BioShock Developer Irrational Games Is Dissolving

If you wanna leave, just leave. Why does his departure equate to the closure of an entire studio and the loss of a hundred or so jobs? Irrational can certainly work with 16 less people - they can certainly help with other games by 2K while they find the right leaders to take over Ken.

It doesn't make sense to just raze the entire team like that.

I would love another Bioshock 2, it was a better game than Infinite in literally every way.

Fantastic.

I'll take best gameplay in the series over another "muh feelings" escort mission any day of the week.

This is a major drag.

Ken Levine has always come off as pretentious and up his own ass, so I guess we shouldn't be shocked that it is once again all about him. An excellent way to thank a team that spent years creating a $500 million franchise. An unexpected middle finger and a notice to clean out their desk along with the hope that they might end up with a job somewhere else in the company.

I am going to respond in the only effective means I have at my disposal. That is, not supporting whatever new projects Levine and his chosen few are working on. This isn't the way that you treat people that help you find success. You do not leave them hanging the moment their usefulness runs out to run off with the bags of money they helped make you.

And so, an overbudgeted AAA game not selling well enough kills another studio.

Since there's quite a lack of details, it may be to early to say, but I feel like this is a sure way to make CORE gamers not buy any more of your properties in the future.

Wait, what about my SWAT 5?! Please, thats the one game I really wanted from them for years!

@oldirtybearon: helluva silver lining. Miss hearing that dude.

CORE GAMER

I think Ken Levine is a great developer, and I'm sure his newest ventures will end up on a number of GOTYs throughout the next few years, but I can't help but shake the feeling that this is an absurdly selfish move.

To open a new, smaller studio in an effort to refocus is nothing new in the games industry, but to dissolve one's own studio--not just assets, but employees--is hard to rationalize. While I'm sure many of the Irrational guys will find reemployment because of their Bioshock (and perhaps System Shock) credentials, not all will, and that's truly disappointing.

Obviously Levine has the prerogative to do what he will with his company, but I hesitate to think that there couldn't have been a better solution for all those involved. I get that the Bioshock thing was weighing him down creatively to some extent, but I'm not sure creative freedom should come at the expense of hundreds of jobs. That's just my opinion, and some will disagree, but I couldn't see myself casting out that many employees because I wanted to do something else.

In any case, it's a shame, and I wish the Irrational developers luck in finding new employment.

The Bioshock series has made a ton of money over the years.

I wonder if we'll see this more and more as the industry grows and the "big names" get bigger. As someone who aspires to work in this field, it's scary to how all my work could be made completely irrelevant when pitted against someone who's known.

Man, as a person who is currently struggling to find work I feel for all the people losing theirs at Irrational.

@swat200 said:

Bioshock Infinite 2 get ampd

@bbalpert: So we have to make sure everyone has jobs to be excited for Levine's new project? That's impossible.

I am fucking shocked! Bioshock Infinite was my game of the year!

That's so sad. Man Irrational made some great fucking games. SWAT 4? That game is so damn great....

I've pilfered this from elsewhere

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

The fact that people had to be let go aside. I actually feel optimistic about Ken Levine and Co.'s new endeavour. On a side note, Ken Levine is slated to deliver a keynote speech on how to make narrative-driven games repayable. Something titled Lego Narrative or something like that. So that'll probably give us a glimpse of what they're going for.

Ugh, losing one of the best development teams. Would've enjoyed more big production games from Levine and his large studio.

We don't know all the details but it would be unfortunate if all those people lost their jobs because Ken wanted to do his own thing.

That said, in the name of art that's how it's got to be.

People who make great art should never compromise. Kubrick would famously make his actors do a take 100 times until the point that the 69-year-old Scatman Crothers famously broke down and cried asking, "What do you want, Mr. Kubrick?"

