Bioshock Finite: Irrational Games shuts down

[melmer]

He's been posting a lot on Facebook too if you want to be nosey

https://www.facebook.com/ken.levine.9

Zynga is hoping to snap up all dat Bioshock talent

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z4qiPuNZgYsyeAmYp_PdkM1XVxFRHI2xpSxznofGIkw/mobilebasic?viewopt=127

Edit, oh my bad that's just their internal 'links to potential employers' doc. Here is a list of the company's attending their recruitment day

https://www.facebook.com/ken.levine.9/posts/10202483601190245

In this instance would these employers be completely open about what they are making? For example, hypothetically, would the new Amazon games company say openly "you will be working on freemium mobile apps". I suppose this goes for all video game employment, how often do you fully know what you are getting yourself in for when you accept a position?

[aperson]

I also really don't appreciate the way that you caricature what people you disagree with are saying in every post you've made so far on this forum. It's a cheap way to make you seem more reasonable in comparison, which you shouldn't need if you really are the voice of reason here.

 

You are correct - I definitely don't need to caricature. I will use direct quotes.

 

Let's go through some of rude and ridiculous things said in this thread.

 

There's plenty of evidence that:

 

A ) Levine was a Really Bad Boss, and allowed or even enabled(!) a toxic culture to take over Irrational Games, and

 

There's plenty of evidence? Where is it? This poster, while claiming that there is plenty of evidence, cited zero evidence. Where is a first-hand account of this toxic culture? Or even a second-hand account?

 

Another poster, in reference to the Gamasutra piece:

 

Direct evidence! Well, ces't la vie. Was willing, and trying, to give the benefit of the doubt. But $200 million for Bioshock Infinite? I could see $40 million, a fifth of that. But 200? Geeze.

 

"Direct evidence." Of what? Of mismanagement? Of that Ken is a Really Bad Boss and the culture was toxic? Of the budget?

 

This is of course not "direct evidence." It's barely "indirect evidence." "Direct evidence" of the budget would be a copy of the relevant documents. The Gama piece includes a single attributed quote - which calls the piece into question. The section called "Foreshadowing" is full of innuendo  - Ken says crunch is bad but BI is not a formula game, Nate Wells praises the atmosphere at ND, and we're supposed to put two and two together and conclude that obviously that's a jab at Levine and that Levine forces his team to crunch and is terrible or something?

 

The actual Levine quote is perfectly reasonable. He doesn't like crunch and it should be avoidable with good planning, but sometimes you don't plan well and you crunch. I work in the video game industry, I know plenty of other people who work in the video game industry. The vast majority of them would say something similar. Everyone from CEOs to design interns. Trying to spin that as disregard for employees is extremely unfair. Most people in the video game industry, including almost certainly most of the people laid off, believe something similar to that sentiment.

 

Calling this "direct evidence" of anything is flat wrong. It's also confirmation bias - the piece is flimsy but if you're already prone to believe it why not pretend it's some slam dunk?

 

Now this is where it gets really bad:

 

This may sound harsh but based on some of these accounts, Levine comes across as more of an idiot than a creative genius. It's great that he has all these awesome creative ideas but the fact that he is so apparently clueless on how his practices impact the potential profitability of the game he is creating is baffling.

 

Based on what accounts? Again, there's no citation of anything. No quote is attributed to anyone. Are "these accounts" just that JP tweet? Are you guys sending each other private messages full of source material?

 

He comes across as an idiot? Not just he made a bad business decision, but he's "clueless." He doesn't understand that spending a lot of money on a game will impact profitability, or he doesn't understand that if you delay a game you need to burn more money?

 

He started his own business - a business that was more successful than most. I'm supposed to believe that subtracting spending from revenue is beyond him?

 

This is a gross simplification of how game development works, or how any business works. Sometimes you know that delaying something will cost more money, but you delay it because the product quality isn't there. Sometimes you go down a promising path then realize it wasn't so promising. Sometimes the guy over your head demands changes. This happens all the time at nearly every developer. The idea that he doesn't understand basic business concepts as evidenced by his studio eventually failing is idiotic.

 

Maybe his "sculpting" approach eventually failed. But that approach lead to the creation of good games in the past, commercially successful games and a successful business. Maybe it got out of control, maybe it didn't scale up. But his practices were profitable. It's not like he inherited a company and immediately ran it into the ground.

