shooters... with dynamic images that change what people perceive and how they play a game," detailed Shur. "To do this, we wanted to create a very cinematic approach, by constantly making you feel like you're moving. We wanted to show the great actions and movement of the characters and also demonstrate that there are surprises around every corner. We thought, 'What would we do if this was a movie and we were filming it?' If you're watching someone else playing a game, you're detached from the action, but something like this throws you right in. We also went for strong atmospherics and we think that we achieved this painterly quality to the look, with Ridley Scott Blade Runner lighting added on. We took in every 3D animator in New York City and we flew people in from all over the place to do this spot and we worked on it for about three and a half months."

"There are so many layers of rules [for commercials], such as a kid can't be in danger, no blood and so on, that we had to do a lot of playing with camera tricks and deciding what specific areas of the game to show. We had all these different ideas on how to make a spot like this. We did deco without the gaudiness, noir without the cheese," he explained. "Now, I'm not trying to brag about this, but the testing revealed that the ads showed so well, the guy doing it was worried that he was fudging the numbers. Literally everyone showed heavy interest in the game after seeing the ad. 2K and RDA International gave us a large amount of space to work with. You can imagine showing this as storyboards and they didn't understand how it would connect. We were fortunate to have their trust, however."

We asked Shur if he saw the original game trailer for BioShock, which was more straightforward and gameplay-like, but also much more violent. He agreed about the direct approach with the gameplay (which Eyeball avoided consciously) and stated, of the unnerving parts where a Big Daddy drill goes through a hand and then back from a first-person perspective, "It's like watching someone juggle kittens."

We chatted at length with Shur about how one exists as an artist in the modern world. While practically everyone at EyeballNYC was classically trained as an artist, the making of commercials is not traditionally considered "high art." The same principles still apply, however, and Shur noted that he and his colleagues study the past rather than their contemporaries so as to avoid derivative products.

"The hypocrisy of what we do is that we're artists trying to present something of ourselves and, at the same time, making sure it's something that the client wants," confessed Shur. "How do you make something that makes somebody want to invest a month of their life? How do you immediately engage the consumer, even if they don't initially understand the concept? We promised that, after people see it, they'll say, 'What the f**k was that? We want to see more!' We do that with foundational art theory; you can make a poster of each frame. We wanted to create something that was a moment of depth. So we built the whole spot as a flashback and we draw you in slowly. There's this epic image of someone drowning and there's some sort of fire above. At that moment, we show the city and it's from that point that we start to screw with you. Nothing's more creepy in North America than little girls with red eyes. Then we go with more action, and then there's the Big Daddy and Little Sister."

"We're thinkers and commercial designers and we have had tremendous experience in CGI because we were the first to step into this field," he added. "We decided, 'Let's go at it like thinkers, and use what's most compelling.' We try to make things that are speaking specifically for [the client] that feed off of our foundation as artists."

Going forward, EyeballNYC will continue offering its skills to a variety of clients. Shur was self-deprecating, saying that he was "ADD" in his focus and that their longevity and vitality was due to the fact that they were poor businessmen, so they couldn't rest on their laurels. Still, he expressed interest in working with a game brand again, should the wind be blowing that way again.

"We were grateful for the opportunity to do this for BioShock and to have a mostly free hand since we think that's rare these days, and it's an integral part of the creative solution . We look forward to what challenges us next, like, 'What can we do with this game?' Give us a brand, we'll make it shine," he concluded.