-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Irrational Games shutting down, 2K takes over BioShock, KL in new 15 person DD studio
- Thread starter Quentyn
- Start date
JasonUresti
Member
Honestly, if he's too scared to or legally barred from speaking about specifics, best not to say anything at all.
Saying That's all wrong but I can't say why or how is saying nothing, just using too many words to do so.
Saying That's all wrong but I can't say why or how is saying nothing, just using too many words to do so.
ChrisMahoney
Banned
You're being unreasonable. Take-Two is who fired everyone. They can't hold employees hostage to force Kevin to work on Bioshock.
This isn't surprising in the least. The game was in development hell for several years. Itt would've had to perform on an insane level to be financial justified. As far as Ken.. he didn't fire everybody, he's more a sacrificial lamb probably for the sake of his employees. It's better to say he cut them than say they couldn't ship a game for over half a Gen
element
Member
mattiewheels
And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
I cannot believe the amount of vitriol from people so sure of the fact that Ken took his ball and ran home and implicitly ruined 100 or so livelihoods. You're really creating your own story at this point, because no facts besides [Irrational closed] and [>100 jobs lost] are out there. Be reasonable for a second, and accept that you can't be disgusted by somebody that you're not really sure played the role you think they did in this mess.
Messofanego
Banned
I guess we won't be getting "capital-J Journalism" and it'll be speculations for a while.
It's telling when multi-million selling AAA games (Tomb Raider) are just not cutting it for return of investment for these big publishers. Big budget narrative games are on the rocks as endeavours. Naughty Dog, Rockstar, and Remedy are the few left.
I'd expect a golden parachute is exactly what this is, but I'm not sure how commonly known that term is. For those that don't know it's basically a contractual stipulation, typically reserved for already extremely highly paid executives, that if they get fired or otherwise lose their job they've basically just won the lottery. Infinite does poorly, 2K feels obligated to show fiscal responsibility to their investors and decides it's time to do away with the studio. They prepare to pay out Levine's lottery winnings while firing the rest - he offers a counter proposal to develop a micro-scale digital-only endeavor to give him an opportunity to prove his commercial viability, and save the jobs of a handful of employees in the process. Both options could potentially even be relatively cost-similar from 2K's perspective, and only one has an opportunity of earning them more monies. They go for it.
No good guys. No bad guys. Just investors with extremely marginal concepts of variance, and a company subject to the whims of their frequently fervent fiscal frustration.
Buckethead
Banned
You guys honestly think 2K would let Ken Levine walk?
Why would they ever do that?
I think that's a false comparison, though.
It's like a developers pouring a bunch of money into Driver or True Crime and expecting it to beat GTA.
I'm not saying they're the same games but Uncharted and Tomb Raider at least offer overlapping experiences.
The problem is most of these games are chasing another game's dollar. Battlefield with COD, Saints Row with GTA, Tomb Raider with Uncharted.
None of these games have any rational basis for selling big #s, it's silly to think they would magically cross over. Even Uncharted, which is in many ways a gold standard, doesn't sell that well, all things considered.
It's laying the blame at the wrong thing (AAA games, narrative games) rather than bad business, mismanagement, and poor direction.
The shoe fits with 2K and Irrational on Infinite as well.
Why would they ever do that?
I'm not even trolling but did Tomb Raider do anything better than Uncharted?
I think that's a false comparison, though.
It's like a developers pouring a bunch of money into Driver or True Crime and expecting it to beat GTA.
I'm not saying they're the same games but Uncharted and Tomb Raider at least offer overlapping experiences.
The problem is most of these games are chasing another game's dollar. Battlefield with COD, Saints Row with GTA, Tomb Raider with Uncharted.
None of these games have any rational basis for selling big #s, it's silly to think they would magically cross over. Even Uncharted, which is in many ways a gold standard, doesn't sell that well, all things considered.
It's laying the blame at the wrong thing (AAA games, narrative games) rather than bad business, mismanagement, and poor direction.
The shoe fits with 2K and Irrational on Infinite as well.
D
Deleted member 22576
Unconfirmed Member
^You've made me curious. Has anyone one Uncharted game sold more than the Tomb Raider reboot? I mean 5 platforms vs. 1... And as a franchise no doubt Tomb Raider has brought in more cash than UC but thats obviously because of the 15 year headstart.