There's countless examples of artists going above and beyond to create the vision they see in their head and in the end it very often yields a superior product. If Ken thinks he needs 15 people to make his dream project I have to agree with him, Infinite was fantastic. Sometimes this stuff leads to unfortunate circumstances like this one, but if his next game is brilliant and remembered forever in the eyes of time it will be worth it, just like The Shining was worth it, countless early architectual marvels, other feature films, or anything of grand singular vision and scope.

I'm fairly sure 2K wouldn't voluntarily close the developer of possibly one of its best selling franchises, also Levine's motives seem abit strange when he talks about wanting to be more creative through "digitally delivered content"... sudden business words infect all this talk of creative desire.

Imagine if i told you i was "moving to france to express my desire for painting landscapes, £20 per painting through my website, i also sell t-shirts and thongs in my store".

@gorillamopena: Yeah it came as quite a Shock to me.

I'd like to believe there is a 'good' reason for this. Maybe BI didn't sell what it needed to and Irrational was going to be forced into something they didn't want to make (like that Mafia 3 project supposedly kicking around various 2K studios?). Maybe 2K said "if Ken leaves, we shutter Irrational" and Ken and the higher ups at Irrational thought they could do it in a more 'humane' way themselves, finding people jobs as they slowly bring the studio to a close. Unfortunately unless people from inside Irrational spill the beans, we probably won't find out any time soon, if ever.

Let's not forget what happened with Criterion. Small group splinters off and keeps the Criterion name, the majority of the studio gets absorbed into Ghost Games as Ghost Games UK. They make a pretty excellent NFS game and a couple months later Ghost Games UK is shuttered anyway. It's not a given that if Ken left and went on his merry way that Irrational was long for this world anyway.

I don't know how you got this from what was written in the article.

This is really weird. You rarely if ever see this happen in this specific way.

@bbalpert: That's a factor, of course. But is it up to us as consumers to care about that though? Do we need to ensure that everyone now without a job gets a new job before we can be excited about what Levine does with a new studio? I'm gonna say that I hope all the people now probably without a job lands on their feet, and I'm really excited about what this means for Levine's future project(s).

Also, this makes perfect sense. There has been rumors about Levine going indie for some time now. This is probably 2K's way of holding on to him while trying to give him more flexibility and freedom.

Oh jeez. Listening to Rich talk on the UPF awhile back about investing his life into a project only to have it abandoned tore my heart out. I'm sure this just brings back tons of visceral pain... if it ever left at all.

RIP

I am really curious to see what Levine does after this. I don't know how involved talent like Steve Gaynor was before he left, but losing guys like him must have hurt IG. I really hope Levine can continue to craft worlds the way he, at least I believe it is largely him, does.

Kind of saw this coming. Good news I think, very excited to see what Levine can do creatively with less restriction due to massive budgets/mainstream necessities.

I think Zoe Quinn's point and Brad's response on twitter both make a lot of sense. She basically says why fire the rest of the studio to keep 15 when it's easier, and better, to just leave with that 15 and Brad says it's probably not Ken's decision. What we're seeing here is the distorted version from Ken himself as far as he could tell it.

Obviously nothing of this is truly confirmed yet but I wouldn't be surprised if Take Two mandate plays into it big time. It's famously happened before when Take Two mismanaged the three teams involved with BioShock 2 and subsequently when they decided to just dissolve 2K Marin after the dev nightmare that was The Bureau.

@alxxy: Steve was not a part of the original team that made the first game; he worked very briefly at Irrational, after Minerva's Den. He mainly worked at 2K, on Bioshock 2 and Minerva's Den.

The thing that makes this seem especially shady are the reactions of Irrational employees on Twitter. you would think that if the studio was having difficulties or moves like this were being considered, that top folks on the team might have some kind of idea. This isn't like 38 Studios where they were massively bloated, no game was coming out, and there were rampant rumors about imminent closure. This was a very successful team that had made arguably the best trilogy of the last console generation and nearly half a billion in sales.

