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BioShock studio 'winding down,' new studio being formed by Ken Levine
Originally posted by Polygon
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I would click on that link but Polygon doesn't deserve the hit.Last edited by JimLeavy59; 02-18-2014, 01:06 PM. -
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A Message From Ken Levine
When Jon Chey, Rob Fermier and I founded Irrational Games seventeen years ago, our mission was to make visually unique worlds and populate them with singular characters.
We built Rapture and Columbia, the Von Braun and The Rickenbacker, the Freedom Fortress and some of the nastiest basements a SWAT team ever set foot into. We created Booker and Elizabeth, the Big Daddy and the Little Sister, MidWives and ManBot. In that time, Irrational has grown larger and more successful than we could have conceived when we began our three-person studio in a living room in Cambridge, MA. It’s been the defining project of my professional life.
Now Irrational Games is about to roll out the last DLC for BioShock Infinite and people are understandably asking: What’s next?
Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best one. And working with the incredible team at Irrational Games is indeed the best job I’ve ever had. While I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience.
I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it. I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two. That is going to mean parting ways with all but about fifteen members of the Irrational team. There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give them during this transition.
Besides financial support, the staff will have access to the studio for a period of time to say their goodbyes and put together their portfolios. Other Take-Two studios will be on hand to discuss opportunities within the company, and we’ll be hosting a recruiting day where we’ll be giving 3rd party studios and publishers a chance to hold interviews with departing Irrational staff.*
What’s next?
In time we will announce a new endeavor with a new goal: To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable. To foster the most direct relationship with our fans possible, we will focus exclusively on content delivered digitally.
When I first contemplated what I wanted to do, it became very clear to me that we were going to need a long period of design. Initially, I thought the only way to build this venture was with a classical startup model, a risk I was prepared to take. But when I talked to Take-Two about the idea, they convinced me that there was no better place to pursue this new chapter than within their walls. After all, they’re the ones who believed in and supported BioShock in the first place.
Thanks to Irrational and 2K’s passion in developing the games, and the fans who believe in it, BioShock has generated retail revenues of over a half billion dollars and secured an iconic place in gaming. I’m handing the reins of our creation, the BioShock universe, to 2K so our new venture can focus entirely on replayable narrative. If we’re lucky, we’ll build something half as memorable as BioShock.
We do our best to update an FAQ in this space as questions come in.
-Ken Levine
@iglevineComment
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now i get wombat's twitter comment. damn. hate to see people out of work.
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I guess that's what happens when you make a game that was a shadow of the original, in my opinion (and I'm guessing lots of others based on this situation) and don't release eagerly anticipated dlc until a year later after the game released. However, I hate to see anyone in the game industry lose their job, especially of this magnitude at a major studio.
Does anyone know what the sales numbers were? I thought it still sold well? Did it not meet expectations? I'm sure they were lofty.
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Bioshock Infinite is by no means in any shadow.Comment
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I don't know about the sales, but reviews were extremely favorable for the game. I didn't play it, but those I know who did were raving about it.
From reading Levine's letter and trying to interpret between the lines, it seems to me he doesn't want to be involved in a huge title like Bioshock anymore. More than likely, he's burnt out over the time constraints put on him to make sure the game is coming out when the parent company wants it, rather than making the game on his time.Comment
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I think it is. It pales in comparison to the original.
Yeah, the reviews were nuts, and that's what baffled me. But honestly, did anyone expect anything less? This game could've been a cow patty in a box and reviewers would've been making 10's rain like dollar bills at a strip club. Ken Levine and Irrational bring that cache with them. Just like Titanfall. Because of the reputaion that Zampella and West have (which I think is blown way out of proportion) I can already guarantee you that it will receive glowing review scores from EVERY major outlet. Even though word from *unbiased* people that have invested plenty of time with the beta have tons of critiques including the weapons not having any recoil, the parkour stuff not working a good percentage of the time and the AI just being completely dumb and pointless. But agi, guaranteed 10/10. I was listening to the Game Informer podcast of their GotY discussion just yesterday. Out of their writers they all decided that the battle for GotY was obviously between Infinite, TLOU and GTA. But what was funny that the ones that wanted Infinite as Goty, including the reviewer that gave it a 10/10, talked about all of the issues they had with the game, which were major issues. They are also the issues that I had with the game and why I was so utterly disappointed. They talked about how rote the combat was, how predictable the battles were, how the vigors were far less interesting than the plasmids in the original and other things like the inventory acces being an issue. It seems like they completely hung their hat on the characters, setting and the story, which the whole alternate dimension/time warp thing has been done countless times. It baffled me that they could ding the game for so many major things and still give it a perfect score and argue it was the best game of 2013.
And say what you will about an individual person's opinion but my wife is one of the biggest Bioshock fans you'll ver meet. She's played through the fist two games at least five times each. She has several Bioshock t-shirts. Her PS3 theme has been Bioshock since it was available and she refuses to change it. She was 1000 times more dispappointed in Infinite than I was. Hell, I bought two versions of the game, including a $150 CE, because we were so excited about it. Yet any time even the name of this game comes up her immediate reaction is "I still can't believe how disappointing that game was."Last edited by Twigg4075; 02-19-2014, 01:10 PM.
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I have applied there for jobs for at least 5 years and never heard back from them. Their office was in a shitty spot outside of Boston.Comment
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I'm pretty sure Infinite sold well. It was overrated in its reviews, but then, so was Bioshock 1. Irrational hasn't put out a truly unique game/concept since Freedom Force. Hopefully Levine shrinking his next company's size will get them back to times like System Shock 2 and Freedom Force.
And yeah, everything I've read made it sound like this was a personal choice of Levine's. Whether or not that's true, who knows, but that's what it sounds like.Comment
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It may be the fact that I've never played the System Shock games but I was pretty blown away by the first Bioshock based on it's originality and atmosphere/setting alone.
I thought I remember an article or interview with him where he basically said that making Infinite was a much larger task than he had ever imagined and it was taking its toll. I could be completely imgaing that though.Last edited by Twigg4075; 02-19-2014, 01:29 PM.
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The setting was definitely great, and I don't begrudge anyone that played Bioshock first loving it (hell, I loved it -- it just didn't have quite the same bang for me as it felt like a nerfed System Shock). Especially console only gamers.
I feel like I read that about Levine too, and maybe even Irrational in general. That game had such an awful production life, and it just reeked of them biting off more than they could chew, then basically spending two years in constant crunch time most likely due to some (much needed) pressure from 2K.
My guess would be smaller projects with smaller budgets will give him freedom to take his time and not feel that pressure again. Unfortunately, with Irrational's history, new-Irrational may never release a game again if they're given all the time that they want.Comment
The game sold 4 million copies in 4 months, it took Bioshock 1 four years to sell 4 million copies.
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