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Irrational Games shutting down

RK47

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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Yes, I'm sure he was too good that's why they needed to downsize his ambitions.
How irrational of Take 2.
Infinitely shocking to be sure.
 

Wirdschowerdn

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No, it was unsustainable. Irrational would have shut down either way because the the core team simply got fed up with a multiple-hundred team and a chaotic crunch-time infested development hell. Leave that shit to the Montreal factories.
 

RK47

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No, it was unsustainable. Irrational would have shut down either way because the the core team simply got fed up with a multiple-hundred team and a chaotic crunch-time infested development hell. Leave that shit to the Montreal factories.
sochibear2.png

See folks, this is why Kevine Len is totally blameless and is a future visionary of gaming that is just awaiting for the right time and environment to bloom. They were dragging him down. I'm sure that's why the dismissal of those team was totally justified.
sochibear4.png

Want some Doritos?
 
Last edited:

Wirdschowerdn

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Meanwhile, Ken doesn't give a shit and continues making games. His former footsoldiers otoh do give a shit and therefor will be dispersed.

Welcome to the corporate world.

Btw, I'm looking forward to Ken's next game. DEAL WITH IT.gif
 

DalekFlay

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I think this is more a statement about mismanagement than it is AAA being doomed altogether. Still amusing though.

Also wow it didn't take long for reviewers to realize they're whores and Infinite was a flawed game.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/20/bioshocked-ken-levines-irrational-games-decision

Bioshocked – the meaning of Ken Levine's Irrational decision
The studio behind the critically acclaimed Bioshock series has shut, laying off most of its staff. Is this about the crazy economics of Triple A game development or one man’s restlessness?
566e2029-5acc-4e1e-a088-ce049e7fac73-460x276.png

Bioshock creator Irrational Games is winding down. But why, and what will the consequences be?

A man chooses, begins one of Bioshock’s most famous lines, a slave obeys. Perhaps this sentence crossed the mind of Ken Levine when he posted his announcement on Monday declaring the end of Irrational Games, the studio he co-founded in 1997.

“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,” he wrote. “To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience.” Following the completion of the final piece of downloadable content for Bioshock Infinite, almost all of the studio’s staff will be out of a job, while Levine and around 15 others are set to move forwards as a distinct outfit.

Over the course of Irrational’s lifespan the studio developed six games, including the exceptional System Shock 2 and the underrated Freedom Force series, and cancelled at least five others. But it came to global prominence with 2007’s Bioshock, one of the last hardware generation’s most defining experiences. Set in a doomed undersea city, Bioshock is about a world where extreme capitalism rules, where the struggles of powerful men enslave those who thought they were signing up to utopia, and things do not turn out well.

As Levine pointed out in his closing statement, the Bioshock series (which includes 2K Marin’s Bioshock 2) has made over half a billion dollars in revenue. A year before its release, the original title looked so good, publisher 2K bought the company, and sure enough Bioshock was a commercial and critical hit. Irrational set to work on Bioshock Infinite, finally releasing the game in March 2013 to similarly glowing reviews and – as of July 2013 – 4m sales and counting. That sounds like a lot, and of course it is, but the reality of AAA development at the highest end means that even this wasn’t enough to help 2K make a net profit in the last financial year.

Cash cows and money pits
The problem with Bioshock is, it isn’t a standard game franchise, easily updated on an annual basis. “Bioshock Infinite was released at the same time as Tomb Raider,” says Chris Dring, editor of industry-watchers MCV. “And Tomb Raider is a franchise that they can easily build a sequel on. They have the engine built now, they can add some new features, a new adventure – it’s a lot more straightforward than Irrational and Bioshock. Ken Levine, obviously a genius in many ways, isn’t particularly good at churning out AAA games – he takes ages, it costs a fortune… I mean, 2K Marin, love them or hate them, turned out Bioshock 2 in 18 months. It didn’t hit the sales target but I suspect it made more money than Infinite.”

