Damn you Kevin Levin

Is the first step to ruining someone so they stop being successful is misspelling their name? Or is it running to a message board that has nothing to do with anything and complaining about it? We need to be clear on the rules before we proceed.

I guess I wasn't as massively impressed with Bioshock as the rest of the world was (which might be because I had already played System Shock 2 by that point) and Infinite doesn't seem to be bringing anything to the table that Half Life 2 didn't already, only with an additional manic pixie dream girl onii-chan~ layer that has thus far only creeped me out a bit. I don't know, hopefully I get proved wrong. Levine has always come across to me as someone who is really great at selling his vision and less so at executing upon it. The mechanics of Bioshock were just simply not well thought out and oftentimes the gameplay directly contradicted the thesis statements put forth by the narrative.

@DonutFever said:

@thabigred said:

I want to get hype about Bioshock Infinite but that last trailer really left a sour taste in my mouth. On top of making Elizabeth look more like a Disney character by rounding off her face, they made her tits bigger. I don't know what the artistic calling was for this but it seemed dumb to me. That's excusable, what isn't excusable was the AI routine for the boss in that trailer. It was abhorrent. Clearly so much money went into making this game, but the boss has the same stupid AI routine as lower level enemies.

I'm not saying it's going to be terrible by any means but like the bombcrew said, if this is the best game we have to look forward too all year it will be a disappointing year in gaming.

By "boss" do you mean a handyman? Because those are one of the Heavy Hitters, who will pop up a couple times in the game.

Yes that's who I was referring too. Either way it had a terrible AI routine in the trailer. Patrick mentioned the trailer's framerate, which was also bad. That trailer had a lot of problems.

Christ, what a wanky article.

Who is this guy writing for? With this 'most people havent even heard of a bioshock' bullshit?

And as enjoyable as that game was it had some serious problems in both gameplay and the way it explores it's themes (helping people is good! not helping people is bad!), and wasn't really that influential in the long run.

Maybe i'm just cranky since I havent had my coffee yet, it's interesting hearing about how people got into the industry, but I dont know why it has to be surrounded by so much navel gazing and ass kissing.

@EXTomar said:

Is the first step to ruining someone so they stop being successful is misspelling their name? Or is it running to a message board that has nothing to do with anything and complaining about it? We need to be clear on the rules before we proceed.

By this logic nobody would post anything ever. Are we not on a discussion board? Lets discuss Ken Levine in the Bioshock Infinite board. I don't think that's too crazy.

@StarvingGamer said:

Thief > System Shock 2 > Freedom Force > Bioshock

If this developer isn't deserving of praise, who is? And would you honestly rather live in a world where developers forced every game out the door rather than start over when things clearly weren't working? It may not always be the right decision, but that's a discussion that can't even begin until after the game is released.

Yum > Yum > Yum > Yum !!

Honestly I'm just kind of glad to see a journalist kissing someone's ass who deserves it for a change instead of the latest flavor-of-the-month indie star :)

@paulwade1984 said:

@I_smell said:

@paulwade1984 said:

Also, I honestly cannot fathom his design process. Just throwing away months of work on a whim because he hasn't "discovered" his vision yet. I can really see why his staff are leaving. His ego is going to destroy that company. His attitude to software development is insane.

4 designers left in the final stretch of the project, because that's when the design part is over. Many people JOINED Irrational this year, and over the course of Infinite's development, but didn't get Kotaku articles written about them because that's not very scandalous news.
... actually Rod Fergusson did, because that one's a name people recognise.

OH- and on-topic I saw this article yesterday but I can't read the the whole thing because GOOD GOLLY IS THAT LONG!!

The only problem with that logic is that companies don't just let their best talent go at the end of a development cycle. They retain them. Move them onto a new product, the next product, anything. Ken says himself in this article that nate wells left partly because he made him throw away all his work on finkton.

you keep speaking as though there is some set of rules that every team must follow in order to be successful. the article says that irrational started with 20 people and grew to 200 over the course of development.. your contracted ideas of what is "right" do not apply here. stop arguing against something you (and most of us) don't understand.

i admire ken's devotion and willingness to let go of such an asset in the name of the game's cohesiveness. it's his attention and care for the little things that make games like bioshock such great things. working under him isn't for everyone, and he understands this. now please. stop ruining a fantastic article.

@I_smell said:

@killacam said:

@paulwade1984 said:

@I_smell said:

@paulwade1984 said:

Also, I honestly cannot fathom his design process. Just throwing away months of work on a whim because he hasn't "discovered" his vision yet. I can really see why his staff are leaving. His ego is going to destroy that company. His attitude to software development is insane.

4 designers left in the final stretch of the project, because that's when the design part is over. Many people JOINED Irrational this year, and over the course of Infinite's development, but didn't get Kotaku articles written about them because that's not very scandalous news.
... actually Rod Fergusson did, because that one's a name people recognise.

OH- and on-topic I saw this article yesterday but I can't read the the whole thing because GOOD GOLLY IS THAT LONG!!

