Bioshock Finite: Irrational Games shuts down

[Twig]

no one in this thread was actually calling the guy an idiot.

Actually that did happen. Among other things.

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah I edited it. AHHHH, but now it's preserved, Twig. GAH!

[Twig]

daaaang

[Frenetic Pony]

Absolutely untrue, for the simple fact that most interaction-loop games do not have a clear, functional goal that lets you even attempt to create an accurate plan. A word processor needs to process words. This can be neatly cut up until the functional segments are capable of being estimated and executed. A game needs to be fun. Good luck planning that.

The fact that games still go so massively over time/budget so frequently in spite of the wealth of tools available should be a gigantic red flag that, no, they're not simple at all.

Heck, just look at board games. There's basically zero technology involved there at all and they already can take years to get good. A friend of mine is just getting one of his designs accepted for publishing, and that took two years on and off.

 

Didn't say they were "simple" just not complicated in the same way as other software projects. Other software is "how do I make this work?" All the time, with everything. In games you are often doing the exact same thing another hundred games have done. It's a well understood problem. Which, while not making dead simple, does make it easier than coding everything from scratch (or with minimal borrowed frameworks) that other projects have.

 

If you want to get a guy running around in your game you can do that in a couple hours. If you want to get multiple guys, running around in the same world, controlled by different users over the internet, again that's a day. If you want to sync that text document with multiple users across a server with permissions... uhhhh, how do you do that?

 

The point isn't that games aren't complex, but that uniquely to games that complexity can be a purchased thing. Gunpoint took how long it did to make not because programming was a probem, but making sure everything was fun and the user understood it and it felt good. If you are comparing what takes the most time, between solving programming problems and "making it fun", then the latter is definitely the more time consuming area for most games. Sure there's banished with all its bugs, from a one man team, who still pretty much guaranteed spent more time trying to make the game "fun" than making sure everything just functioned as intended.

[Twig]

If you want to get a guy running around in your game you can do that in a couple hours. If you want to get multiple guys, running around in the same world, controlled by different users over the internet, again that's a day. If you want to sync that text document with multiple users across a server with permissions... uhhhh, how do you do that?

I don't really know how to respond to this other than to accuse you of insanity. This is an absurd series of statements.

[Frenetic Pony]

I don't really know how to respond to this other than to accuse you of insanity. This is an absurd series of statements.

 

Err, I've been to multiple game jams... honestly it's not that hard to do for prototyping. People can and have made complicated multiplayer prototypes in just a handful of days. I can easily point to evidence, of any number of games and developers. Nidhogg did not take years to program, it took years to balance just right.

 

Maybe I'm just explaining it wrong. Think of it this way: Ideally all things are in service of making a great experience. This includes any and all programming tasks. If you limit the scope of a project early you can know what you're programming and get it done. If you continuously change what your goals are, because you are trying to make your game more interesting or "work better", then that's going to take up more programming time, and introduce more bugs, and etc. because you just added new features.

 

It's that all programming tasks, no matter how simple or complicated, are driven by the needs of iterative design, and the less you fiddle around with the basic design of your game the less you have to spend time programming things. I'm not saying programming is easy, I do it for fun. I'm saying it's driven by making, and changing, the game design. Which means that the game design changing and iterating continuously is the root cause of it all.

[Twig]

...Congratulations, you've identified the reason prototyping is a good thing.

[Frenetic Pony]

...Congratulations, you've identified the reason prototyping is a good thing.

 

That was my point all along!

 

But since I've thought of it, evidence for programming games taking less than other major software projects: Natural Selection 2 - 1 programmer (and they built their own engine! Probably why the game is buggy though...). Turtle Rock Studios: Evolve, rather few employees. Heck DOTA was made as a mod, by 1 guy initially! Prototype, fail faster, blah blah blah!

[Forbin]

I've spent years in both game dev and regular software development.  There's a lot of problems common to both, and I think it's fair to say that a lot of the problems that push games over time and over budget are similar.  But in my opinion, games are far more complex to develop.

 

Contrary to what Frenetic first posted, there are far more tools and boilerplate conventions in regular software development.  There are huge open source communities, libraries and volumes of shared knowledge.  By far most developers in the world are doing basically the same job, creating a simple CRUD web applications for internal tools at large companies or institutions.  The advanced guys get to develop services to help pipe data from one arcane system into another.  It can be creative and fulfilling work sometimes, but it's basically the same pattern, and most of the time there's a ton of existing work for you to leverage.

 

Also, I've never met a customer nearly as unforgiving as a gamer.

[Zeusthecat]

I'm sure the dissolution of Irrational is at least partly Levine's fault. What I don't see is how that makes him an idiot, ignorant, incompetent, guilty of adopting an irresponsible process, etc.

I know we're going to continue to disagree but please at least consider these two facts: Irrational had a high turnover rate and Irrational got shut down. I think it is safe to say that companies with high turnover rates are more often than not in that position because of incompetent management. Then when a company that is already in that position gets shut down, it makes an even stronger argument for that being the case. Considering that, I think it is perfectly reasonable to come to the conclusion in a case like this that the dude in charge is incompetent.

[Jake]

It's also worth remembering that the dude in charge had dudes in charge of him who had dudes in charge of them who all set expectations using different metrics.

[Zeusthecat]

It's also worth remembering that the dude in charge had dudes in charge of him who had dudes in charge of them who all set expectations using different metrics.

This is true but I think the circumstances around this whole situation would suggest that the original dude is likely the one most responsible for the high turnover and closing of the studio.

[SiN]

Here's another fact: the dude in charge ran the company for 13 years, where he was in charge of 7 critically acclaimed titles.