Nevertheless, it’s surprising that Irrational wasn’t kept alive in some form. It’s how this usually works. The creative head of a respected developer gets itchy feet and leaves, so the publisher moves someone else in as studio head and things go on. It’s how EA dealt with Peter Molyneux’s departure from Bullfrog in 1997. Id Software has survived the departure of all four of its founders. “If you look at [Call of Duty developer] Infinity Ward for example, half that studio left but it was rebuilt by the publisher and still exists,” Dring says. “Take Two hasn’t done that. Perhaps they just don’t need as many big studios. From what I understand, Bioshock was a profitable project because Take Two are very good at managing their budgets – although it was a lot longer in development than planned so I don’t imagine it made a lot of money.”

Money, money, money.

Irrational Games was working on Bioshock Infinite for over five years – 2K’s next financial results will doubtless provide more context to the closure. Originally slated for release in autumn 2012, the title was delayed at least twice as the ambition of the project pushed the team to its limits. In august 2012, two key members of the development team left the studio amid rumours of widely felt disquiet and unhappiness, rumours that Leigh Alexander has referred to in her thoughtful article on the studio closure. Near the end of development 2K hired industry veteran Rod Fergusson as a producer. A tough type who specialises in getting product out on time, it was clear what his role on Infinite would be. Get the thing out.

Levine on the line
As it is, Ken Levine has come forward to take the slings and arrows of outraged gamers. But his statement acts as something of a distraction from the fact that 2K is firing up to 200 people (based on figures from 2012) who made one of last year’s most successful games. No matter how you cut it, it is a damning indictment of a blockbuster culture where budgets are spiralling into the hundreds of millions. The games industry has already gathered round to try and help those affected find new jobs, and Levine stressed that staff would be assisted in the process of relocation, but it’s impossible to miss the connection between the studio’s increasing scale and this unexpected end.

The statement has made Levine, somewhat unjustly, a focal point for the anger many in the industry feel about such an outwardly-successful studio being closed. It has also led to the offensive suggestion (in the absence of evidence) that the studio was closed to satisfy the man’s ego and keep him at 2K. This perhaps comes from the fact that Levine is one of the industry’s few exponents of the auteur theory, in perception at least. He’s not only one of the three co-founders of Irrational, but also the studio head and creator/director behind the Bioshock games. He is the face of Irrational, the face of Bioshock.

He won’t be making any more of them. His statement says he’s moving to “a new endeavour with a new goal: to make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable.” He is down to deliver a talk at the Game Developer’s Conference in March entitled ‘Narrative Legos’ and, though specifics are thin on the ground, it is clear he’s moving on to concentrate on procedural or reactive narrative experiences – games in which the story emerges organically as the player takes part. He is also penning the script for the upcoming remake of Logan’s Run, retracing his time in LA as a wannabe screenwriter.

The emerging story
Last March I went to Boston to visit Irrational Games and, among other things, got talking to Levine about the tensions inherent in games with a linear narrative like Bioshock Infinite. Through dumb luck I ended up suggesting that the future ‘solution’ to these issues may lie in procedural narrative and stories that are systems rather than scripts – something no designer has successfully cracked.

“Yeah you know it’s weird,” Levine said, “Because actually I wrote the first draft of the design document for System Shock 2 and I haven’t done that since – I’ve been more focused on the writing and business side. But I like systems, that was a very systemic game, and quite often I’m heavily involved with a lot of the more systemic stuff in Bioshock like Elizabeth’s behaviour in combat and that came out of a desire to... it’s a systemic expression of a narrative concept.

“I love systems, I love board games and that’s all they are is systems. I think the challenge is that I probably have something more to say in the narrative space than I do in the system space, but who knows how that could combine? I mean maybe, we did this game called Freedom Force about superheroes, and one thing that I thought we did better than other superhero games was the narrative component. Superhero stories are soap operas, right? They take the characters and emotions and amplify them through the fantastical stuff, and without that character stuff – like without Uncle Ben dying in Amazing Fantasy #15 – Spider-Man isn’t interesting! Videogames often leave that on the table and make their games way more goofy than comic books actually are.”

And from here, very possibly, a hint of what is to come. “So maybe there’s a systemic superhero game with a narrative that is systemically, somehow procedurally generated – I mean, that would be cool right? Something that involves relationships and drama in some systemic way that can click together. It’s harder to do in a first-person shooter, though there’s a lot of systems in Elizabeth. I like the merge of systems and narrative a lot – and there’s nowhere to go but up, you know? That’s a space that has been barely touched.”