 

And do we need to call him an idiot? Based on nothing? Most business fail. That's life. Most business owners are idiots? This is where "if it's so easy why don't you do it?" becomes valid. It's just so simple to found your own video game company and keep it profitable for decades, and if at any point you fail it's because you lack the most basic business sense - really?

 

To me this looks unfounded and rude, but the poster explains how calling someone an idiot isn't so bad. I'm not going to quote that.

 

They then double down:

 

To be clear, I think being a competent game developer goes far beyond just being a 'creative genius' and Levine comes across as completely ignorant when it comes to anything beyond hatching his video game ideas.

 

Again, based on what? He started a business, his business grew to employ hundreds of people. I run a TWO PERSON business and it can feel overwhelming at times. (I sent out 1099 forms a week late!) He's not a competent game developer and he's completely ignorant beyond game ideas? There's a mountain of evidence to the contrary, and no evidence that supports that. There's a common saying in the industry: "ideas are cheap." (Personally I don't like that saying) People good at hatching ideas get mocked. Hatching ideas is not even considered a real skill! The idea that someone founded and ran a successful video game business when they are only good at hatching ideas is monumentally dumb.

 

Is this informed? Is this "criticism" of any merit? Is this fair? Would this be fair to say about someone you know, a friend of yours? About Tim Shafer? Or is this something a guy can get away with saying because it's part of a pile-on?

 

If you think Levine is completely ignorant beyond "hatching his video game ideas" then the ignorant idiot here is you. Full stop. Sorry if that's me attacking another poster, but I don't see a huge moral distinction between attacking a poster vs attacking a guy who isn't around and can't defend himself.

 

 

The fact that he, the head of a major developer, was under a lot of stress seems like a pretty poor defense against accusations that he treated employees poorly during development or in the shutdown.

 

Where are these accusations? Some of you are upset that he is re-tweeting job posts - is that an example of his poor treatment? Are the accusations just that Gamasutra piece again?

 

Ken Levine ran a large studio. There are going to be people who thought they were treated poorly, especially when they were just laid off. So far I've seen very few people saying they were treated poorly. How many of these accusations are there? Who is making them? Can someone list them, link to them?

 

People in this thread keep appealing to evidence, accusations, etc, while citing nothing. You heard that Ken Levine is a monster - ok, where? Let me decide for myself whether that source is reputable.

 

Boo fucking hoo. Do you actually have anything useful to contribute?

 

This is post that wouldn't fly at Neogaf. That's all I'll say about that, other than that this is an odd objection given the amount of useless junk in the thread. Making fun of Cat Daddy was a useful contribution?

 

I could probably have managed to make it less racist, at least. I feel like I could handle that.

 

Now we bring out the big guns! There's no better way to seize the moral high ground than call others racist. This is the entire post. There's no explanation. There's no "I thought the way it handled race was troubling - I can see what they were going for but it came out poorly." Nope. The game is just racist. Racist enough that it could be less racist and still presumably be racist. Case closed.

 

I could make TWD less racist by having Lee not be a convict. I mean, didn't anyone on the team watch Hollywood Shuffle? Fair statement? It seems fair, if going from zero to racism is acceptable.

 

Whether or not BI is racist, or a product of racist intent, or maybe can come off as racist, or used race just as a marketing ploy, or tried for something and just botched it - I think any rational person would recognize this is a conversation that goes beyond the blithe observation that nope, it's just racist.

 

This is not criticism, it's not informed, it's not fair. It's "how can I score cheap points while being snide?"

[Bjorn]

Now we bring out the big guns! There's no better way to seize the moral high ground than call others racist. This is the entire post. There's no explanation. There's no "I thought the way it handled race was troubling - I can see what they were going for but it came out poorly." Nope. The game is just racist. Racist enough that it could be less racist and still presumably be racist. Case closed.

 

I almost commented on the racism thing earlier, but didn't want to derail this.  BI has bad problems with how it handles minorities.  I'm stating that as a fact, because it's a fact.  The way the Vox Pop and Daisy are handled, in the context of how narratives involving whites and blacks often play out, it's problematic at best and racist at worst. For a lot of people who pay attention to gaming news, talking about BI being racist isn't a "gotcha" style claim that needs explaining in the context of this thread.  This has been pretty thoroughly discussed around the Internet. It doesn't need to be rehashed here. You can go check out the BI thread here, there were discussions about it there.  Or check out some links on the previous page.  I don't think this thread should derail into a discussion about racism in BI.  We have other places for that.

