BioShock creator Ken Levine wanted developer Irrational Games to continue, and didn’t expect publisher Take-Two to shut it down.
In 2014 Levine announced he was “winding down” the studio to focus on a “different kind of game”, meaning all but 15 Irrational employees were laid off.
Now, in an interview with Edge Magazine (thanks GamesRadar), Levine has stated his intention was for Irrational to continue but the decision to close was “made at a corporate level”.
Levine discussed his time at Irrational following the release of BioShock Infinite and how this led to him parting ways with the studio.
“The closure of Irrational was complicated,” he said. “I felt out of my depth in the role. You’re this creative person, and all of a sudden, as your vision increases of what you want to do, you have to become a manager, in a way that you don’t necessarily have any training or skill in. My mental health was a mess during Infinite. I was stressed out, a lot of personal things were going on in my life at the time, and then my parents both died. I just couldn’t do it any more, and I didn’t think I had the team’s confidence.”
That’s when he left, leaving the studio in the hands of Take-Two.
“So my intention was to go and say, ‘Look, I just need to go start a new thing, and Irrational should continue’,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t maintain the name Irrational. I thought they were going to continue. But it wasn’t my company – I sold the company, so I worked for Take-Two, and the studio was theirs.
“The decision was made at a corporate level that they didn’t think they should continue with the studio as a going concern. My feeling was that it probably would have made sense. Take-Two did a BioShock remaster – that would have been a good title for Irrational to get their head around, build a new creative director structure, and then build off of that once they had the confidence to do the next BioShock game. I don’t think I was in any state to be a good leader for the team.”
Levine described trying to make the studio closure “the least painful layoff we could possibly do”, but he didn’t feel comfortable leading the team when his next project would have a long period of research and development. “The problem is – and you see this problem with big studios – what do you do with 300 people when you’re going to have a multiple-year R&D project?” he said.
Still, a “good chunk” of laid off developers returned to work on the yet-to-be-revealed next BioShock game.
Levine, meanwhile, will this year release Judas with his new studio Ghost Story Games, which he previously described as being built from “narrative Lego”.
Levine also discussed with Edge the development of BioShock Infinite, which he pushed to make more action-oriented. That led to the Sky-Lines – something he would have developed further in a potential sequel.
“The problem was that the Sky-Lines were so expensive to build that we couldn’t build enough space to support the feature,” he said. “The team did a great job of bringing that feature to life – there was just not enough of it in the game for it to really land.
“If we had done a sequel to Infinite, I think I would have spent more time on that. That thing was built on Unreal Engine 3, which is not an outdoor engine. Sky-Lines were a lot of spit and chewing gum and prayers. Players would be surprised how much of games are put together with spit and chewing gum – even the best ones that have worked really well.”
Judas was last seen at Sony’s PlayStation State of Play this time last year and is yet to receive a firm release date beyond 2025.
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