There seems to be a lot of "Blame Ken Levine" sentiment around this when we don't exactly know the whole circumstances (not that I'm surprised, per se). Was it really entirely up to him to shut down the studio? I would guess not.

It sounds like it's Ken's decision to leave, sure, but I expect either no one was willing to take control of the studio or 2K decided Irrational Games without Ken Levine was not something they're looking to maintain at the moment. I mean, 2K does own Irrational. It is ultimately their call whether to keep the doors open or not.

Either way, I doubt they're done making Bioshock games, so hopefully a large chunk of the Irrational team will be soaked up into another studio for the next one.

This seems pretty cray. But the idea that Levine would just shut down his studio so he can work on smaller games? Why not just leave it under new management?

Surely there is more to the story. Is Levine taking the hit for 2K shutting down what they view as a bloated studio?

I look forward to see what the new team does

Sorry to see people lose their jobs because their boss is bored. Bioshock Infinite was a bloated, messy stinker with rote gameplay and rotten storytelling, and Bioshock 2 was better on every level and I still maintain that most people who shat on BS2 never actually played it and just followed the bleating herd, but the talent at Irrational still shone through.

Think about it: if Bioshock Infinite had done well enough for 2K, do you think they would be closing Irrational if Ken simply wanted to leave? They own the studio outright and Ken is one of their employees - they don't have to answer to him for any decision they want to make. (Hence why Bioshock 2 exists.) They could simply put someone else in charge of the team if they wanted to keep them running. When you consider that, as others have mentioned, Bioshock Infinite was conspicuously absent from Take 2's recent financials, it's far more likely that they decided that they didn't want to keep supporting Irrational at the size it had become but wanted to keep Ken because they see the value in having him.

For those bitter about him firing all these people: it sucks, and you know Levine isn't happy about it, but it has to happen for what he wants to achieve. He doesn't want to stay with a large team developing things his heart isn't in, and they probably wouldn't want a director that had lost his enthusiasm. It's exactly like staying in a relationship that isn't working, even if you care a lot about the other person. You just have to rip the band-aid off. I should know. I watch lots of Downton Abbey.

You guys are aware that Irrational was owned by 2K? Do you think 2K would let Ken shut down Irrational just for the sake of his pride, especially given that it's one of the more well-thought of names in game development? Isn't it possible that, given the amount of money and dev time that was reportedly put into Infinite, 2K just decided that Irrational couldn't go on just being Irrational, with their monstrous timelines and ballooning budgets making vaguely artsy games for selective audiences?

Somehow that seems more likely to me. Just because Ken's name's on the press release doesn't mean it was his decision. I think we all know the video game industry well enough to know that

Some of the posts in this thread demonstrate a stunning lack of empathy. Why are some people more concerned about an "artist" who dumped the vast majority of his team the moment he no longer needed them than they are about all of these people with no jobs?

You know something? There are plenty of creative minds in the industry that are also decent people and would not do what Ken Levine just did. How about we support them instead of pretentious assholes?

apart from it sucking for the people who got fired, this doesn't sound like such a bad thing. excited to see what ken levine can do with a smaller team

I don't think its Levine simply wanting to do something else as much as it doesn't really pencil financially to have a bloated triple A dev studio crank out a product every 6 years or so. Irrational as we knew it is not a sustainable entity. I'm with you on the Shawn Elliott though I wish he were still employed. It feels too morbid to be happy that someone is free to entertain you with their witty banter now that they lost their job.

What the hell....

This seems more like an impersonal business decision from 2k. Ken Levine and the other studio heads were probably faced with a hard decision from 2K. The game probably didn't sell as much as their internal predictions. They are basically operating with a skeleton crew over there. Irregardless, everyone was probably going to get fired. This decision allows the name Irrational stay alive for a little longer. Instead of 2k getting blamed for the decision, Ken gets all the blame.

Better not be phone games.

Whoa. WHOA. Seriously? That's crazy.