[aperson]

So aperson, should all people in a position of power be off limits when it comes to criticism? Who is it okay to criticize? I suppose you also find it sick when people call Obama an idiot or when they get furious at congress because they're all trying so hard and all have our best interests in mind right?

 

Sorry. You don't get to pretend that you're somehow the good guy, fighting the fight for the oppressed masses while I'm some apologist for the 1%.

 

Calling someone an idiot isn't "criticism." Your "criticism" was nonsense..

[Gormongous]

aperson, I understand your complaints about "rudeness" and mostly agree myself, but I don't really get your whole "unfounded criticism" thing. So long as Levine is famous and respected, anyone who goes on record saying that he's a bad boss or that Irrational was mismanaged is sacrificing their livelihood, full stop. Anyone who wants to work in the video game industry, no matter how bad the conditions, can at best hint to reporters that things might not have been great all the time for some people they know, but that's it. All we're going to get is "unfounded" assumptions because the culture of the video game industry freezes out anyone who violates that conspiracy of silence in order to protect the poor working conditions on which it sustains itself. You can make plenty of arguments about how, if more people found the courage (or maybe just the means) to speak out, that all might start to change, but right now your refusal to accept anything but firsthand testimony with a name attached stacks the deck impossibly in favor of Levine, the only person who wasn't and isn't and will never be in danger of losing his job.

 

Also:

Sorry. You don't get to pretend that you're somehow the good guy, fighting the fight for the oppressed masses while I'm some apologist for the 1%.

 

Calling someone an idiot isn't "criticism." Your "criticism" was nonsense..

 

Dude, you just said a couple posts ago that laying off an entire company and sailing away on a golden parachute is somehow "life", whatever that means. Literally anything in the universe can be defended by calling it "life" with no further comment. There's a good conversation going on in the I Had a Random Thought thread about pots and kettles being black, actually.

[brkl]

This is an Internet forum, not journalism or a dissertation. Don't criticise people on not having a list of references at the end of their post as if that's expected. We are here to hash out our opinions, not nail down the truth of Levine's character.

So if you want to understand where someone's opinion comes from, ask them.

[aperson]

I almost commented on the racism thing earlier, but didn't want to derail this.  BI has bad problems with how it handles minorities.  I'm stating that as a fact, because it's a fact.  The way the Vox Pop and Daisy are handled, in the context of how narratives involving whites and blacks often play out, it's problematic at best and racist at worst. For a lot of people who pay attention to gaming news, talking about BI being racist isn't a "gotcha" style claim that needs explaining in the context of this thread.  This has been pretty thoroughly discussed around the Internet. It doesn't need to be rehashed here.

 

Saying that something is a fact doesn't make it a fact. I'm stating this as fact: your "fact" isn't a fact. (This is in fact a real fact) This is not up for debate unless you want to argue with the basic principles of reality. Argument by assertion is no argument at all. There's no consensus view on the internet that BI is racist, so at best your talking about the the view of the slice of the internet you frequent. (I'm not sure when "the internet" became the final word on race )

 

Secondly, there is a huge difference between "this thing is problematic" and "this thing is racist." The claim wasn't that it was problematic.

 

Third, by saying that this poster could make the game less racist they are clearly implicating Levine in that racism. That Levine is racist, that he just didn't care about stripping out the racism, that he was oblivious to it. Whereas this guy is a morally superior being who cares about race issues much more than Ken. It wouldn't even be that hard to make the game less racist - just, you know, don't be such a fucking racist!

 

If we're going to just state things as facts can I take a turn? TWD is racist. The show is racist, the game is racist, the comic is racist. Also sexist. Were I working on the TWD I would have made the game less racist and sexist than Jake or Sean did. I feel like I could handle that. It wouldn't be very hard.

 

Does this feel fair? is this a useful criticism? This doesn't feel like posturing or point-scoring? The subtext here isn't "I'm less racist than these fucks"?

 

TWD is "problematic" in many ways. Lee is a fucking convict. You can find a ton of writing on the internet about how TWD is sexist and how Kirkman is sexist. (The internet has spoken!) The game is about a male hero protecting a literally infantilized female.

 

That said, I wouldn't say with conviction "were I working on TWD I'd make it less sexist and racist" because I know very well what the implications of that are and I'm not that shitty a person. I'm not a super nice person. (Can you tell?) But I'm not that shitty.

[Merus]

I've articulated my opinions the best I can, if you don't get it, you don't get it. Oh well. I don't know what your point is and don't care enough to prove you wrong.