It's the "job" of a public company to constantly chase higher profits. A person is only as valuable as the money they make the company. I mean Apple, for instance, fired Steve Jobs at one time because he failed to make them buckets of money over a very short period of time, likely solely as a consequence of unpredictable variance. That variance is likely the cause of so many problems in this industry and others. Public companies, or at least their "investors", want predictability. They want the stock to just go straight up. And if something doesn't work out perfectly just once, then something must be done - there must be accountability. Which means something is always "being done" since variance is everywhere and perfection is unattainable.
The long view and labors of love are privileges restricted to private companies. If Valve was public we'd be on Half Life 17 by now. And if it somehow didn't sell as well as 16, Gabe's job would be on the line. What's this Steam shit? A large chunk of gamers circa 2003 don't like its initial release, can it NOW.
The long view and labors of love are privileges restricted to private companies. If Valve was public we'd be on Half Life 17 by now. And if it somehow didn't sell as well as 16, Gabe's job would be on the line. What's this Steam shit? A large chunk of gamers circa 2003 don't like its initial release, can it NOW.
Raw sales, from a corporate perspective, are irrelevant. It's raw sales in relation to the expenditures involved. Comparing the sales of game A to game B is oddly enough apples to oranges in many ways.
Buckethead
Banned
Pretty sure all of the Uncharted games have done bigger #s than Tomb Raider 2013 to date and TR is multiplat with a strong brand.
That's essentially my point though.
TR has always been a popular enough game commercially but not done well with critics. Then they jacked the hell out of the budget and it barely made back it's cost. There was no precedent to think they could sell crazy numbers, especially with heavy competition/a game that cannibalizes it's USP.
That's essentially my point though.
TR has always been a popular enough game commercially but not done well with critics. Then they jacked the hell out of the budget and it barely made back it's cost. There was no precedent to think they could sell crazy numbers, especially with heavy competition/a game that cannibalizes it's USP.
Well, someone mentioned Levine's contract on the last page in the other thread.
Buckethead
Banned
The Packers were 5-2 before Aaron Rodgers got injured, then they went 2-4-1 without him.
Point being, the higher you go up the food chain, the typically the more valuable he is to your company.
The issue is that they had Rod Ferguson for over a year shepherding Bioshock: Infinite with a promise of seemly giving him his own dev team, and license to work on a new IP as he wished.
Instead, they tried to foist Mafia 3 on him, so he jumped to MS to work on more Gears of War games.
Take Two have been running without their heads screwed straight for a while in terms of running their dev units. Its pretty telling that not even Take 2 other devs didn't have first pick of the BI guys. You'd think handling transfers within a company would be a hell of a lot easier than laying off, then rehiring.
scytheavatar
Member
People don't want to admit it, but the implosion of Irrational Games due to Bioshock Infinite not hitting COD numbers shows how difficult it is to sustain AAA game development. Take-Two has been bleeding red for a while and they could be closing down Irrational Games and investing in Levine's new smaller studio as a way to move away from committing to the AAA model.
Buckethead
Banned
How is it difficult to have a project plan, keep a running tally of costs and weigh them against reasonable projected sales, and make smart, calculated business decisions for your company and brand?
Ugh, stop this, pls.
Ugh, stop this, pls.
All you need to know about Tomb Raider is money was put aside for the definitive additions and a sequel was green lit as well. The sales forecast and budget was real, but it also was funny corporate accounting.
TR built a new gen engine from scratch that will be leveraged over the next game, and used by Squenix. To expect the game the recoup engine development and game development both was some wishful thinking that the later action by them have shown to be a bit disingenuous in their "failure". Now a days you either license a third party, or you build a long term investment from scratch. No game spends money to build a one off engine anymore.
Basically they moved GAAP beans around to write it off on the last fiscal year and sent out a story to that effect to legitimize it. Squenix overall seems pretty happy with its reception and they got a costly next gen engine out of the way at the same time.
ColonelColon
Member
Some interesting info that's probably relevant to Levine's next project is in this article: http://gotgame.com/2014/02/18/what-is-bioshock-creator-ken-levines-next-project/
He's mentioned an idea he calls "narrative lego", in which an emergent narrative is generated from small pieces of a story, based on player input. Apparently, he's going to speak about this at GDC.
He's mentioned an idea he calls "narrative lego", in which an emergent narrative is generated from small pieces of a story, based on player input. Apparently, he's going to speak about this at GDC.
It's absurdly difficult.
How do you project the sales of Destiny? Of the XBox One? Of the PS4?
Even market testing isn't really all that informative. That's something that's been reasonable well established and that the XBox One will likely become a poster child for. Do you think Microsoft didn't focus test the pants off the XBone? It undoubtedly scored incredibly well. Incidentally, modestly incremental products + gimmick tend to score great with focus groups.