The only problem with that logic is that companies don't just let their best talent go at the end of a development cycle. They retain them. Move them onto a new product, the next product, anything. Ken says himself in this article that nate wells left partly because he made him throw away all his work on finkton.

you keep speaking as though there is some set of rules that every team must follow in order to be successful. the article says that irrational started with 20 people and grew to 200 over the course of development.. your contracted ideas of what is "right" do not apply here. stop arguing against something you (and most of us) don't understand.

i admire ken's devotion and willingness to let go of such an asset in the name of the game's cohesiveness. it's his attention and care for the little things that make games like bioshock such great things. working under him isn't for everyone, and he understands this. now please. stop ruining a fantastic article.

Nah he's right, after I posted that I was debating whether those people could've left because they don't like working on such huge games, OR because they don't like working at Irrational... then he said it's mentioned in the article, so I that answered that.

I'm not right. I just have a different perspective. There are only two people who know the truth, the employee and Kevin Levin (Yes i'm just calling him Kevin for fun now). I just wanted to discuss this article because it rubbed me the wrong way.

Oh if anyone is interested. I did a readability test on this article and it came out as a 13-14yr old scale. Read into that what you will, but these things don't happen by accident for a professional journalist.

No I just mean "right" as in "there's a fair chance that's probably true, the thing I said isn't that concrete anyway, there's no need to get up in arms about anything."
 
 
...but now you're doing a readability test to pwn whoever writes for Polygon and it paints the whole thread as just some snarky neogaf argument, so now I'm not interested in even thinking about this.

The readability test isn't to "pwn" the journalist. Its to make an educated guess at his target audience, and what that may imply about the article and its purpose as a whole.

I wasn't getting up in arms with you. I'm sorry if I gave you a wrong impression. Can we be friends? Do you wanna add me on psn?

I think the article's description of Jack in bioshock 1 is making the story of that game seem retarded, while the Jack character is actually a clever plot tool and IMHO, a way to satirise the usual 'voiceless muscular man goes X, shoot dudes Y and Z, THE END' kind of character development.

what the hell is a readability test and why would you do one on this article? this is a fantastic piece of journalism. well-written, nicely structured, and informative without being boring. ah, but if only it used bigger words for no reason but to appease those who would tear it apart because they can't understand how someone can do something differently than they would!

@paulwade1984 said:

Just look at the iterations of elizabeth. The only thing that stayed constant was the big boobs and cleavage.

Well if your only going to keep one thing.....

Didn't they actually reduce her, ehm, 'boobiness'?

@killacam said:

what the hell is a readability test and why would you do one on this article? this is a fantastic piece of journalism. well-written, nicely structured, and informative without being boring. ah, but if only it used bigger words for no reason but to appease those who would tear it apart because they can't understand how someone can do something differently than they would!

You can't ask "what the hell is a readability test" and then criticize me for having used one. This is an oxymoron.

@paulwade1984 said:

@killacam said:

what the hell is a readability test and why would you do one on this article? this is a fantastic piece of journalism. well-written, nicely structured, and informative without being boring. ah, but if only it used bigger words for no reason but to appease those who would tear it apart because they can't understand how someone can do something differently than they would!

You can't ask "what the hell is a readability test" and then criticize me for having used one. This is an oxymoron.

oh, now i see. i apologize for having taken you seriously. i should've realized far earlier.

I'm sorry, I don't have much to add to the discussion here, but the title of this thread made me laugh out loud after having a pretty bad day. High fives all around!

@killacam said:

@paulwade1984 said:

@killacam said:

what the hell is a readability test and why would you do one on this article? this is a fantastic piece of journalism. well-written, nicely structured, and informative without being boring. ah, but if only it used bigger words for no reason but to appease those who would tear it apart because they can't understand how someone can do something differently than they would!

You can't ask "what the hell is a readability test" and then criticize me for having used one. This is an oxymoron.

oh, now i see. i apologize for having taken you seriously. i should've realized far earlier.

lol. I really thought nobody would get that little joke there. This makes me happy.

@galloughs said:

I'm sorry, I don't have much to add to the discussion here, but the title of this thread made me laugh out loud after having a pretty bad day. High fives all around!

Gotta get on the Kevin Levin train. It just makes more sense this way.

I'm willing to ride on the Ken Levine hype train until Infinite releases. I'll reevaluate my opinion after I finish the game.

@ColonelRick said:

Didn't they actually reduce her, ehm, 'boobiness'?

No they're larger in the new trailer. She was more a child earlier.

Ken is amazing. So like shut up.

That article was long, biography long.

So again I have to ask, what is the point of this topic? It seems like the original poster is complaining about how much respect a veteran creator gets where I wonder why he thinks it is weird or undeserved.

@mnzy said:

@awesomeusername: In that big Hot-Coffee-Mod article from a few weeks back they basically said, that they started with Red Dead Redemption right after San Andreas. So about 6 years of development? 2k has patience.

Exactly my point to the OP. Take-Two would rather ship out an amazing product then fart one out every year.

Also, that's pretty crazy.

Kill your babies. That's true of any creative endeavor. You don't get to the artistic level of BioShock and all it's influences by planning everything out and then just grinding it out. If you think you know exactly what you're going for, it'll be shit, because the most important part of creativity is the revelations along the way. I'm reluctant to go into why Levine and Irrational are one of the few who are doing it right, because hey, they're just games right.