My point here is that you have no point, and are covering for that by telling other people they shouldn't make points either, that it's in bad taste. I am happy to waste no more time on whether or not I'm allowed to have the conversation currently in progress. Anyway, I have a new chewtoy:

 

My entire team except for my boss was laid off. Fuck that incompetent idiot!

 

Oh wait, my boss felt really bad that we were laid off, is a friend of mine, and we now own a business together. We also regularly meet up with our ex-coworkers for drinks.

I have also been in a situation like this. I didn't blame my boss for being laid off, because it was clear that the problem did not lay with him. The money ran out, and sacrifices had to be made. The difference is we made good products that didn't spend six years in development and weren't fatally compromised when they released.

 

It sucks when people are laid off. I don't see how that's an excuse to lay into someone with a mix of vitriol and ignorance. Managing a project is hard.

I reject your insinuation that a) people being laid off is a force of nature instead of an intentional act performed by a human being,  that having negative opinions on what happened is in bad taste, and c) that snark on a public forum is as objectionable as hundreds of people losing their jobs, and not a way for the relatively powerless to cope with a tragedy for people they hoped would be more successful. This is smarm; characteristically, you spend several paragraphs basically saying, 'guys, this is entirely mysterious, so everyone shut up and look sad'. This helps no-one, and we will learn nothing. And in trying to deploy shame to bolster your argument, you make a fatal mistake:

 

If Ken Levine is an incompetent piece of shit what about Tim Shafer? DFA isn't exactly well-managed.

Said as much in the DFA forums when Broken Age was split.

It took Idle Thumbs forever to send Kickstarter backer items and some people are having problems / still waiting. Are they incompetent morons also?

They dropped the ball (and I've teased them about it), but fulfillment is a full-time job. They're not professional fulfillers and it's unreasonable to expect amateurs to be as good at it as, say, Fangamer.

Valve takes forever to make games - also worthless pieces of shit?

Oh man you're new, I yell about how terrible Valve is all the time, everyone else here is sick of it.

In general, it's not a good idea to make arguments to a crowd that suggest hypocrisy without actually demonstrating it, because you'll inevitably make it to someone who happens to have been consistent the whole time.

And then we get false equivalencies:

If Valve goes out of business next week can I point back to the interview where he said he played DOTA for 1000 hours and say "the warning signs were there! The lazy piece of shit was a terrible manager who just played DOTA all day!"

Not even comparable; games developers playing their product is research and development. Ken Levine interviewing other creators will probably result in insights he can use. If he's interviewing hacks, though, what's he learning?

 

Still, it's the kind of thing that becomes more important after the fact. If someone had told me before Binfinite's release that it was going to be mediocre because Ken Levine interviewed Zack Snyder, I'd have called them a dipshit, so while it's a false equivalency it was still not a particularly good comparison. I take the point.

Nevertheless, we're still entitled - and able - to draw conclusions about Irrational based on what we know publically:

 

There's not a lot of evidence that Ken Levine is a terrible person or an ineffective manager, other than that his business eventually failed - like most businesses.

We know for a fact that Irrational suffered from massive turnover, well above the industry average, and high turnover almost always means that there's a problem with a business (whether it's with the industry or with the management). We know that the game took six years to develop, and that protracted development period is in part due to Ken Levine's creative process, as in pre-release interviews he said as much, characterising it as iteration. We do not have good reasons for why these things happened, but we can be sure that Irrational during Bioshock: Infinite's development was dysfunctional, and it's not unreasonable for the buck to stop with the man in charge.

We can infer more. We know in detail what happened with Team Bondi and Silicon Knights, other studios that had high turnover and were late with their games, and in both of those cases the problem was a 'creative visionary' who was a poor manager and terrible person. We do not usually see this sort of evidence because it suits the game industry to ensure it cannot be seen - which in turn implies that it's endemic. We see from the finished game that it has major creative problems - although it contains much of merit, it is a compromised product. However, it is not especially buggy and has a consistent art style, which suggests a level of co-ordination that in turns suggests relatively good management of the individual disciplines by the leads. This in turns suggests the problems with the game lie either with the creative team, or the co-ordination between the creative team and the leads for the various disciplines. If the creative team is at fault, Levine has misrepresented himself to the public and to his publishers; if the co-ordination was poor, Levine is a bad manager.

 

Maybe your boss isn't paying attention to the game and that reads as negligence, when in reality the reason they aren't paying attention to the game is that they're busy lobbying the parent company for more budget so you can stay employed.