This is actually the exact reason companies like Activision/Ubi are starting to simply keep releasing the exact same game over and over with very slight tweaks. They want predictability. Of course even there things start to sway in the wind. When gamers get tired of your product, they really get tired of it. Activision has started simultaneously developing the next 3 Call of Duties. When gamers decide they're sick of paying $60+$20+$10+$15 for the same game every year, that's going to lead to a meltdown of catastrophic proportions.
I'm not sure how he means this outside of.. I don't know.. procedurally generated stories? But computers SUCK at telling good stories. They've never been humans, and they've never lived lives. It's going to be sterile because you've programmed it to tell generic stories. So to avoid that, you have to make a bazillion hand-crafted little story bits and then... well, then it's still put together by a computer, isn't it? Then where does the cohesion come from? Is Levine taking his "story as interpretive dance" thing all the way, hoping that a brick-a-brack story generator's holes will always be interpreted as being meaningful?
I'm pretty skeptical about how he's going to do it, short of falling short of his goals, or spending two decades writing an actual artificial intelligence. It just sounds sort of impossible. I wish him luck, though.
ZackieChan
Member
The old saying "if it was easy, everyone would be doing it," comes to mind.
None of this is easy, and even when you have good research, nothing is guaranteed. Look at the Xbone. Do you think that Microsoft doesn't have a bunch of extremely intelligent people doing research on the market for them? How, then, could they have completely misread the market with their initial plans? It's just not as easy as you think.
Things get out of hand, and when you have human "soft" factors in the mix, it makes it increasingly more difficult.
Steve wasn't the CEO when he left, and he left after a power struggle. He was trying to organize a boardroom coup to kick out Apple's CEO, John Sculley. The board sided with Sculley and removed Jobs as head of the Macintosh division.
NoPiece
Member
Computers SUCK at ______________. Insert any word you want into the blank, and it was true at some point. Computers used to suck at drawing triangles, now they are amazing. You have to start somewhere.
NinjaCarrot
Member
I really enjoyed reading this article on the subject: http://theconversation.com/games-by-humans-23399
"the main thrust of the release is What Will Levine Do Next?, relying on the crux that its audience has long personified Irrationals creative output in Levine alone."
"the main thrust of the release is What Will Levine Do Next?, relying on the crux that its audience has long personified Irrationals creative output in Levine alone."
Turin Turambar
Member
It's a bit... bad taste, professionally speaking? amateur? to say it now. It's very like:
"Oh guys, this BIG news of today, that everyone is speaking of?? Oh, I actually knew before everyone else since one year ago. I totally could have made a Shocking News if I wanted and be super relevant in games journalism. I just didn't report it because.... uh... reasons".
Yep, it could be true, of course. Most probably, it's true. I'm not saying she is a liar. But at this point, there is no evidence, and she chose to stay silent one year ago, so going now she secretly knew all along... ehh. I don't like it. It's ok she chose to not make a news of it one year ago, but then don't make it now. Too late for it.
Baron_Calamity
Member
As much as I can't stand Leigh Alexander, she was totally on point with that article. She heard speculation and thats it. We all did. However given the nature of the business, almost any studio could be shut down in a year. This industry isn't known for its stability. If she heard two weeks in advance, then maybe she would have a story.
I took that piece as explaining why many were not surprised Irrational shut down.
Turin Turambar
Member
The rest of the piece is good, I give her that!
PetriP-TNT
Member
Well shit. This kinda sucks, maybe its time I play Infinite, the only IG game I havent played yet
GI.biz did a piece and received a comment from Take2: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-19-the-irrational-decision
Why are they going to out of their skin not to say 'we closed the studio' in those words? They have no problem 'announcing' they are shutting this or that studio but they are really trying hard with the phrasing this time. Are they afraid of getting fan and media backlash is they had said in plain words 'we are shutting down your beloved AAA studio'? Silly. People who lament this outcome aren't going to be less upset because you put it that way.
You're missing the point, I think. Leigh brings up some really interesting (and tough) questions about how much a journalist should share, and whether it's really in the public interest for a company's dirty laundry to be aired. My perspective tends to be "publish everything I know, if it's true," but Leigh's piece made me think a lot about that mentality.
Buckethead
Banned
I don't disagree that it takes effort and intelligence however Bioshock never sold that well in the first place.
The franchise never had any precedence for high sales judging by the sales of the first two games, even with a fully-grown install base.
Also, yes it's a FPS of sorts, but when has a game that comments on religion, politics, and class structure shown to do well on the open market?
