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Irrational Games shutting down, 2K takes over BioShock, KL in new 15 person DD studio
- Thread starter Quentyn
- Start date
Storm Prelude
Member
Can't believe this...where is this industry going?
RazielCuts
Member
Yeah, it kind've came out 'I want to do new things so lets burn this studio to the ground I guess?' even if behind the scenes it might not of went down like that.
Could've been like, well we're closing the studio anyway if you want to start a new smaller studio start it with us. Just the initial announcement was all focused on Ken and what he was doing.
Maybe this makes me an uncaring monster, but I find it hard to work up a head of steam over the guy who models trash cans at Irrational having to go find a job. People lose their jobs everyday. Most of them don't get sympathetic outpourings on Twitter.
I'm much more interested in what Ken Levine is going to do than where Ken Levine's former low level employees are going to end up working. Sorry if that's a rude way of putting it but come on, the guy coding Circus of Value machines isn't as imporant as the game director, lead concept artist, lead coder, etc.
Like, I'm also not interested in what Chrisopher Nolan's grip and best boy are cooking up. They are important to the movie making process, but ultimately their role is to faciliate the direction of the guy in charge. His talents and skills are most responsible for the end product. His output is what interests me as a consumer.
I don't think it makes me a bad person to be more interested in Ken Levine than Ken Levine's employees.
I'm much more interested in what Ken Levine is going to do than where Ken Levine's former low level employees are going to end up working. Sorry if that's a rude way of putting it but come on, the guy coding Circus of Value machines isn't as imporant as the game director, lead concept artist, lead coder, etc.
Like, I'm also not interested in what Chrisopher Nolan's grip and best boy are cooking up. They are important to the movie making process, but ultimately their role is to faciliate the direction of the guy in charge. His talents and skills are most responsible for the end product. His output is what interests me as a consumer.
I don't think it makes me a bad person to be more interested in Ken Levine than Ken Levine's employees.
AlphaTwo00
Member
In some ways, this post is the perfect example of how twisted the consumer now views the game making process: It's not a 200-800 man project, taking years of time, thousands of man hours, but rather distilled down to just one person, making every decision along the way. If that person were to go, the game wouldn't exist.
Ugh, that kotaku article is shameless, masturbatory shlock for someone who is essentially the sole cause for hundreds of people to lose their jobs (whether that is due to mismanagement or "artistic" reasons is irrelevant). To wash over those job losses like that is just disgusting, and to write it off as ad revenue clickbait as damage control is even more repugnant. Newsflash: if your readers have an ignorant view of the field you're covering, do your fucking job and inform them.
In itself, it doesn't make you a bad person, no. But dismissing all employees other than Levine as "low level" and utterly ignoring their contributions to the game? That's fucking nauseating.
Without Ken Levine there is no Bioshock Infinite.
Well, I don't think it is gross to recognize that on a 200 member team there is a heirarchy and members who are more important than others. I also don't dismiss the contributions of the Circus of Values coder, but I do think he is replaced easily compared to replacing someone like Ken Levine.
I think you generally do good stuff, but this is why people like me just blanket hate games media. The news today is not a game announcement, it's the closing of the studio. How, why, who is responsible...but since journalists feel they wouldn't get anywhere with it, or are afraid to not be best buddies with 2K they'd rather continue to suck up to the cult of personality.
I personally found Patrick's enthusiasm on the GB announcement talking about Ken's new project disgusting when it's (potentially) being used only as a cover to fire a shitload of people under the guise of a new creative endeavor, when the man who caused all this shit gets to keep his job and a cozy new team.
Turn off brain, close eyes, open mouth, insert shit.
Bioshock will keep on without him. And Bioshock Infinite with him, needed a constant flow of money and resources to take it out the door on a releasable state with significant senior staff turnover along the way. Ultimately, is he an asset or a liability? T2 seems to think the former but I am not that certain.
I can somewhat agree with this. Of course developing a game is a team-effort, and a single visionary can't do nothing on his own, but at the end of the day, a lot of work is just grunt work. Difficult, long work no doubt, but work that could be done by a lot of other people just as well. A person like Ken Levine however adds something unique, that can't be just replaced by anyone. Replace your average artist or coder on Infinite, and the game would be more or less the same, replace Levine, and it would be completely different.
