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The true Story of Bioshock pg. 6 (Irrational closure)
C2B
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SwitzerlandRegistered User regular
Update
The True Story of Bioshock per eurogamer
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-17-the-true-story-of-bioshock
The True Story of Bioshock per eurogamer
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-17-the-true-story-of-bioshock
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
@iglevine
*If you’re a 3rd party interested in interviewing some of the best game developers in the world, please contact chris.bigelow@2k.com
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WTF?
Could be some nebulous business reason, a new entity that he has sole control over etc.
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Did not see this coming.
Like, at all.
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Fuck. ;_;
It's both a little dickish and how the industry seems to work. If a studio doesn't have a new project to move on to, then people get canned. It's also possible that 2k wanted to keep Levine rather than see him go, and agreed to let him do something different rather than churn out another *Shock game, and that new game just doesn't require all the resources that Irrational has.
Wasn't a 2K studio started by ex-Irrational member recently?
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Sounds like he doesn't really know what the game is yet, hence, there is nothing for all those coders, and level designers, and artists, and all the rest to work on for the next couple of years.
I'd be having a pretty bad day if I were Joe Irrational.
Edit: @Axen, per your point, I can't say if they'd keep Irrational together if Levine left to do a startup. I could see it going either way.
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But, I guess they are called "Irrational Games", just didn't imagine he'd take it so literally.
I loved Irrational, Bioshock 1 and Bioshock: Infinite are two of my favorite games. I do feel like this move doesn't 100% make sense. If Levine wanted to leave, that makes sense, but why does Irrational have to shut down because of it? It rubs me the wrong way.
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Well. The thing is it probably isn't that easy.
Irrational is probably about to lose all their upper-management and you know that isn't something you can just shrug off.
And no one is going to take on a team that size just because.
Man, this sucks.
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For a floating city full of vile rich old bigots embracing their hatred with impunity, I'm surprised none of them threw around the N word even once.
There is no intrinsic value to the studio beyond, I suppose, whatever royalty agreements it has with Take Two, so there isn't anything to sell to another company outside of those royalty profits and the IPs (assuming that Irrational holds the IP rights to their big games), both of which if I was the owners I would want to hold on to.
Levine can step down but if there is no one to purchase his ownership he is still responsible for it. Winding the company down (or at least reducing it to a royalty collecting entity that doesn't do any other business) is the only practical way for Levine to go and do something else.
It is unfortunate for the people that work there but it sounds like Irrational is taking steps to help them find other employment.
Yeah this makes sense to me (it's still dickish in a 'Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown' kind of way). Originally I was picturing the situation not unlike when Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk left Bioware and the company carried on.
Either way, it is a bummer and one I totally didn't see coming. I'm sure studios will be snatching them up left, right, and center though.
they are in absolutely zero trouble
there is very little chance they dont have their salaries covered until they get a new job given how this is ending
good work ken levine
Yeah if the studio has to close down this is probably the absolute best case scenario you could wish for.
For info on who the hell he is:
http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Jean-Paul_LeBreton
Ah, there you go then. I'm sure you are right. That makes it even simpler.
Irrational Games is the Ken Levine business. Ken Levine wants to do something else. Take Two doesn't need to keep on funding a game studio that has lost (more or less) it's reason for being.
I wonder what this means for Bioshock as a franchise though. Will this be the end for Bioshock adventures or will we get further Bioshock adventures that Lavine doesn't have a hand in coming out of 2K, ala Bioshock 2? While not as good as BS1, BS2 was a good game and was definately worth playing. I could stand to have a few more like it.
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Him leaving and taking his brain trust with him would have crippled the studio and probably gotten everyone laid off anyway. At least this way they can continue to use the studio and work on their portfolios, like he mentioned in his farewell letter. And there are probably forces behind the scenes at work as well. He's been nothing but a stand-up guy during his tenure, I can't imagine him being a dick all of a sudden.
This is my first instinct as to why he won't just step down and let Irrational continue as well. He knew who he wanted, and also knew he couldn't have them if irrational stayed together either due to contracts or money, or some other reason.
I would be flabbergasted if part of this whole restructuring deal doesn't entail another Take-Two studio churning out at least one more BioShock game, but then again maybe the publisher is gun-shy about throwing a big bale of money into a franchise they've lost a bit of commercial confidence in.
Well, technically it was only listed as shipped.
Also...we have to take into account how long the game took to make and how much it costed.
Sadly, game companies are so cloak and dagger with their numbers that its hard to get estimates on anything.
C'mon Retro, grab up the talent when they need the work most!
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Ehhhhhhhh, it's been known that he was hard to work with. Didn't the original Art Director leave because he couldn't take it anymore?