All this to say, anything but a little higher sales was highly speculative of 2K and throwing a ton of money at this game was a fundamentally poor decision.
I'd be interested in their market research and the conclusions they faced however I think Nintendo and Microsoft both likely rationalized poor data to fit their conclusions to justify/offset R&D costs.
Both probably had good intentions, both for themselves and the market at large, but in the end, yes I would say they made uninformed decisions in some capacity.
Here you go. In Sculley's own words:
He himself now bemoans the results oriented decision. Knee jerk results oriented decisions are seemingly just an accepted part of public companies. "If you lose, you're out" sounds sexy but in reality it's absurdly naive. It completely ignores the absolute reality of variance. The world be such a nicer place if reading Fooled by Randomness was required before being allowed to invest in anything or hold any managerial/executive level position.
I love irrational games. I am based out of Boston and 14 years ago my second interview out of college was with irrational to be their IT person. I even interviewed with Ken at the time. Unfortunately I did not get the job.
Flash forward to a year ago and I get a call from the current IT manager at Irrational wanting to interview me for his position since he was leaving. I have been a gamer my entire life and I follow the industry closely. Working for a game company has always been a dream of mine.
However I am also older now with a family, mortgage and other responsibilities. I know from following the industry how often developer go out of business and I even asked how financially viable the company is should Bioshock Infinite fail to hit it's marks. Long story short I declined to pursue the position.
After hearing the news yesterday of the studio's closing it shows i made the correct decision.
Flash forward to a year ago and I get a call from the current IT manager at Irrational wanting to interview me for his position since he was leaving. I have been a gamer my entire life and I follow the industry closely. Working for a game company has always been a dream of mine.
However I am also older now with a family, mortgage and other responsibilities. I know from following the industry how often developer go out of business and I even asked how financially viable the company is should Bioshock Infinite fail to hit it's marks. Long story short I declined to pursue the position.
After hearing the news yesterday of the studio's closing it shows i made the correct decision.
Andrew Korenchkin
Member
So Ken...
Will you release your content on consoles?
Will you release your content on consoles?
It was a power clash, the board had to decide to fire either Sculley or Jobs. You can't say that they weren't considering removing Sculley when there's plenty of details about the boardroom coup attempt by Jobs. It was not a knee jerk response to results, it was a response to a power struggle with one of its biggest shareholders.
Most people suck at telling good stories. And you're asking a computer to create a story all on its own with genuine soul? Because that's what a good story takes. So either you spend a bunch of time creating a soulless machine story, or you spend the rest of your life redefining artificial intelligence, or you hand craft it yourself and cut it up so a machine decides which order things happen in, which is something lots of people have already done and isn't original at all. Maybe the method, but not the concept. And on that last method, Levine's team probably already did the initial work with Elizabeth's environmental interactions. A thousand microscopic clockwork pieces, so to speak.
PandyDandy
Banned
So you could say they jumped the shock?
The "power clash" was Sculley trying to can Jobs because of short term results. Jobs tried to keep his... job. The board, predictably, sided with Sculley as short term bad results are surely a sign that Jobs just had no clue what he was doing. Again as Sculley himself says now, he didn't really understand what people like Jobs and Gates were about. He was just following the typical and accepted knee-jerk response to results. That quote is from Sculley himself in reference to this exact incident: ".... you don't make mistakes because if you lose, you're out. Incidentally he would also be fired from Apple several years later for poor short term results.
No, there's plenty of details about the boardroom coup attempt, Sculley even alludes to a showdown. You can keep trying to fit it into a narrative of simply being focused on results, but there's plenty of information out there on this issue, including Jobs arranging a boardroom meeting on Sculley's planned trip to China, and how Jean-Louise told Sculley of Jobs plans so he could cancel his trip and fight off the coup attempt.
Sculley got rid of Jobs because Jobs, a 15% shareholder and chairman of the board, was trying to get rid of him.
Sculley likes to say many different things in hindsight, here's another, which indicates it was about a power struggle:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/06/why-i-fired-steve-jobs.html
SniperHunter
Banned
I was really excited for Bioshock Infinite. I loved BioShock I so much, that I went on a media blackout for BI. After a strong start, the game just fell apart as you start to approach the commstock tower. I even bought the $20 season pass after being blown away by the intro and never even downloaded Burial @ Sea.
I guess they just wasted too much time developing BI and 2K got fed up with them
I guess they just wasted too much time developing BI and 2K got fed up with them
Similar threads
- Locked