This isn't a great argument because delivering a creative work under budget is a skill. There is a broad swathe of creative professionals whose chief asset is that they're able to deliver pretty good work, under budget. The hypothetical boss here begging the parent company for money wouldn't be in this mess if they had developed the skill that lets them budget appropriately - and by all accounts Take Two generally does not force a greenlighted game to rapidly change scope, unless a game has very clearly gone off the rails (again, drawing from the expose on Team Bondi and post-release discussion about what went wrong at 2K Marin). While developers frequently have to deal with meddlesome publishers, part of Take Two's success has been rooted in them not doing that, so it's unlikely to be the case here.

[eot]

hird, by saying that this poster could make the game less racist they are clearly implicating Levine in that racism. That Levine is racist, that he just didn't care about stripping out the racism, that he was oblivious to it. Whereas this guy is a morally superior being who cares about race issues much more than Ken. It wouldn't even be that hard to make the game less racist - just, you know, don't be such a fucking racist!

Making or saying something that comes off as racist doesn't necessarily make you one, it only makes you insensitive.

 

TWD is "problematic" in many ways. Lee is a fucking convict. You can find a ton of writing on the internet about how TWD is sexist and how Kirkman is sexist. (The internet has spoken!) The game is about a male hero protecting a literally infantilized female.

 

That said, I wouldn't say with conviction "were I working on TWD I'd make it less sexist and racist" because I know very well what the implications of that are and I'm not that shitty a person. I'm not a super nice person. (Can you tell?) But I'm not that shitty.

TWD plays on the stereotype of a black convict to make the other characters (and possibly the player) feel uncomfortable about him. Using a stereotype is not inherently problematic, but TWD and Infinite are a world apart in that regard.

[aperson]

aperson, I understand your complaints about "rudeness" and mostly agree myself, but I don't really get your whole "unfounded criticism" thing. So long as Levine is famous and respected, anyone who goes on record saying that he's a bad boss or that Irrational was mismanaged is sacrificing their livelihood, full stop. 

 

 

On some level it was mismanaged - that's pretty undeniable. The business did fail. But the accusations that he doesn't care about people, that the environment was "toxic", that he ran people into the ground, that he's a moron at running a business - I need *something* more than essentially nothing. I can't condemn someone based on nothing just because every good story needs a villain.

 

People don't want to use their real names, ok. Show me some quotes from anonymous sources then. Show me someone saying "I know three people who work at Irrational and they all thought Ken was a terrible person." I work in the gaming industry, I talk to people. I interview people. A lot of people looking for new jobs are unhappy with their old ones. That in itself means very little.

 

When people get laid off they are going to be pissed. And there are going to be people who quit over personality clashes, people who were pushed out, people who fundamentally disagreed with how the business was run. You're going to have some disgruntled people. Someone is going to say "I worked on something for 3 months then Ken made me redo it from scratch" because someone always says that. That person is going to view Ken as fickle and a bad manager. That doesn't mean Ken is actually fickle and a bad manager.

 

I've managed people. I'm sure a few of them think I was a bad manager. (Hopefully not too many) I know some of them disagreed with decisions I made or how I made them. I may have snapped at someone or been short. I may have been pissed at someone for not working hard enough. I sometimes worked on one thing when I should have been working on something else and missed the forest for the trees.

 

That doesn't make me a terrible person or terrible at business. It makes me a person. If someone is willing to say those things above they wouldn't be wrong. It wouldn't be an accurate representation but it wouldn't be wrong.

 

Maybe there's a guy at Telltale about to get laid off, and when he does he's going to complain about how Nick Breckon took hour-long breaks to play Neptune's Pride while he picked up the slack.

 

I don't need a signed affidavit from every Irrational employee stating that Ken Levine is a piece of shit, but I need more than innuendo. I need more than "well in an interview about Naughty Dog Nate Wells seemed to contrast the ego-free nature of development there with development at Irrational and thus Ken Levine is an egotistical asshole QED."

 

Dude, you just said a couple posts ago that laying off an entire company and sailing away on a golden parachute is somehow "life", whatever that means. Literally anything in the universe can be defended by calling it "life" with no further comment. There's a good conversation going on in the I Had a Random Thought thread about pots and kettles being black, actually.

 

Didn't you chastise me about mischaracterizing people rather than exactly quoting them? I said businesses failing is life. Most businesses fail eventually. That's life - as in, that is what normally happens on planet earth. Ken Levine's business was more successful than most. If his failure shows he's an idiot then most business owners are much bigger idiots.