If Levine is sticking with a small team, and if he wants to keep making narrative-focused games, then procedurally generated stories and environments make sense. He won’t need a large team to generate masses of art assets and scripted sequences – he just needs very smart coders and designers who can generate systems. Look at Hello Games in Guildford – a tiny studio that’s creating a whole systemic universe in its forthcoming title No Man’s Sky. Perhaps Levine saw in that game’s triumphant VGX Awards trailer, a hint at where his style of game was heading.

Last exit from Boston
Back in the business world, elements of the industry see Levine being used as a smokescreen to hide the human tragedy of 2K’s decision, and perhaps there is some truth to that. But the man himself, when asked about this perception of his being an auteur, had no hesitation in putting credit where it was due. “I have the easy job. There are ideas I come up with, but I say this is what I want now go make it happen – how do you draw a close relationship, like the Big Daddy and Little Sisters, or something like the skylines from that? I have the easy job.”

You can’t hold it against Levine that he still has one. But the fate of Irrational is a cautionary tale and, subsequent to the news of closure, the studio has been locked down tight, with employees left under no illusions about the consequences of speaking to press.

At the moment this is too raw, but in the future perhaps Irrational’s former employees will look back with pride on the magnificent games they made together, and particularly the worlds of the Bioshock games. One aspect of these fantasies is how they skewer the idea of collectivism, presenting rank-and-file workers as little more than indentured slaves kept in line through the propaganda of tyrannical overlords. Not now, but maybe in a few years that will be worth an ironic laugh.

Whatever angles of this story remain uncovered, Irrational Games was one of the great developers. It is a studio that has left a permanent mark and, as 2K may find out to its cost, the quality of their games was never down to one man’s choices. The original Bioshock has three endings. “They offered you everything,” says the game’s brilliant geneticist, Brigid Tenenbaum. “Yes? And in return you gave them what I have come to expect from you: Brutality.”
 

Azalin

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It's intersting that this article mentions Tomb Raider,another recent example of how bloated the AAA video game industry is,like Bioshock:Infinite Tomb Raider had a huge budget rumoured around 100millions and didn't have enough sales to cover the huge costs.
It had sold about 3.5 millions when Square Enix called those numbers unsatisfactoryt since they expected 5-6 millions
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/09/square-enix-reveals-sales-expectations-for-tomb-raider
The story is the same with Infinite,a gigantic budget rumoured to be 100-200 mill,a 5 year developement time but the sales although considered good by some outsiders(4mill)were not enough since they probably needed Skyrim numbers(over 10 millions) to get their money back.
The indusrty is imploding as we speak ...
 

Coyote

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the game’s brilliant geneticist, Brigid Tenenbaum

I've been reading way too much BS from Eidos-Montreal about the "DNA" of games. Not having played Bioshock, I misinterpreted this phrasing for a moment and thought, Wait, they actually called one of their employees a "geneticist"?
 

Oesophagus

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Downsizing the operation and cutting production costs is the only option if we ever want to see anything decent from Levine again. You don't push for experimental gameplay and leftfield ideas when many bags of jewgolds are at stake.

Not that I'm expecting anything, this is most likely KL's retirement plan
 

Dreaad

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I like how the internet has made getting fired a drama story worthy of some crappy television series. Boohoo our boss doesn't care, evil jew bastard, planned it from the start. Too bad none of them managed to learn that capitalism couldn't care less about the factory workers. Kevine is just doing what's best for Kevine, what a monumental discovery, here we all thought he had the good intentions of making art while financially ruining himself to feed his devoted/beloved worker's.

I personally find it satisfying that the people who work for these cretins get what they deserve. If your boss is lying to the public why act surprised when he shits all over you as well.
 
Repressed Homosexual
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It's hilarious how people act that it's a world crisis and game "journalists" create endless drama about it when it's just a typical restructuration that would get ignored if it was in any other industry, and when people went to work there knowing how precarious and shaky the "gaming industry" is. It's all ado about pretty much nothing. I can't stand these insufferable self-aggrandizing, drama queen personalities.
 

