SAD NEWS: No more Bioshock

[Jack_in_the-Green]

SAD NEWS: No more Bioshock

You read it. Ken Levine is closing down Irrational games, a move that will mean everybody but 16 people of the entire studio will be laid off... The chosen few will accompany him in creating a very small inside branch at Take 2 Studios (it will be focused on development of smaller, digital distributed and narrative driven games...).

http://www.irrationalgames.com/

Rumors (they're always there... ) have spread speculating that in fact it was a shut down by Take 2 due to poor sales by Bioshock Infinite (it's THAT possible???).

Anyways... I always thought that Infinite was the last, good and proper ending to the series; it just saddens me that such huge ammount of organised talent will be scattered to the four winds... An inglorious ending if you ask me. And only the Big, "usual" gaming corporations can take full advantage of that...

Hopefully perhaps our Polish overlords can offer some good positions to some or those great talented people? There's still a lot of work for CP2077 I bet...

 

[dragonbird]

A post has been deleted. Whatever someone's opinion may be of the studio or their games, insulting their fans is not permitted.

 

[Garrison72]

Wow, they don't even get a chance to work in another division under Take Two? They're just kicking them out the door? Kind of a dick move if you ask me.

edit-Never mind. I just read the whole thing now. Me and my skimming...

 

[Thoric]

As far as I understand 2K will take over Bioshock and at least a part of the devs will just be shifted to other Take-Two studios.

Though I really doubt this was initiated entirely by Levine. If the publisher had something major in store for studio, they wouldn't have given up on it that easily. I suspect they were hesitant to trust Irrational with an AAA budget again after Bioshock: Infinite spent 5 years in development hell and Levine is doing his penance by taking the flak for the downsizing.

 

[sidspyker]

Incredibly dick move by Levine though. "I want to work on something else, better fire my whole staff."

 

[GuyNwah]

Take Two has been jerking the pieces of Irrational Games around ever since they were acquired. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the real reason for breaking them up was that they had been PHB'd to the point that they couldn't get traction with any game other than the two Bioshock follow-ons. I hope Ken Levine knows what he is doing by taking Take Two's shilling.

 

[goopit]

no more Elizabeth SFM !? damnit!

 

[Cs__sz__r]

I wouldn't be sad if the series were to end. Lest they become shells of their former selves. Instead of riding the series on by the original developer it will be done by someone like 2K Marin, who did an okay job on BS 2, but will not perform like it's predecessor or successor.

I truly feel sorry for the employees most of all. Whether this was instigated by Take-Two or Levine himself. Seems more the former since they both publish and own the studio and their IP's. It's nice that they will give them a grace period and will have a recruitment to keep those hard workers in the business they trained for.

 

[octavian123]

Bioshock infinite was highly overrated. Sure, it had a great story, amazing visuals and Elizabeth was very charming but the game was bogged down by all the dudebro shooter conventions, not to mention that the original System Shock 2 gameplay was dumbed down to the bone and nobody even cared because hey...the GAEM IS ART. Elizabeth was highly traumatized when I killed someone in front of her but doesn't react at all when I burn and freeze people. The worst part of it is that people are WILLING to overlook this simply because they think the game is art. Bottom line, this should have been an adventure game instead, it feels wrong as a shooter.

 

[Cs__sz__r]

As many complainers as there are about it being a boring fps and combat didn't feel right about there being combat. Well there would've been lynch mobs had they made a Bioshock game that was pure adventure/exploration with no combat.

 

[Georgie_Porgie]

Well I wasn't expecting that. One interesting thing he said "I'm handing the reins of our creation, the BioShock universe, to 2K" . At least I will have one more time to enjoy something new with Burial at Sea episode 2.

 

[octavian123]

As many complainers as there are about it being a boring fps and combat didn't feel right about there being combat. Well there would've been lynch mobs had they made a Bioshock game that was pure adventure/exploration with no combat.

Then it should have been a spinoff..or the combat should not have been so disjointed. One moment I am in an artsy environment, the next I'm in a large corridor shooting lightning at tons of uninteresting enemies and maybe finding a "secret" behind a lock. The whole game is simply not fun and the actual action is more like filler than anything else. I think people are conscious of this but flat out refuse to acknowledge this because they are desperate about games being considered art and that is NOT ok.

You'll see, people will come to their senses and ask themselves why this game was game of the year, especially how they replaced the interesting System Shock 2 combat with dudebro conventions. If games are to become art, they need to let go of the notion that they have to emulate movies or books in the most sycophantic manner. What games offer in comparison to movies/books is INTERACTIVITY and the ability to EXPLORE and these are woefully ignored by developers.

Either way, the gaming industry is currently undergoing its teenage angst period. Pretentious and edgy dudebro shooters are in a way a necessary evil for the maturation of video games as an art medium. Next stop, video games go to college.

