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Irrational Games shutting down, 2K takes over BioShock, KL in new 15 person DD studio

Vagabundo

Member
Pretty bizarre. So they close a whole studio because Ken wants to do something different. Two words: Bull Shit.

I'm sure we'll get an angry Reddit at some point telling the real reason.
 

fernoca

Member
Wondered the same thing the moment this thread posted (and merged?).

A ton of people lost their jobs, because Levine wanted to make something smaller and focused along with a few other cherry picked team members?
Publishers had no problems in the past closing studios and blaming their bombas to it. Why all this PR with the head of said team making an open letter that focused mostly on him and 15 other people forming a new team to make smaller games.

If Levine wanted to move on and start a new smaller team,why not do that and leave the rest of Irrational with Take Two or make some other deal since he will continue at 2K. West and Zampella left Infinity Ward, and not only Infinity Ward continued been part of Activision along some of the members from all this years; but they both started a new studio and are going to release their first (and big) game next month.

Maybe there is some truth and Levine striking a deal to be safe while throwing everyone else under the bus. Who knows. The link is quite right, sites are wondering and jumping at around "oh, what will Levine brings us next", instead of trying it dig for the actual story: what the hell happened?
 

Dire

Member
The amount of vitriol in this thread over a disappointing game in light of some ~150 people losing their jobs is sickening.

Oh get off your pedestal.

People in the games industry know the jobs are insecure. And this isn't like some manual labor factory shutting down when you end up with hundreds of people out of a job with no substantially marketable skill. Some will continue on in the industry, some will go on to help create yet more of the amazing indie titles we've been seeing as of late, some will probably decide to go join a different development industry where they'll likely earn more for less work. They'll be fine.
 

This piece is predicated on an incorrect idea, I think. While it's definitely true that people tend to erroneously attribute one face to a game/movie/what have you, moving towards a smaller team isn't "meglomania" - it's the exact opposite, actually, a smaller team means Levine really can have the creative control he so clearly wants in every aspect of his work. Ken's name won't be stamped over several hundred peoples' work anymore.

Claiming that the move is "ironic" and similar to something his games would rail against is silly. Throughout the myriad of "Ken Levine is impossible to work with" stories we've seen over the course of two Bioshocks, it's obvious that a smaller team is what he needs. The weird part is why Irrational had to close because of it, rather than Levine just leave. I see two possible reasons: either there are financial implications we're not aware of that had Irrational on 2K's chopping block anyway, or Levine was too stubborn to hand the reins over to someone else on the way out.

No matter what happened, there's definitely more going on that we're aware of and a story to be dug up, and quite possibly one that isn't flattering to Ken Levine. I just can't really put much stock in these quick, dramatic think pieces.
 

FStop7

Banned
I don't know which is more surprising: the implosion of Irrational or the harsh words from JP LeBreton. Being somewhat familiar with him from various podcast and live stream appearances he comes across as very easy going and level headed. I don't think he'd put someone on blast like this unless there were very good reasons. It seems like the best advice one could give to Ken's Chosen 15 disciples is to watch their backs.
 

Saty

Member
Another thing that doesn't make sense for taking what Levin said at face value is that if indeed it was just about him wanting to do something different and causing the collapse of the studio, you would think it would be something that Ken would have said to his employees; prepared them for the news; suggested they start looking for a new place.

But no, the news seems to have as abrupt and surprising to IG's employees as any regular shutdown by the publishers. Employees shocked and asking for jobs over Twitter. You would think most of them would have been prepared if this was all Ken's doing. Unless you wanna argue Ken's behavior was even more objectionable and he kept everybody in the dark about his plan and about him thinking of leaving and shutting the studio.
 

spekkeh

Banned
The amount of vitriol in this thread over a disappointing game in light of some ~150 people losing their jobs is sickening.
Not really. A lot of GAF has no connection to the industry, let alone Irrational Games, but only to the games themselves. People lose their jobs all the time.
 

jimmypop

Banned
The amount of people buying Levine's statements at face value is surprising.

This was about money, and he's indebted to 2k if he's handing over IP and promising his near-future output to them.
 

Yup, we never get to hear from developers other than the leads. Which is why I have loved the Double Fine documentaries because pretty much everyone is given a voice. Maybe that kind of documentary would not be allowed with a AAA developer :(

But there is a responsibility to read between the lines of press releases to find the “actual” story. But it’s not simply a case of lazy journalism, either. Even if we tried to get the story from former employees, they would not be able to speak to us: either because of contracts they’ve signed or, much more simply, because they still want to find a new job in the industry. And so, they remain invisible to us.