DeepOcean

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It's hilarious how people act that it's a world crisis and game "journalists" create endless drama about it when it's just a typical restructuration that would get ignored if it was in any other industry, and when people went to work there knowing how precarious and shaky the "gaming industry" is. It's all ado about pretty much nothing. I can't stand these insufferable self-aggrandizing, drama queen personalities.
There is a difference, the gamming industry is full of people with self steem issues, they just don't want to accept that they are nerds and don't want to mingle with us mere mortals that just want to have fun with video games. Bioshock Infinite fit right on their insecurities like a jigsaw puzzle piece "See, games can be taken seriously too." is their motto, so obviously Irrational dying it's deserved death is a tragedy. Gamming journalism can't survive without sweet publisher money, it is so worthless that the publishers have to keep subsidizing them because people wouldn't pay a cent for the drivel they write.

They have to make such a drama because, you see... they can't be just gamers doing a review of a game, they need to feel themselves important, like real journalists so the shoehorning of real life issues on gamming and drama, so much drama.
 

Dexter

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It's hilarious how people act that it's a world crisis and game "journalists" create endless drama about it when it's just a typical restructuration that would get ignored if it was in any other industry, and when people went to work there knowing how precarious and shaky the "gaming industry" is. It's all ado about pretty much nothing. I can't stand these insufferable self-aggrandizing, drama queen personalities.
To be fair, the hiring/firing policies have been deplored for quite a while now, one of the first time I heard about this sort of stuff was in regards to EA back in 2004: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
I look at our situation and I ask 'us': why do you stay? And the answer is that in all likelihood we won't; and in all likelihood if we had known that this would be the result of working for EA, we would have stayed far away in the first place. But all along the way there were deceptions, there were promises, there were assurances -- there was a big fancy office building with an expensive fish tank -- all of which in the end look like an elaborate scheme to keep a crop of employees on the project just long enough to get it shipped. And then if they need to, they hire in a new batch, fresh and ready to hear more promises that will not be kept; EA's turnover rate in engineering is approximately 50%. This is how EA works. So now we know, now we can move on, right? That seems to be what happens to everyone else. But it's not enough. Because in the end, regardless of what happens with our particular situation, this kind of "business" isn't right, and people need to know about it, which is why I write this today.

There were even some studios and people speaking out against this stuff as late as last year: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ng_off_your_employees_once_a_game_is_done.php

If you ask me what they need is a union.

And I'm not sure how you'd think that this would "get ignored if it was in any other industry" when this sort of stuff is actually big politics if it is about thousands of jobs, I remember this rather vividly for instance: http://www.mgovworld.org/News/anti-nokia-backlash-grows-in-germany
 

Angthoron

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It's the case in a shit ton of other industries now, including those that are dominated by labour unions.

The problem isn't the hire&fire model, it's the general incompetence of management, planning, financing and the dreaded crunch-time that comes as a "surprise~" no matter how many hundreds are hired for a given project - largely because of those hundreds, code monkies are actually a minority now. How do you expect a bunch of artists to fix a gamestopping bug? Hurr.

But of course, thousands will keep on applying to companies with shittiest of reputations because they want to be in those "Top 9 companies" that will give them a free pass to life. Or something. It's like WalMart or McD, it'll never end up without employees.
 

Roguey

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"Bioshock Infinite received multi-million sales and a large amount of critical acclaim, but it wasn't enough and the studio had to be closed" is a big story.

if you ask me what they need is a union.

Josh said:
i'm not anti-union, but the legal powers of unions in the u.s. have been systematically weakened for decades and most major publishers are heavily international now. a lot of publishers already have dev houses making a huge amount of core and supplemental content overseas. i don't think there is any mechanism in place, legal or otherwise, that would prevent publishers and investors from moving more of their development money out of the u.s. as a reaction to devs unionizing.
 

Wirdschowerdn

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OT:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/25/layoffs-hit-god-of-war-studio-sony-santa-monica

https://twitter.com/froughol/status/438447899593412608

50 footsoldiers plus vets let go at Santa Monica.

SCEA can confirm that we have completed a reduction in workforce at Santa Monica Studio. This is a result of a cycle of resource re-alignment against priority growth areas within SCE WWS. We do not take these decisions lightly. However, sometimes it is necessary to make changes to better serve the future projects of the studio. We have offered outplacement services and severance packages to ease transition for those impacted.

"The US economy is booming!"

--some Economist Ph.D.

:kwanzania:
 

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