Bioshock Finite: Irrational Games shuts down

[Bjorn]

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.

 

OMG, we're just talking in an infinite loop aren't we?  Like we're just one of many, one of many worlds where the same pattern is repeated over and over again. 

 

"There's always a forum, there's always a man, there's always a game."

 

 

[JonCole]

OMG, we're just talking in an infinite loop aren't we?  Like we're just one of many, one of many worlds where the same pattern is repeated over and over again. 

 

"There's always a forum, there's always a man, there's always a game."

 

 

 

I wish that this post I'm writing would be deleted and the thread locked at this quoted comment.

[Gormongous]

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

 

No worries. It's clearly been my instinct too, although I haven't found it very validating. I don't want to see Levine hanged or anything, I just got creeped out by everyone who passed over the layoffs as "business as usual" in the industry in order to cheer for Levine's new project. But that creepiness shouldn't leave me arguing with reasonable people about whether anyone deserves anything they get.

[osmosisch]

I wish that this post I'm writing would be deleted and the thread locked at this quoted comment.

I've never seen anything more worthy of a kokoro wish.

[aperson]

I just got creeped out by everyone who passed over the layoffs as "business as usual" in the industry in order to cheer for Levine's new project.

 

Edit: Deleting my previous post, as convo has moved on.

 

This is business as usual. I'm not cheering for Levine's new project - the only Irrational game I've played is Freedom Force. But I don't get why this is terrible and awful and we need to find one individual to blame here and not for the other 100 rounds of layoffs at various places in the last year. It's terrible when people lose their jobs, but if you are going to be laid off from a place Irrational is a pretty good place to be laid off from.

 

I get that the letter was very odd and invites criticism. But beyond that, what's special here? Why does this call for the wailing and gnashing of teeth and "oh, these poor ex-Irrational folks!"? What about those poor Ghost Games folks? Trion folks? Folks nobody in this thread has even heard about? Is it because some people who worked at Irrational were well-known before or after? (Shawn Elliot, Steve Gaynor, etc) Is it because they had amusing Twitter feeds or podcasts? Because Irrational is a prestigious developer?

 

This is not me saying "you can't be upset here unless you're upset every time someone is laid off", but it does strike me as at odds with how common this sort of thing is. There are plenty of "grunts" who don't have podcasts and who don't work at prestigious studios. They work for 2 years at Pandemic. Then Pandemic lays people off and they work at Bottle Rocket. Then Bottle Rocket closes and they work at Harmonix. Then Harmonix lays people off and they work at Trion. Then Trion lays them off.

 

I don't see anyone trying to figure out who at Trion is to blame or claiming that Scott Hartsman is a terrible person. About how the process that lead to End of Nations is irresponsible.

 

I get that Irrational closing is a juicier story - Irrational is high profile, makes AAA critically successful games. But that doesn't make layoffs at Irrational more morally wrong. It doesn't put those people in worse shape than anyone else laid off. (If anything, if you're going to be laid off, a high-profile AAA dev is who you want to be laid off from) Many of the people I know who were laid off with me have been laid off at least once again already. So yes, it's hard not to see this as "business as usual."

---

 

On Twitter I saw Mattie Brice talking about how this was a good case for unionization. At first I was like "what? That's dumb! Unionization wouldn't have prevented these layoffs!" But at least that's looking at the bigger picture. Calling Ken Levine an idiot is not "coping" or "learning" or "educating" or "raising awareness" or fighting against corporatism or whatever - it's ego gratification.

 

Maybe a union or guild or something similar would address issues like how you can work on a game for 6 years then get credited as "special thanks" or not even credited at all. Maybe it would give employees more leverage in negotiations, some sort of dispute resolution process, etc. If people want to affect positive change why not try to start some twitter hashtag movement #gamedevguild or some shit? (Don't call it a "union", that will never work!) Or call for reforms to the IGDA since the IGDA is useless shit that actively fights against game dev employees?

[Zeusthecat]

OMG, we're just talking in an infinite loop aren't we?  Like we're just one of many, one of many worlds where the same pattern is repeated over and over again. 

 

Guess what? I'm fucking breaking that loop right now.

 

Edit: Aaaand he deleted his post.