 

There's nothing incredibly remarkable about a business failing nor is a business failing any sort of moral failure. That a person failed at business is a pretty flimsy reason to rip into them.

[brkl]

Saying that something is a fact doesn't make it a fact. I'm stating this as fact: your "fact" isn't a fact. (This is in fact a real fact) This is not up for debate unless you want to argue with the basic principles of reality. Argument by assertion is no argument at all. There's no consensus view on the internet that BI is racist, so at best your talking about the the view of the slice of the internet you frequent. (I'm not sure when "the internet" became the final word on race )

Quoting this because I want to make sure people didn't miss it.

[anthonyRichard]

People don't want to use their real names, ok. Show me some quotes from anonymous sources then. Show me someone saying "I know three people who work at Irrational and they all thought Ken was a terrible person." I work in the gaming industry, I talk to people. I interview people. A lot of people looking for new jobs are unhappy with their old ones. That in alone means very little.

 

"Very little", but not nothing. Right now we've got nothing from official sources. Worse than nothing, obvious PR spin. So it's not unreasonable to use the little we have to form tentative opinions. But of course people are liable to take tentative opinions and transform them into sure facts and you're right to call some of those specific comments out, but you go too far in insinuating that we can't have an opinion at all unless it's backed up by facts.

Here are some facts:

• That there is a long history of unconfirmed rumors of Levine being an egotist/asshole. (It is a fact that the rumors exist & have existed for a long time, which is salient on its own for reasons that should become obvious)
• Bioshock Infinite took approximately twice the time to make that typical games like it take.
• Levine's studio is now being shut down.
• For the announcement of that shut down & the firing of almost all of its staff, Levine or 2k PR chose to write a letter that emphasized that it was his own choice to leave because he wants to form a new studio and to please now be excited for his next project, in an almost too good to be true parody of his long-rumored egomania.

I know that, knowing nothing for certain, it appears to be bizarre and gross. I don't know that it actually is, but I know that it very much looks like it is. What's wrong with me saying that?

[aperson]

that having negative opinions on what happened is in bad taste

...

that snark on a public forum is as objectionable as hundreds of people losing their jobs

 

I didn't insinuate anything even remotely resembling these statements. These are your fabrications to make me appear callous.

 

 

This is smarm; characteristically, you spend several paragraphs basically saying, 'guys, this is entirely mysterious, so everyone shut up and look sad'. This helps no-one, and we will learn nothing. And in trying to deploy shame to bolster your argument, you make a fatal mistake:

By doing what you're doing you're "basically saying" that I can safely ignore your posts.

[aperson]

Quoting this because I want to make sure people didn't miss it.

Because you agreed or because it was incredibly stupid? Or maybe because I used the wrong form of "you're"?

Without getting into prolonged epistemology debates what I wrote is correct. Stating that something is a fact doesn't make it true. I realize this is itself an assertion of fact, but again, epistemology etc. If you really want to we can have a 10 page debate on whether or not numbers exist. (I'm "for") (Spoiler: the argument ends in draw)

I've never played Bioshock Infinite (I have no interest in that type of game) but I suspect I would agree with the statement that it has problems with race. From what I've read that certainly seems to be the case. But that it has racial problems isn't a fact. "Most people believe B:I has racial problems" may well be fact. (It probably isn't though) "I'm reasonably intelligent and I can make a good case for it having racial problems" is fine, it doesn't need to be a fact. It's just silly to think that you can make an opinion more convincing by claiming that it's a factpinion.

It seems pointless to erase the distinction between "fact" and "opinion" - these are useful words that mean different things. Specific language is a good thing.

[brkl]

aperson, why are you bringing epistemology into this? If you have a different conception of how the word 'fact' should be used, fine. Use it how you want to. But you don't own the language and don't expect everyone to play by your rules.  

[aperson]

"Very little", but not nothing. Right now we've got nothing from official sources. Worse than nothing, obvious PR spin. So it's not unreasonable to use the little we have to form tentative opinions. But of course people are liable to take tentative opinions and transform them into sure facts and you're right to call some of those specific comments out, but you go too far in insinuating that we can't have an opinion at all unless it's backed up by facts.