 

There are some very competent industry leaders who would be envious of that track record.

[syntheticgerbil]

Are you saying Ken Levine was in charge of those seven titles? It appears he's only really hands on and in charge on the "Shock" series upon checking the credits.

[SiN]

I'm saying he ran the company that produced those titles.

 

And are we looking at the same credits? http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,6832/

Lead Design on the Shock titles and SWAT 4. Freedom Force just says "Freedom Force Team", but I'm pretty sure he did design and writing on it.

 

Honestly (and again I *really* didn't like Binfinite) that's a pretty legit track record.

[syntheticgerbil]

Oops, went by the wiki, it's inaccurate for Swat 4. Although if the Mobygames is to go by, I don't think he was project lead on any game besides that, and he also didn't run the company alone. He may be a founder but it would seem that Jonathan Chey did most of the big boss man running stuff also going by Mobygames. The other founder, Robert Fermier seems to have stuck with programming.

 

And then Jonathan Chey left Irrational in 2011.

[Justin Leego]

Mobygames says he left even earlier than that, in 2009. BioShock 2 shipped in February 2010.

 

Four other ex-Irrationals joined him at Blue Manchu and they went and did Card Hunter.

[Zeusthecat]

Here's another fact: the dude in charge ran the company for 13 years, where he was in charge of 7 critically acclaimed titles.

 

There are some very competent industry leaders who would be envious of that track record.

 

Sure, but as others have pointed out he didn't quite have the same position of power and prominence in the company during that time than he did during the development of Bioshock Infinite. The fact still remains that he was running a company with a high turnover rate and that that company ultimately got shut down. 

[Bjorn]

The fact still remains that he was running a company with a high turnover rate and that that company ultimately got shut down.

 

This has become a bit of a mantra in this thread as the most emblematic sign that Levine was a failure, but high turnover is the norm in the gaming industry, and retention is the exception.  Because so much focus has been put on it, and because some of the former employees are better known to us than other companies (thanks to the connections the Thumbs have to Irrational), this might be a case of confirmation bias leading people to believe that the turnover was exceptional simply because we know more about it. 

 

Was their turnover rate significantly different than the industry norm?  Was it significantly different than other Take 2 owned studios?  Was it significantly different than other publisher owned AAA studios?   Was the churn during BI significantly different than the churn at other studios that have had a 5-6 year development cycle for a game?

 

I tend to agree that the company probably had some serious culture problems, and that some of that was related to Levine.  But this thread (perhaps unintentionally) makes it feel like there was something unique or different about the culture and atmosphere at Irrational.  Rather, if you turn the microscope on any gaming company (like Kotaku did here), you start to see the same pattern of complaints emerge. 

 

It feels a bit odd to dogpile on a single individual for what may well be the collective sins of the industry.  And part of the reason for that dogpile is that Levine has made himself a target by being more public than a lot of studio heads.  Between being more accessible to interviews and the podcast run, he made himself more visible, and on the Internet, visibility means target. If Levine would have kept a super low profile over the last 10 years, would this discussion be happening?

 

I don't think he should be immune from criticism, but it just feels that in the wake of all this that the criticism has lacked context and scope.

[Zeusthecat]

Bjorn, your point is well taken and if the situation at Irrational is truly the norm, then you're right, he doesn't deserve all this scrutiny more than anyone else.

 

However, based on the information that's been made available and the stories being run, it does appear that the turnover at Irrational was exceptionally high and that the churn was significantly higher than at other companies. When claims of high turnover are made doesn't that come with the insinuation that it is high relative to other game companies? Maybe they are being unfairly singled out so these stories can sound more sensationalist and their turnover is just as bad as everyone else in the industry but I am skeptical that that is the case considering the rumbles and grumbles we've been hearing about the culture there (which, again, could be the norm I suppose) and the stories of multiple people leaving due to their frustration with working with Ken.

[Bjorn]

And it may be high.  I don't know!  But at heart, I'm a skeptic of everything.  I'm skeptical of Levine's letter and Take 2's silence, and I'm skeptical of the criticism of Levine. 

 

I will point out to these stats though.  The average US employee only stays at a job a little over 3 1/2 years.  So based on national averages, a company might be expected to go through a number of employees equaling almost 200 percent of its workforce in 7 years (slightly longer than BI's development).   The tech sector, including gaming companies, has an even higher turn.  They can potentially replace a number of employees equal to their entire staff every single year, at the far end of the scale.  Based on those stats, if Irrational had around 150 employees, in order to stand out, they would have been needing to hire around 150 people a year in order to be at the far extreme of churn in their industry. 

 

It seems like if there were 600-1000 former employees out there, the odds of having a couple of whistleblowers willing to go public would be higher. 

[sclpls]

This discussion has gotten quite amorphous.

[Gormongous]

This discussion has gotten quite amorphous.

 

Yeah, I was just going to post the same thing. We've been talking in circles for a couple pages now, because evidence either shows Levine to be more or less responsible. There's arguments for both sides and everyone's said which one they're on. Better now just to wish for onward and upward, maybe.

[feelthedarkness]

like Diablo 3 I'd really love to see "the game we didn't get" in some form. 

 

also, Levine is responsible for the creative content of the game, but Take2 is responsible for managing the money and the Ken. If the game made more money we would maybe be having a conversation about Levine's new venture, or no conversation at all. 

[Zeusthecat]

Yeah, I was just going to post the same thing. We've been talking in circles for a couple pages now, because evidence either shows Levine to be more or less responsible. There's arguments for both sides and everyone's said which one they're on. Better now just to wish for onward and upward, maybe.

 

Good call. My apologies for dragging this out for longer than was necessary.