BioShock creator Irrational Games is shutting down

i wish BioWare shares the same fate at some point...Especially if they don't manage to deliver with DA 3 then they certainly deserve to be swallowed by EA like Take-Two does with Irrational .. That being said Irrational really didn't deserve such fate. BioShock and BioShock Infinite were brilliant games (yes i skip BioShock 2 on purpose) and even if Irrational was pushed to the wall by Take-Two they still remained quite real to their goal and Levine lead the game to the best possible presentation given the time he was given opposed to the one he asked. So it really saddens me to see this outcome. And this is the difference with BioWare...They don't give a crap about the games anymore! If EA tells them to jump they will,if they tell them to Multiplayer-ize even the most CORE single player game they will , ALL for the sake of $$...Well let's hope Levine manages to see through his new endeavor and deliver to us more brilliant games like BioShock.

How did HE decide to do anything when his company is owned by Take Two? It sounds like Take Two had him make this statement to avoid backlash. It seems like this is just another case of a big game company swallowing up a smaller (and more creative) company. He already confessed that the last part of Bioshock was not as good as the rest of the game because he was not given enough time to get it right. Yet, now he make this statement: "But when I talked to Take-Two about the idea, they convinced me that there was no better place to pursue this new chapter than within their walls. After all, they’re the ones who believed in and supported BioShock in the first place." They believed in him and supported him so much they wouldn't even give him time to finish Bioshock without rushing it. How is it his company if he can't even control how the games are made? Then there is the fact that he supposedly gave control over Bioshock 2 to someone else. (I'm sure that was at least part of the reason Bioshock 2 was not as good as the original.) If all that isn't enough, why did his games become so much more political, and why did the political views expressed in the games following Bioshock swing so far in one direction? Sadly, it appears as though Levine has become a sellout.

Was bioshock infinite a failure or something? That game restored my hope in todays game industry.

it must suck to be in the game industry, you get canned so quickly unless your buddys with the bosses.

Infinite was a disappointment. They should have just made a new System Shock but called it something else.

Hmm Digital only games with a reduced worked force? He can talk about core gaming all he wants, but it sounds like he is going the shovel ware free to play route.

I don't care about Bioshock, but I do not like to see people lose their jobs no matter what is involved(illegal business aside). I have a feeling they will be able to find work soon.

Well, this may be a good thing, because after Take 2 bought them, Irrational went from being one of the more innovative and creative developers in the industry to making BioShock games. Maybe now Ken Levine can finally get around to making a follow-up to the Freedom Force series

I'd be sad about it if their last game wasn't BioShock Infinite.
(cause it sucked)

dumb decision by levine

Working in the gaming industry isn't all that great. Greed from large, publicly owned studios to massive layoffs all the time to more and more out sourcing. I worked in the industry for a little while but left it to do my own thing. To all the talented people who have worked in this industry and have been tossed aside all for a stronger bottom line, start your own company if you have the means to do so! Not easy in the least, but indi gaming is gaining strength and will take larger shares of the market in the not so distant future. Regardless, good luck to those who lost their jobs...and to those who will be laid off this year as well.

So I'm guessing Bioware Infinite cost a lot to make and wasn't as profitable as the company heads had hoped. Now the execs think the company is bloated and want to cut costs by firing folks. Except most of the key decisions about the games design were made by the same people who are firing folks. So if the game wasn't successful the people being punished are the same ones who had the least say in it's design.

When Bioshock first came out and they had used the words "system shock" in the development process, I was hoping it was going to be a successor to System Shock 2. I never got into the Bioshock series, tried them and they are just first person shooters with some cool powers and a decent story. Still when I heard Bioshock Infinite was only 5 hrs long, I saved my 60 bucks and just watched youtube videos of the cutscenes. I'm sorry but for PC electronic downloads to cost 60 bucks with no packaging and only lasting 5-6 hrs is a rip off in my opinion, you could go to the movies for 20 hrs and spend that much, or get 3 lap dances, which is also worth more than that.

What really surprises me is that it wasn't EA that killed this intellectual property, lol.

Obviously, Levine can personally do what he want. It's his company, he created it, but to just shutter the company because he's done with large-scale development, to just fire a staff of that size because he, personally, is done and doesn't have the emotional wherewithal or whatever else to appoint a successor to maintain a successful business?

I really try not to get too vulgar on Gamespot because there are enough people who do that already, but I kind need to get this out of my system: Ken Levine is a childish, thoughtless, self-centred mass of sun-baked coagulated santorum and I hope to God he's living in a box under a bridge after his next venture fails.

When you run a business, you don't owe the employees who help create your success much more than a paycheck and some stability, and those things are not hard to give people when you're successful. Ken Levine is just an asshole and it will be a cold day in Hell when I buy anything with his name on it.

That's fine. It just means they'll be going Indie, which is where all the quality games are these days, anyway. If anything, Ken's presence will be a major boon to Kickstarter.

At least they managed to ship out three excellent Bioshock titles before the greedy corporate monster stepped in and put a stop to it. Shame most gamers weren't intelligent enough to appreciate true art and support them financially. It's hard to find good games with great atmosphere, combat, writing and ideology these days.

This doesn't surprise me. Irrational games was going the way of Peter Molyneux and his ideas... I never played any Bioshock games and never had the desire to do so, i've been curious about 1 or 2 of them but something just did not appeal to me.

It seems a lot of people have found fun in those games but something must have been wrong because this supposedly high level developer wasn't regarded enough to keep their division open. I think the sales numbers and an I told you so probably had something to do with it. A lot of creative directors get the freedom to make decisions based on their track record. I think somewhere along the way Take-Two was saying, ahhh we don't particularly like this direction. I think Ken Levine had issues also. Just my opinion.

Being an employee in the gaming industry sounds tough. Make a good game one day and the next day your laid off. Almost like your freelance developer, artists etc. Hats off to the game developers as you continue to bring loads of great entertainment for us all.

All we could do is wait to see how this turns out. And to the 15 remaining members of Irrational Games: Would you kindly make a new game as good as Bioshock, or better ?