Bioshock developer to close

Studio head, Ken Levine, to start new, smaller company with the same publisher

Irrational Games, the team behind the Bioshock series, is being wound up by its founding member, Ken Levine, with the loss of the majority of jobs there.

In a statement on the company's websie Levine explained his reasons saying that he wants to develop different types of games in future.

"Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best one. And working with the incredible team at Irrational Games is indeed the best job I’ve ever had. While I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before."

Bioshock Infinite launched in March of last year after a protracted and sometimes troubled development process. It went on to sell more than 4 million copies in it's first four months on sale.

The sequal to one of the most highly regarded, and critically aclaimed, games of the last hardware generation, it was well recieved but ultimately divided opinion.

Now Levine, and a fifteen person team, will be moving on to something new with their publisher and studio owner, Take Two. In his post on Irrationalgames.com Levine says that he will focus on narrative driven games that are highly replayable.

"I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two. That is going to mean parting ways with all but about fifteen members of the Irrational team. There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give them during this transition."

It remains unclear whether the decision to wind-down the larger team was Levine's or rested with Take Two.

Twitter has been overwhelmed with offers of new jobs for those affected by other developers since the news broke.

Best of luck to all the folks at Irrational. BTW, we have over 70 open positions! http://t.co/x21zkcploT
— Wes Phillips (@WesPhillips) February 18, 2014

From gas-power to quantum mechanics: The development of Bioshock Infinite

The Bioshock Infinite released last week looks very different from the one announced back in 2010. It looks different from the one demoed at E3 2011. It looks different from the one hinted at in the interviews creative lead, Ken Levine, gave throughout development. Take a look.

Read it: Ken Levine Article on Polygon

Bioshock Infinite Artwork
Source: Polygon.com

Ken Levine is an interesting man to listen to. And he makes great games. 

Chris Plante at Polygon has written an excellent longform article on Levine's past, his motivations, and his methods when approaching game design. And I think you should read it.

"BioShock games are the hardest kind of games to make that I've ever worked on. I think sometimes people on the team look at the old timers and wonder, 'Do these guys have any idea what they're doing?' Because we know part of the process is not knowing, but discovering. But that's hard for people who haven't been through it before to always understand." - Ken Levine

The piece weaves together an interview with the history of the development of Irrational Games. Also, Polygon's feature layouts are incredible.

Read more at Polygon.com

Minerva's Den

The team behind Minerva’s Den have done the impossible – building on a masterpiece and managing to improve on it.

Bioshock 2 box-art. Source: Kotaku/
2Kgames

Minerva’s Den was a stand-alone piece of down-loadable content released for the 2010 videogame Bioshock 2. But it wasn’t just more of the same – it had very big shoes to fill. Bioshock 2 scored ok but wasn't generally well regarded. It was itself a sequel to one of the most significant videogames of the generation.

Released in 2007 on Xbox 360 and PC, and a year later on PS3, Bioshock will be remembered for its story and setting as much as its gameplay. It wasn’t your typical first-person shooter.

If the combat was fun, it was in spite of sluggish controls and overly twitchy artificial intelligence of its enemies. A great shooter this was not, at least on console. Bioshock combined traditional gun-play with a series of powers that could be elegantly combined with environmental tools to great effect.

Bioshock’s real success came from the atmosphere of its setting – the underwater city of Rapture. This city was a dystopian art-deco ruin inspired by the writings of Ayn Rand – a place where the world’s greatest had gone to escape the tyranny of the masses.