Here are some facts:

• That there is a long history of unconfirmed rumors of Levine being an egotist/asshole. (It is a fact that the rumors exist & have existed for a long time, which is salient on its own for reasons that should become obvious)
• Bioshock Infinite took approximately twice the time to make that typical games like it take.
• Levine's studio is now being shut down.
• For the announcement of that shut down & the firing of almost all of its staff, Levine or 2k PR chose to write a letter that emphasized that it was his own choice to leave because he wants to form a new studio and to please now be excited for his next project, in an almost too good to be true parody of his long-rumored egomania.

I know that, knowing nothing for certain, it appears to be bizarre and gross. I don't know that it actually is, but I know that it very much looks like it is. What's wrong with me saying that?

 

This is going to be my last post for a while because I don't want to monopolize the conversation, and because I'm tired, and because I've basically said what I wanted to.

 

What's wrong with what you said? Not a lot. I would take issue with the "where there's smoke there's fire" sentiment about rumors involving egotism, but overall there's not much wrong with your post. (I heard from 3 different girls that Suzy is a slut! Draw your own conclusions!)

 

It does appear bizarre and gross. The idea that he is closing the studio and laying everyone off so that he can refocus is gross. It's also very hard to take at face value. Take Two has determined that the studio is losing money, or will lose money, or that it will make such modest amounts of money at best that it's not worth keeping open. Otherwise it would stay open. Ken would leave and the studio would remain. Rare didn't close when the Stamper brothers left. Lionhead didn't close when Molyneux left. Studios don't close because one guy wants to leave. Executives don't choose to not make money.

 

Maybe Ken wanted to leave and Take Two thought that without his personal brand the studio would struggle. In that case he had a choice I don't envy - stay at a job he no longer wants just to keep people employed, or leave and they lose their jobs. Maybe Take Two just wanted the studio to close. I don't know. I really have no idea. But I'm fairly certain the story isn't "viable, promising studio closes because guys leaves."

 

The letter is very odd. I suspect the intention was to say "Take Two is closing but don't worry, crazy genius Ken Levine is still here and still making great games. The studio is closing so that his games can be even better!" It's highly unlikely that Ken wrote this letter without input from Take Two. Ken is a brand. This looks like an attempt to make the most of bad situation by playing up the strength of that brand.

 

Yes, the letter is gross. I don't know who to pin that on. Maybe Ken Levine is incredibly tone deaf. Maybe a Take Two person in incredibly tone deaf. Maybe we'll find out that Ken Levine has a medical condition that explains why he's so tone deaf, and then the narrative will be about how a disabled person was bullied. I don't know who to take fault with, so I'm not going straight for "Ken is an asshole.

[CaptainFish]

I don't think you can blame him for the studio closing, but you can certainly blame him for statements he puts his name on whatever the reason. I don't see any situation in which he isn't to blame for something he put his name on. If he agreed to stay on as long as he put his signature on a statement without knowing the statement, that's still his fault. If he has a mental condition, he has more than enough money to have had it diagnosed so that he can reduce the effect on his work, something I bet a lot of people who suffer in similar ways don't. So if he says "we're laying people off because I want to make smaller games" when what happened is "Irrational was not viable to keep open but Take Two is willing to keep Ken on in a smaller capacity", that's on Ken. You don't get to attach your name to statements and not take any repercussions for those statements.

 

 

The Walking Dead comments on this page are a part of why I think some of the analysis to games that aren't done is so dangerous. People make  statements about games before they're out, or when a piece of information leaks, and then someone makes a similar comment about a game that is released with a fully fleshed out character and think they're equivalent. To even imply that TWD is racist because of one aspect of Lee, a fully formed character, is so preposterous in comparison to Bioshock Infinite that only uses barely fleshed out characters of race as a backdrop to a story that was ostensibly about race but turned out to be more about white guilt. I guess you were trying to prove a point, but your point is moot because if you take a full analysis of Bioshock Infinite you can see lots of problems and issues and if you take a full analysis of The Walking Dead it isn't even remotely racist with regards to Lee as a character. Lecturing the forum about facts and knowledge while making such disingenuous statements is pretty callous. 

 

On a personal note, the idea that you could play The Walking Dead and then boil Lee down to being a convict is really disgusting to me, even if it's just to prove a point.

[Zeusthecat]

Aperson, I would respond to you but others have already pretty much nailed all the points. Just remember that an idiot is a person who is ignorant, straw men are very flammable, and a frog that calls a tree green is racist.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I've sort of zoned out in the last few posts but if we're looking for proof that Ken Levine is a shitty dude to work for, JP "Friend of the Show" "The Breton" LeBreton gives us some proof:

(He worked on BioShock and BioShock 2)

[Forbin]

Has everyone had their fill of forum justice?