Personally, I'm really looking forward to what Ken Levine is going to do with his new smaller studio, it sounds really exciting. It's a shame that Irrational couldn't continue under different leadership, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over that. But if he official PR-story is true (a big if of course), I can't fault him. People like him are as close to artists as we have in this field. If he thinks he can't express himself in the current system as well as he would like, he doesn't owe it to his employers to continue to work as the head of a 200 men studio, just because some people would lose their jobs if Levine started doing what he really wants to do now.
Baron_Calamity
Member
I wonder if Take Two was pushing him and Irrational to do another Bioshock but with a reduced team and tighter budget controls? When he refused, as soon at the final DLC went gold, the hatch came.
You mean a studio since being acquired that had never released a retail title under a 95 MC and had never released a title that sold less than 4 million units abruptly vanishing into thin air basically overnight?
Yes. That happens all the time...
It's been in this familiar territory for years, you just didn't have unfettered Twitter access/etc.
Wyndstryker
Member
Towards an unsustainable future that many people have seen trending for a long time but the core audience refuses to listen.
http://au.ign.com/articles/2014/02/19/irrational-games-infinite-and-beyond?page=1
A rather interesting editorial on IGN with what appear to be comments from Ken Levine post the announcement of Irrationals closure, but I can't be absolutely certain of that with the way the author has structured the editorial, but the quotes from Levine seem to be rather new.
A rather interesting editorial on IGN with what appear to be comments from Ken Levine post the announcement of Irrationals closure, but I can't be absolutely certain of that with the way the author has structured the editorial, but the quotes from Levine seem to be rather new.
Actually, I don't think that's what happened. What makes more sense -- Ken Levine deciding to fire a ton of people because he wants to go small, or Take-Two deciding that Irrational is not a worthwhile investment because of BioShock Infinite's costly bloated development cycle? It's always tempting to sort people into villains and heroes, but I don't think that's reality. I suspect that this is, like most things, all about the money.
Also, I hope you'll trust me when I tell you that I have no interest in working in the video game industry, nor will I ever not pursue a story because I'm afraid of pissing people off. You could call Kotaku many things, but sycophantic is not one of them. If there's a story here, we'll do our best to find and tell it. I'm not sure the truth is more complex than "Levine's last project went through development hell and Take-Two made a business decision," but I guess we'll see.
AlphaTwo00
Member
Hire/fire cycle happens to contract/project completion expansions, but "SHUT IT DOWN" after a critical success (and also, almost year out after the full release, kinda makes you wonder what the whole team was up to, because not all of them were on that DLC)?
Beyond the initial conception of the idea, I honestly do not believe this to be true. The voice of the game may waiver, the quality may not be held as high, but no man is irreplacable as far as delivering a product out. Studios and developers, in this regard, is a well oiled machine. No departure of a key programmer, designer, artist should ever be a critical blow to the development of software once the ball is rolling. And if there is, there's SOMETHING fundamentally wrong with the entire infrastructure.
The problem with that, alas, is that everyone's been saying that the last generation needed to end. And now it has. And what have the new consoles brought us? More graphics and polish.
The PS4 and Xbox One largely exist to perpetuate this exact problem. And the Wii U's lack of success - along with the bottom appearing to fall out of the previous gen completely - suggests that that's what the market wants.
Neato_Jinkins
Banned
i forgot that "journalists" get paid to speculate, rather than investigate. thanks for reminding me.
ShinMaruku
Member
I don't think it's too outragous if a company cuts off something in development hell far too often. I mean if somebody is taking too long on a project it is prudent to deal with the problem. So I can't say the suits or the shareholders are complete villians, I just thing this medium has no idea of what it is doing sometimes and it shows.
And as before if the talent lost from Irrational brings up the collective quality of games elsewhere I think that is a worthwhile price to pay.
And as before if the talent lost from Irrational brings up the collective quality of games elsewhere I think that is a worthwhile price to pay.
It's not outrageous. What is sort of outrageous is that it in the case of Irrational, the situation was allowed to get to this point in the first place, and then the person at the helm just skips away to his next thing, leaving ~200 people jobless in his wake.
Orniletter
Banned
I wish the WiiU would do better just to have an alternative choice to the EVEN more graphically intensive PS4/ XBone...
...we are in for a rough generation...
Bowling Pin
Member
Ken Levine's employees were the designers who envisioned and then crafted the beautiful world in this game.