[Twig]

ughhhhhhhhhh i was resisting drop a turd in here for like two pages now because every piece of evidence anyone finds is just confirming their own position because that's what they're looking for

 

so i'm glad someone called it out

 

but also ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Gormongous]

Everyone is this thread seems to know the turnover rate and how it compares to the industry average but me. Strange.

 

What was the turnover rate? What is the industry average? Can you break it down by year? By studio size? Can you quantify it an any way so that I can decide for myself whether it's high or "massive" or whatever?

 

Who is making those claims and how do they know?

 

You keep saying the turnover rate was high. But what you mean is "I heard the turnover rate was high from someone else." Does this someone else know? You don't know the numbers - do they?

 

I'll tell you what, tell me the names of the people making this claim and I'll stop bugging you and bug them. Can they quantify the turnover rate? Can they compare it to the industry average? Do they even hear about turnover at studios when it isn't a major name leaving? The answers to all of these questions is "no."

 

I can think of a very well-known, very well-respected, huge developer that has had a massive turnover that to my knowledge has never been mentioned in the press. Because the people who left were just "grunts."

 

It's a company that employed 200 people at once. That means, especially with this supposed massive turnover, over the course of 6 years there have been how many employees? 250? 300? 400? For some people not to grumble or leave due to working with Ken would be well outside the norm. 

 

Not to take your bait after we'd all agreed to disagree, but the claims are coming from an interview with Levine from over a year ago when, after the departure of four major project leads and untold other staff, he came out to specifically state that "people join and people leave" in a company of a certain size and it was totally normal. The assumption here is, if it were really normal for several important people (and again, untold others) to leave during the final stages of a game's production, it wouldn't require a special interview to say so. There are other instances of Levine mischaracterizing the development at and culture of Irrational, so mistrusting him could be defended as legit. Furthermore, when compared with statements after the fact by Leigh Alexander and other journalists as well as by former employees like J.P LeBreton (his "toxic egomaniacs" tweet was deleted, but he still has up a plea for journalists to ask other employees for "stories to tell"), that it was common knowledge among people they knew in the industry that Irrational Games' culture was toxic and its turnover high, it feels fair to suggest that maybe it really was not normal, unless you're suggesting that all these journalists and employees have no idea that Irrational was perfectly average.

 

So yeah, you're fine being skeptical and no one's disputing that, but I myself don't need hard numbers to see these statements as more than the grumblings of a few malcontents. Everyone's entitled to their opinion here, negative or positive.

 

 

EDIT: ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Bjorn]

ughhhhhhhhhh 

 

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[Gormongous]

kittenzom1.jpg

 

It reminds me of that one episode of Idle Thumbs about Chris'

in Prison Architect.

[Dewar]

I'd like to think that the studio was going to be canned either way, and Levine found a way to help at least 15 of them keep their jobs, and that the press release was written by 2K and shoved down his throat. I don't know if it's true, but I'd like to think it was that way.

[Professor Video Games]

I'm a little late so I'm just gonna jump right on into this second iteration of the infinite loop with my two cents.

 

Personally I think the studio shutdown aspect of this whole thing isn't that remarkable as it's tragically all too common in the game development industry, but that letter Levine put out is downright weird. It basically boils down to "Hey I'm tired of doing this big studio thing so we're letting go of nearly everyone." I just don't see how it's in anyone's interests to phrase it in such a way as to make the shutdown appear to be because Ken Levine got bored and is throwing everyone under the bus when it's so obviously not the case (the most likely real issue is, as always, money). I think had that letter been phrased differently then yeah there still would probably be some angry tweets and a few articles about what went wrong at Irrational, but that would probably be about it. Oh well!

[syntheticgerbil]

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. 

Yeah that's what I was trying to get at when nitpicking the credits earlier and the exit of Jonathan Chen. Really late here. I don't have much else to say.

[pkirkner]

Polygon has a feature up today that lays out the chronology of the last couple years of Irrational. It also has quotes from a number of former employees that, for me, raise more questions than they answer.

[aperson]

The fact that people didn't expect layoffs is a little surprising. They had a studio full of people without anything to work on.

 

Beyond that it sounds pretty normal. SSM recently laid off a bunch of people. Disney just laid off a huge number. I still don't see what's particularly different about this. As far as layoff stories goes it sounds nicer than most.