 

It's been pointed out a few times that Levine is all over twitter and facebook trying to help people get jobs. If that's helping, that's great, but it's hardly an excuse for anything.  I've known deadbeat employers to completely abandon their team after layoffs, and it's a lot easier to just be quiet, but what he's doing doesn't make up for the situation.

 

The studio closure I can't lay directly at Ken's feet.  He may be largely responsible, he may not be.  But the thing that's bugged me since the start is the deal he's set himself up with, the amount of preparation he's had, and (mostly) the way he included it in the message.  When you get laid off, it doesn't matter how good the outplacement package is, the feeling is awful even if you've known it was coming for a while.  And it doesn't matter how much your old boss is trying to help you out, because it all feels like guilt.  And if you see that they've completely taken care of themselves, it's hard to be grateful.

 

Tweeting #irrationaljobs just seems like slacktivism.  I don't think he shouldn't be doing that, I just don't think he should be given any credit for it.  I doubt the people looking for work are truly feeling that grateful.

[Bjorn]

Quoting this because I want to make sure people didn't miss it.

 

I would argue that it's fact, because you can place BI in a historical context of similarly racist material, and show the lineage from which it is descended.  If people choose to ignore or be ignorant of that lineage, that's their problem and choice.  But it doesn't wipe out history, or what parts of it BI draws on in negative ways.

[aperson]

I find it fascinating that the response to "watch your tone" being used to dismiss things out of hand was the invention of "watch your smarm" - also being used to dismiss things out of hand. Before someone might shut down discussion with "I don't know, I have some issues with your tone" and now they can say "I don't know, you seem to have some issues with my tone." It's the same fucking thing just reversed. It would be kind of brilliant if it wasn't so obviously ridiculous.

 

Just pretend your opponent is making a tonal argument and you win for free. Clever.

 

In the written word tone and content are both solely defined by the words you choose. There's no line where one starts and the other ends. The idea that content and tone are cleanly separable is nonsense.

 

To be clear, I think being a competent game developer goes far beyond just being a 'creative genius' and Levine comes across as completely ignorant when it comes to anything beyond hatching his video game ideas.

 

The problem with this is not the tone. It's that it's fucking dumb. It's a little rude, but it's also complete nonsense. It betrays a complete lack of understanding of what it takes to develop a game or found and run a studio.

 

Aaronofthe made a point about jumping to conclusions based on little information, that people were assuming the worst without cause, that other humans should be treated with some respect, and that the process of creating a game was being grossly oversimplified, portrayed as a simple task that only a clueless idiot could botch. The response to that was dismissal out of hand as "smarm."

 

This is a mechanism that enriches conversation? "Don't smarm me bro" is a valuable contribution? It looks to me no better than "watch your tone" - employed in the same way for the same reason: as a dodge to avoid engagement.

 

I look forward to the day when a series of feminist concerns is dismissed as being too smarmy while an MRA guy defends his sexism as a noble blow struck against the forces of smarm. I assume this will happen if it hasn't already.

[brkl]

If Aaronofthe was making a point about how other humans should be treated with some respect, he should have led with example.

[Zeusthecat]

The problem with this is not the tone. It's that it's fucking dumb. It's a little rude, but it's also complete nonsense. It betrays a complete lack of understanding of what it takes to develop a game or found and run a studio.

What's fucking dumb is coming onto a forum and telling people that they are stupid for having the opinions they have and then go on a fallacy ridden rant about how none of us have the right to draw different conclusions from those that you have drawn. All you have done is come on here and attack people and when you are challenged on your points, you put up a straw man in the hopes that no one will notice that you aren't actually capable of providing an intelligent response to the specific counterpoints that people have brought up.

Yes, Ken Levine comes off as ignorant to me. I have read enough about this situation that that is where my brain ended up. It appears that he was difficult to work for, couldn't keep his project under budget, and just generally had a negative impact on a lot of people who worked for him. So he seems ignorant to me. That's the thing about opinions, we all have them and sometimes we offer them up. You seem to have a very hard time accepting that.

And that whole 'liberalism' thing from earlier was real classy too.

[brkl]

I would argue that it's fact, because you can place BI in a historical context of similarly racist material, and show the lineage from which it is descended.  If people choose to ignore or be ignorant of that lineage, that's their problem and choice.  But it doesn't wipe out history, or what parts of it BI draws on in negative ways.

 

I would agree with you.