The ease with which 2K and Levine are able to spin a studio’s closure and the loss of over a hundred jobs to one of an auteur’s exciting new venture reveals just how poorly we – journalists, players, critics – appreciate the full breadth of people whose labour creates these works.

But theirs are the only voices we will hear on the matter, and so the myth of the great creative auteur continues.
 
Sounds like the math simply didn't work out in Irrationals favor so they razed it. If they knew a Bioshock game takes 5 years to make and Ken didn't want to helm another and there was no one else to drive the ship it makes sense to kill it. Otherwise they have a full team sitting there waiting to do *something*.
 

Sneds

Member
Yup, we never get to hear from developers other than the leads. Which is why I have loved the Double Fine documentaries because pretty much everyone is given a voice. Maybe that kind of documentary would not be allowed with a AAA developer :(

We've had stories come out of big studios (2K Marin actually) it's just that the quotes used are anonymous.
 

spekkeh

Banned
The amount of people buying Levine's statements at face value is surprising.

This was about money, and he's indebted to 2k if he's handing over IP and promising his near-future output to them.
Yeah I would agree with this hypothesis. This way he can retain an image of success.
 
Woke up to news of this. Still can't believe it. If Ken Levine wanted a smaller team, then why close the studio? He didn't want to do a Bioshock 3? Things just don't add up.
 
I don't know which is more surprising: the implosion of Irrational or the harsh words from JP LeBreton. Being somewhat familiar with him from various podcast and live stream appearances he comes across as very easy going and level headed. I don't think he'd put someone on blast like this unless there were very good reasons. It seems like the best advice one could give to Ken's Chosen 15 disciples is to watch their backs.

Is this coming from JP LeBreton's twitter? I only see this. It seems he's happier at Double Fine.
 

Dommo

Member
Strange reactions from GAF. Sucks that a whole lot of people lose their jobs and hopefully they'll find somewhere to go because a lot of the must be hugely talented to have worked on the Bioshock games. With that said, this is an exciting twist and I can't wait to see what Ken Levine has in store.

To me, just as a reflexive thought to Levine's letter, it seems like Levine has more ambitious ideas in mind that will not fly in such a big budget, money-driven environment. He states he wants to create a narrative driven game - perhaps he doesn't want it to be combat focused? Perhaps he actually wants to get creative with the industry. I'm excited for a smaller budget game by Levine. It could be amazing.
 
I thought Bioshock and Infinite were really pretty, in a big way. The artists (and their directors) involved really knew how to create place. I have no idea how much of that Levine was directly or indirectly responsible for (or how much he hindered the process), but that's the first and lasting impression.

The games themselves were just cumbersome shooters. I guess the production values were just plain high, enough so to get me through the games.
 

NoPiece

Member
The amount of people buying Levine's statements at face value is surprising.

This was about money, and he's indebted to 2k if he's handing over IP and promising his near-future output to them.

Yeah I would agree with this hypothesis. This way he can retain an image of success.

How would Levine be indebted to Take Two? Take Two bought Irrational in 2005, and already owns all the existing IP. Remember when they renamed it 2k Boston for a while? He surely doesn't get to make the decision to close the studio. He is just an employee, albeit a high level one.
 
Huh. Surely someone must have archived it...either way, yeah many people will be giving anonymous details about how it went down. Maybe Shawn Elliott might be one of them?

PIj9wPc.jpg
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Just look at the pattern.

Prior to Q3/Q4 2013, Take-Two were happy to piss away money on projects taking fucking forever to get finished, and quite content for those projects to get scrapped and rebuilt as many times as it took. BioShock was penned one way, scrapped and rewritten and build as something else. XCOM went from a BioShock-like first person shooter to a squad based third person shooter. Infinite went through god knows how many iterations over six to seven years. Mafia II took forever and despite knowing Mafia III exists we haven't seen/heard anything for three years.

Take-Two has had to dance around shareholders as to why money keeps disappearing down development sinkholes and why they only ever seem to turn serious profit when Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption is part of the fiscal report. How many times can you tell shareholders "No, next year we'll make profit! We promise!", and just have the same thing happen all over again.

I mention Q3/Q4 because here's what's happened since:
* 2K Marin/Australia mass layoffs and leftover staff dissolved. This studio was responsible for the aforementioned XCOM.
* 2K Czech apparently having lost development control of whatever state Mafia III is in, the game now at a different 2K studio. Rumour, but probably true.
* Irrational Games effectively closed sans Ken Levine and 15 people who'll move on high return-of-investment digital games. Responsible for a ~7 year multi-million dollar game development.