I miss the times of Doom and Mario when games were first and foremost about having FUN and were not pretentious bags of shit. I have a LOT more fun in New Super Mario Bros than I ever had in either Bioshock games, the gameplay is just sublime. Use the GAMEPLAY to tell a story, like in Gothic 2 by making the orcs very dangerous and in Deus Ex where you can have moral choice of killing or not. Even Deus Ex, which is mostly regarded for its story doesn't shove the story down your throat and is better because of that. Even if the game had shit story, it still would have been a mighty FUN game.

 

[Georgie_Porgie]

Then it should have been a spinoff..or the combat should not have been so disjointed. One moment I am in an artsy environment, the next I'm in a large corridor shooting lightning at tons of uninteresting enemies and maybe finding a "secret" behind a lock. The whole game is simply not fun and the actual action is more like filler than anything else. I think people are conscious of this but flat out refuse to acknowledge this because they are desperate about games being considered art and that is NOT ok.

You'll see, people will come to their senses and ask themselves why this game was game of the year, especially how they replaced the interesting System Shock 2 combat with dudebro conventions. If games are to become art, they need to let go of the notion that they have to emulate movies or books in the most sycophantic manner. What games offer in comparison to movies/books is INTERACTIVITY and the ability to EXPLORE and these are woefully ignored by developers.

Either way, the gaming industry is currently undergoing its teenage angst period. Pretentious and edgy dudebro shooters are in a way a necessary evil for the maturation of video games as an art medium. Next stop, video games go to college.

I miss the times of Doom and Mario when games were first and foremost about having FUN and were not pretentious bags of shit. I have a LOT more fun in New Super Mario Bros than I ever had in either Bioshock games, the gameplay is just sublime. Use the GAMEPLAY to tell a story, like in Gothic 2 by making the orcs very dangerous and in Deus Ex where you can have moral choice of killing or not. Even Deus Ex, which is mostly regarded for its story doesn't shove the story down your throat and is better because of that. Even if the game had shit story, it still would have been a mighty FUN game.

Yep opinion is a terrible thing, you can't make something that everyone will like. You see for me Bioshocks were almost perfect, however every thing you listed here except SystemShock is just plain boring by my standards. Can't make everyone happy until opinion exists.

 

[ViLarco.400]

More like good news.

 

[soldiergeralt]

good riddance

 

[Aver]

Why? If you didn't like it you just don't have to play it. Nobody forces you. I really liked Bioshock games. They were my favorite modern SP FPS games. Interesting skills, it had nice additions to combat like tears, environmental attacks, skylines and I love store driven games.

 

[Chewin3]

This sure came as a surprise for everyone but it's not completely out of the blue. I am not certain over the real reasons behind Irrational shutting down, but I've come to the conclusion it mostly seems like the case for Infinite being in development hell for too damn long--going through various of changes in both gameplay and story aspects--and when you spend close to 6 years making a game and it doesn't sell crazy like 2K would expect (remember them stating that they were a bit disappointed withmthe sales), so it doesn't come as a surprise when your publisher probably isn't going to stand pat and let you do that again. Since Irrational have been prone in making game with long development cycles, Take 2 wasn't probably going to let them do what they just did all over again.

However, while I find this ordeal saddening I am more worried on the possible impact it could have for any big AAA developer though. The longer you take on a game, the higher the financial expectations for your game will be and the less likely it'll be a "success," no matter how well its critically received. That is a terrifying business module, where one flop could be quite catastrophic for a game developer and is certainly not sustainable for the industry.

@Cormacolindor While you are right about people have a certain bias towards Infinite, you are portraying a very subjective matter on the gameplay. I personally had tons of fun with the gameplay aspect of Infinite. Sure it wasn't revolutionary, nor was it evolutionary in any way, but that doesn't justify claiming it as crap.

And people here stating that Irrational shutting down is a good thing, well it isn't. People loosing their jobs is not a celebrating matter and even while they are getting support, it is a delicate matter. I don't see any reason how people could justify a gaming company shutting down as "good riddance", even if you didn't like what kind of games they made since that is a terrible excuse.

I am saddened by Irrational closing, but still intrigued where Levine will go with his "making narrative-drive games". Best of luck to him and the people who worked at Irrational.

 

[octavian123]

They butchered the System Shock 2 mechanincs like there was no tommorow, and the exploration was completely taken out in favor of linear sections full of sploshuns, the guns weren't fun at ALL...Take a look at RAGE and BF4, THAT is how you make good weapons

 

[Chewin3]

As I said, it is a subjective matter. I can't make comparison to SS2 since I haven't (unfortunately) played it yet, but I still enjoyed Infi ite and what it offered, even with its faults (just like any game has).

 

[octavian123]

As I said, it is a subjective matter. I can't make comparison to SS2 since I haven't (unfortunately) played it yet, but I still enjoyed Infi ite and what it offered, even with its faults (just like any game has).

Go play SS2, it is the father of everything you see in Bioshock and done better. It's a bit clunky at first but once you get used to it, you'll be hooked.