Ken Levine is the guy who directed a multi million dollar video game to live out a fantasy where he gets to rescue a girl he once knew.
Yes, I care more about Irrational than Levine, and you're woefully ignorant if you think auteur theory applies to a AAA video game.
BronsonLee
Member
Holy shit, really dude
I think they'll all do fine. I only feel bad that they need to relocate for any new jobs. Most of them probably have families and can't just suddenly leave.
Go get them Retro Studios! This could be useful for those affected at Irrational Games
Columbia is Skytown!
Kotaku is just trash faux-journalism, you think they have anything informative or worthwhile to say? LOL. It's been what, like 7 years now I've been seeing Kotaku keep up their dogshit output?
They're never gonna change because they're Gawker-garbage.
I'm not sure you actually read the post you quoted, because AkuMifune was in no way alleging that closing the studio was actually Levine's call.
Of course they're allowed to report on it, and even to be excited about it, but I don't think it's crazy to suggest the fellation be tempered by a little criticism or skepticism. Not when 200 or so people are out of jobs.
I mean, for chrissakes, Jason's piece was posted less than an hour after the original story about Irrational.
Fucking this.
TheSpaceBetween
Member
I'm shocked so many are defending Levine after Bioshock Infinite, saying AAA development are ruining his games. It's not Irrational's or Take Two's fault that the man demanded major portions of the game be rebuilt over and over and over blowing through tens of millions of dollars for six years.
No, but it is Take-Two's fault that executive management didn't exercise enough fiscal discipline on Levine and Irrational to prevent Infinite's development costs from spiraling to levels that would've been impossible to obtain a decent ROI from.
It is not speculation to say that no sane human being enjoys laying people off, and that these decisions are typically made for business reasons, not because a director wanted to make a smaller game.
Informed speculation is still speculation dude >.>
GlamFM
Banned
But why would Ken write blogpost that makes it sound like he shut the whole thing down?
Why didn't he let 2K do the dirty work?
It's PR, and sounds more positive than "the studio's getting shut down, while I get to keep suckling at 2K's teat."
Neato_Jinkins
Banned
you just posited three assumptions that can be tested and either confirmed or dismissed.
TheSpaceBetween
Member
I definitely agree, they basically just let him do whatever the fuck he wanted, and that was not a smart move.
Neato_Jinkins
Banned
i've simplified this for you jschrier
GillianSeed79
Member
It's business. When the CEO decides the company needs to axe an entire department, he doesn't do it himself. He gets the subordinate or team manager or whatever to do the dirty work. I doubt Zelnick was going to type up a blog post saying, hey, we just closed one of the most storied studios in the industry and fired 200 plus people but it's cool because Ken is sticking around and - like - some 15 other dudes or something.
I'm sure it played out something like this:
Take-Two: Levine. Type up a blog post saying that the entire studio is closing because you want to work on smaller games.
Levine: You said they'd be left in Boston under someone else's supervision if I stayed!
Take-Two: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
Maybe a pithy point, but the unsustainablability of AAA is especially highlighted for me with the closure of Irrational. Yes, it was badly managed and a bloated project got the best of them. But it's still one of those studios that I'd never imagine would be shuttered, and especially not now.
Best of luck to all those laid off -- hopefully they can find something quickly.
Best of luck to all those laid off -- hopefully they can find something quickly.
GardenSirens
Banned
This move really shocked me. Bioshock is such a successful series and to see that even that doesn't protect you is a bad sign. HOWEVER, they've pumped a few great games that we'll never forget and those people who gave us those are now free to go work elsewhere. Looking at the bright side, this could be a blessing but only time will tell.
TheSpaceBetween
Member
That's the thing. Levine was in charge of the project and was given free reign to do whatever he pleased with seemingly unlimited funding and time. So instead of punishing Levine for his managerial and creative incompetence, the whole staff loses their jobs, and Levine suffers basically no consequences. You don't see anything wrong with this? Or do you just think that story wouldn't be as interesting as what Levine is now up to? Or maybe you really are afraid of potentially damaging publisher relations.
AlphaTwo00
Member
Buckethead
Banned
We should just rename this "False Dichotomies: The Thread".
TheSpaceBetween
Member
Exactly what I've been trying to say. This is what pisses me off most about this situation.
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