What else does Take-Two have? Max Payne 3 apparently cost a fortune and didn't sell as well as projected. NBA, WWE, and Borderlands are co-owned by their respective studios, so Take-Two doesn't get a full cut. Civilization is probably the only other stand out, that and obviously Grand Theft Auto. Spec Ops bombed.

I can't imagine Take-Two's suits are particularly interested in appearing at another fiscal report full of pissed off shareholders, only able to recycle the same "next year guys!" rhetoric.
 

Minion101

Banned
Just look at the pattern.

Prior to Q3/Q4 2013, Take-Two were happy to piss away money on projects taking fucking forever to get finished, and quite content for those projects to get scrapped and rebuilt as many times as it took. BioShock was penned one way, scrapped and rewritten and build as something else. XCOM went from a BioShock-like first person shooter to a squad based third person shooter. Infinite went through god knows how many iterations over six to seven years. Mafia II took forever and despite knowing Mafia III exists we haven't seen/heard anything for three years.

Take-Two has had to dance around shareholders as to why money keeps disappearing down development sinkholes and why they only ever seem to turn serious profit when Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption is part of the fiscal report. How many times can you tell shareholders "No, next year we'll make profit! We promise!", and just have the same thing happen all over again.

I mention Q3/Q4 because here's what's happened since:
* 2K Marin/Australia mass layoffs and leftover staff dissolved. This studio was responsible for the aforementioned XCOM.
* 2K Czech apparently having lost development control of whatever state Mafia III is in, the game now at a different 2K studio. Rumour, but probably true.
* Irrational Games effectively closed sans Ken Levine and 15 people who'll move on high return-of-investment digital games. Responsible for a ~7 year multi-million dollar game development.

What else does Take-Two have? Max Payne 3 apparently cost a fortune and didn't sell as well as projected. NBA, WWE, and Borderlands are co-owned by their respective studios, so Take-Two doesn't get a full cut. Civilization is probably the only other stand out, that and obviously Grand Theft Auto. Spec Ops bombed.

I can't imagine Take-Two's suits are particularly interested in appearing at another fiscal report full of pissed off shareholders, only able to recycle the same "next year guys!" rhetoric.

I think you'll find there is a dollar sign behind everything.
 
These high budget titles were dumbing down Levine's games. Hope with his next project, he'll be making games more like System Shock 2. Won't sell as well as Bioshock games but won't cost as much either.
 

SparkTR

Member
The Bombcast discussion was interesting. Bioshock Infinite seemingly didn't perform too well, and it's unlikely Irrational could of survived even with Levine there (EatChildren expressed this way better than I could).

From a gamers perspective a small 15 man DD team could develop stuff that takes more risks and is ultimately more interesting to me than what a AAA developer with AAA budget can provide these days. Bioshock Infinite definitely felt way too 'conventional' to me, it had some interesting ideas and mechanics but I could feel it getting smothered the homogeneity that is so engrained into big budget games these days.
 

Water

Member
These high budget titles were dumbing down Levine's games. Hope with his next project, he'll be making games more like System Shock 2. Won't sell as well as Bioshock games but won't cost as much either.
I just recently played the first Bioshock the first time, and while it was a nice and worthwhile experience, it was nothing like the absolutely glowing reviews made me expect.

World felt more linear, "gamey" and especially far more static and less alive than I thought it was supposed to. Basic shooting / plasmid mechanics felt laggy, unresponsive, bullet spongy. Game also clearly stretched out too long for the content they had, and suffered from needless repetition. Most of Hephaestus should have been cut; a lot of stuff that came after it should have been cut as well. Incredibly inconsequential and sanitized "moral choices". No idea why people made a big deal of them back in the day.
I haven't read much about BS2 or Infinite (don't want to get spoiled), but the general impression I've received is that they don't fix most of the things I disliked.
System Shock 2 is also on my to-play list; I wonder if I'll like it better than Bioshock.
 
2K strikes me as a company that pours huge amounts of money into development and, as a result, demands sales that aren't realistically achievable. Faraxis being the exception, it seems like 2K studious have to make GTA and red Dead numbers... Or else.
 

beril

Member
This piece is predicated on an incorrect idea, I think. While it's definitely true that people tend to erroneously attribute one face to a game/movie/what have you, moving towards a smaller team isn't "meglomania" - it's the exact opposite, actually, a smaller team means Levine really can have the creative control he so clearly wants in every aspect of his work. Ken's name won't be stamped over several hundred peoples' work anymore.

