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gregbrown

Bioshock Finite: Irrational Games shuts down

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Announced today, Ken Levine is "winding-down" the studio to about a dozen people so he can explore making narrative projects that are more replayable. I'd heard that the studio had its fair share of cultural/organizational problems, but this still comes as a shock!

http://irrationalgames.com/

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I'd be tempted to reply to you just saying that it might come more as a Bioshock, but this is just too sad/weird for that. It's sad to see such a prominent and consistently interesting studio go out of business, and to see so many people out of work.

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Now all the people there who thought Irrational games were good because of their narrative can make more racist stuff with Levine while the people who joined Irrational to make immersive systems-driven games can go work at Arkane and other places that will appreciate them.

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 It makes sense.  Lots of creators reach a point where they aren't really creating anything anymore because of their success.  They are managing a business, overseeing multiple projects, etc.  And the expectations for the next thing only get bigger and bigger. 

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I can understand Levine wanting to make something different instead of another massive scale game like B:I, but I can't understand why him leaving means that the entire studio is shutting down.

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Because if you get rid of all the people there is a TON of money left in the system. 

 

Now all the people there who thought Irrational games were good because of their narrative can make more racist stuff with Levine while the people who joined Irrational to make immersive systems-driven games can go work at Arkane and other places that will appreciate them.

 

HEYOO! But the note says "To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable."

 

That's kind of back to basics system shock, no?

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Well now I get the meaning behind "Irrational Games" as a name.

 

If Ken Levine was getting bored why didn't he just leave the company in someone else's hands? He just put a lot of people out of work.

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Technically 2K owns IG, and Levine just manages it, right?  It's a fully owned studio?  2K would have had major input, if not final decision, on closing the studio rather than turn it over to someone else. 

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Technically 2K owns IG, and Levine just manages it, right?  It's a fully owned studio?  2K would have had major input, if not final decision, on closing the studio rather than turn it over to someone else. 

 

That was my assessment as well. I can't imagine that Ken Levine was like "well, I'm bored with this so let's put like 70 people out of work". Probably he put in his request to leave Irrational, 2K evaluated whether or not Irrational was worth keeping without him, and seemingly decided the answer was "no."

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Someone at GAF is suggesting that Levine is being a willing fall-guy, that Take-Two wanted to get rid of the studio but made Levine do it.

 

That's a little tinfoil hatty, but not enough to be entirely ridiculous.

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Even if it was Take-Two's decision to close Irrational Games if they were going to lose Levine, Levine was in a position to know that was coming. And he still followed through.

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Someone at GAF is suggesting that Levine is being a willing fall-guy, that Take-Two wanted to get rid of the studio but made Levine do it.

 

That's a little tinfoil hatty, but not enough to be entirely ridiculous.

 

That's the conclusion I came to, as people have pointed out a studio head wanting to leave shouldn't lead to that studio being dismantled.

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Even if it was Take-Two's decision to close Irrational Games if they were going to lose Levine, Levine was in a position to know that was coming. And he still followed through.

 

So he should have put thrown his career at the feet of 2K in exchange for them releasing the hostage that was Irrational? That's pretty crazy, dude.

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Why are people assuming Ken has the power to fire that many people? And even if he did (he doesn't), Take-Two could just hire 'em all back... if they wanted to (read: if Bioshock had sold more).

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This sounds like great news to me, I'm curious what Ken will come up with, as well as the ex-Irrational devs. Infinite was a bit disappointing so it's sensible and inspiring to try and scale things down again.

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2K Marin and Irrational gone... so intense. Hope all those people can land on their feet, but with that number of people it seems daunting. At least there will probably be some amazing new indie studios to come out of this.

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Yay AAA gaming!  I can't wait for Chris and Steve to comment and give us all the inside dirt on Levine's evil deeds!


 

CHRIS: "I enjoyed my time at Irrational and the opportunity to work with Ken and the team.  I have made friendships there that have lasted to this day."

 

STEVE: "Uh, I never worked for Irrational.  How did you get in my house?"

 

This confirms every nefarious thought I ever had about Ken Levine!

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Wellp, there goes Irrational. Wouldn't be surprised that after this, we get some stories on how horrendous the development of Bioshock Infinite was. Playing it feels like playing a hollow carcass of a game. It feels like a shitton was iterated and cut out. For what reasons (other than the obvious fact that some content just needs to be cut), I do not know.

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That headline as well as the follow-up "BioShock studio caught in the Rapture" are both solid gold and you're just jealous you didn't think of them first.

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Wouldn't be surprised that after this, we get some stories on how horrendous the development of Bioshock Infinite was.

Funny you should say that. Saw this on GAF:

PIj9wPc.jpg

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