 

It seems to me that the people on the "Levine is an awful / incompetent person" train just needed some good drama and a villain.

[Dewar]

He's the victim of one questionably worded press release.

[Gormongous]

It seems to me that the people on the "Levine is an awful / incompetent person" train just needed some good drama and a villain.

 

Dude, you can keep posting it, but that's not what anyone's been saying here. The problem most people have is that corporate-owned studios have never done layoffs by having one of the founders and current boss post a long letter praising the studio's past and present before stating that only fifteen other people are going to be part of its future, all because he's ready for a change. Fairly or unfairly, it attaches to him some if not all of the onus, especially by framing (what by now is obviously) a financial decision in terms of his own creative desires.

 

If a former Lucasarts boss now at Disney published a long letter about how he wants to do something new, therefore seven hundred layoffs, there'd be some hypocrisy here. But no, no one's done that. No one's ever done that in recent memory, expect for Levine, so people are questioning (and in most cases, not outright asserting) whether he is incompetent or selfish because he chose that role for himself. He made himself the figurehead of Take Two's layoff decision, it's a natural consequence. No one made him write that letter (and like I said a dozen posts ago, if someone did, I'd be sincerely curious to know how that went down).

[Lu]

It seems to me that the people on the "Levine is an awful / incompetent person" train just needed some good drama and a villain.

 

That's not my recollection of the events... I think if you read back the discussion on the first couple of pages, it was progressing pretty amicably up to the point where Aaron made a rather snide comment. There was a person that flat out called Levine an idiot, but other than that it was just wondering out loud what could have happened, and whatnot. My point is, I don't know what train you're talking about aside from the one you boarded and rode all the way to tiresome-lets-talk-in-circles town. (I'm jesting! i.e. not trying to start something.)

 

For the record, I agreed with a bunch of your points, but it came across as uh.. aggressively making your point? It felt really out of tone to me compared to the discussion I was reading before that. Also not implying that you're the only one to blame for that, but contributed, yes. I can't speak for others, but it certainly rubbed me the wrong way.

[Zeusthecat]

There was a person that flat out called Levine an idiot

 

That person was me and in retrospect, I probably should have kept that opinion to myself. Unfortunately I didn't and my opinion pissed some people off.

 

To beat this dead horse a little bit more, I don't at all think Levine is a bad person or that he is stupid or anything like that. He did exhibit some dumb behavior (such as his weird statement surrounding the closure of Irrational) and, as that latest Polygon article seems to support, he didn't really come across as very capable of successfully running a large studio and needed a lot of additional help to reign in his 'creative process' and get his game shipped. He may be a 'creative genius' (and I honestly don't understand how he came to have that title so maybe that is part of my frustration) but from my point of view, he is also an idiot (i.e. ignorant) in a lot of ways. I don't really see that as a super offensive thing but apparently others do.

 

If it makes anyone feel any better I'm a big fucking idiot too. It's really not that bad of a title to have.

[Dewar]

Polygon has a feature up today that lays out the chronology of the last couple years of Irrational. It also has quotes from a number of former employees that, for me, raise more questions than they answer.

 

Yeah, that doesn't seem like the best article. It interrupts the timeline several times to tell general "studio culture" type stories, so it's difficult to read it as an acual time line. All in all, it sounds like any other AAA studio. Fun at times, troubled at times. Some people liked the environment, others didn't. Some people liked Ken, others didn't. Meh.

[TychoCelchuuu]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-17-the-true-story-of-bioshock

[Architecture]

So I'm trying to read that Leigh Alexander piece, but boy is it intolerable. Her writing is just as bad as everyone else's in the "enthusiast press." It's too bad Ebert didn't view games as art--I would have loved to read his take on the industry.

[Kolzig]

https://hackernoon.com/how-2k-killed-irrational-games-a09d8865fd8b#.fwvocdupa

 

Resurrecting an old thread, but this is a good read.

[twmac]

On 25/04/2014 at 8:59 AM, Architecture said:

So I'm trying to read that Leigh Alexander piece, but boy is it intolerable. Her writing is just as bad as everyone else's in the "enthusiast press." It's too bad Ebert didn't view games as art--I would have loved to read his take on the industry.

 

I normally love Leigh's work - that was not one of her best