Claiming that the move is "ironic" and similar to something his games would rail against is silly. Throughout the myriad of "Ken Levine is impossible to work with" stories we've seen over the course of two Bioshocks, it's obvious that a smaller team is what he needs. The weird part is why Irrational had to close because of it, rather than Levine just leave. I see two possible reasons: either there are financial implications we're not aware of that had Irrational on 2K's chopping block anyway, or Levine was too stubborn to hand the reins over to someone else on the way out.

No matter what happened, there's definitely more going on that we're aware of and a story to be dug up, and quite possibly one that isn't flattering to Ken Levine. I just can't really put much stock in these quick, dramatic think pieces.

No, the article is based on the information given in Levines message. That's likely a crappy spin and the article admits as much, but that's how they've chosen to present the situation and that what we have to react to.

And the press release is incredibly stupid and selfish. Even if it is a spin trying not to admit that Bioshock Infinity was anything less than a success, it's still selfish and stupid, as shutting down the studio is basically a footnote to Kens awesome future endeavours.

No one saying that he shouldn't leave or that he can't work on smaller games, but there's just no way that a top guy leaving a studio is cause to shut it down, but that's how they're presenting it and he comes of as a massive ass hole for it, whether it's true or not.
 
Maybe it's just me, but I don't see people being temporarily out of work as the end of the world. I've been out of work more than once, and life goes on.
 

RooMHM

Member
Wow Ken Levine really wants us to acknowledge and praise him for the things he created in the past. I mean, big daddies, little sisters, booker and Elizabeth? Holy shit... No.
 

Corto

Member
What also seems odd to me is if Levine was the main head and responsible for the delays/troubled development of Bioshock Infinite I would consider him more as a liability than an asset if I was T2. I thought of Fumito Ueda and Team Ico demise at Japan Studios as a similar situation (looking from the outside without any financial ramifications knowledge of each case). The studio was dismembered, but Ueda keeps working for Sony as a freelancer to help finish the game. Then I would guess they will part ways. It would be met with similar disbelief if Sony went on to give Ueda another lead role even if at a smaller internal studio with a flatter organizational structure after The Last Guardian trouble development process.

But maybe there really are financial obligations behind this move. The Bioshock IP was T2's from the beginning right?
 

beril

Member
What also seems odd to me is if Levine was the main head and responsible for the delays/troubled development of Bioshock Infinite I would consider him more as a liability than an asset if I was T2. I thought of Fumito Ueda and Team Ico demise at Japan Studios as a similar situation (looking from the outside without any financial ramifications knowledge of each case). The studio was dismembered, but Ueda keeps working for Sony as a freelancer to help finish the game. Then I would guess they will part ways. It would be met with similar disbelief if Sony went on to give Ueda another lead role even if at a smaller internal studio with a flatter organizational structure after The Last Guardian trouble development process.

But maybe there really are financial obligations behind this move. The Bioshock IP was T2's from the beginning right?

Team Ico was not shut down when Ueda left
 

jschreier

Member
"The few news posts I've seen about Irrational so far spend like 1 paragraph on ppl losing jobs and 4+ on What Levine Is Doing Next."

Feels weird that gaming journalists care more about Levine's next game than the 100s of people who lost their jobs.

brendan_keogh_ken_levine_by_digi_matrix-d77212p.png
It's easy to forget this given the incestuous world of gaming media/PR/development/etc -- and given the way that many gaming outlets approach their audiences -- but Kotaku is a site for people who play and are interested in games, not just the people who make them. I think it's OK to both empathize with the people who lost their jobs and be excited that a talented game designer is leaving the shackles of AAA shooter development. You all know my track record -- if there's a bigger story here, we're going to try to tell it -- but right now this isn't just a story about layoffs.
 

Corto

Member
It's easy to forget this given the incestuous world of gaming media/PR/development/etc -- and given the way that many gaming outlets approach their audiences -- but Kotaku is a site for people who play and are interested in games, not just the people who make them. I think it's OK to both empathize with the people who lost their jobs and be excited that a talented game designer is leaving the shackles of AAA shooter development. You all know my track record -- if there's a bigger story here, we're going to try to tell it -- but right now this isn't just a story about layoffs.

The timing and emphasis was terrible though. At least in my opinion.
 
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