This is big news, discuss.
Well, this doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be more Bioshock. Depending on who owns the IP it could easily be passed on.
And I’m not surprised at Levine deciding to change how he does things. I loved Infinite, but that’s not to say I don’t think it could have been improved by doing a lot of stuff differently. And it seems that the bigger a studio the more it gets forced to end up doing the same things the same way. It’s also much harder to make changes in a larger organisation. So if I were him cutting back to a small team wouldn’t seem like a bad idea at all.
Plus, he’s still doing this with the backing of Take Two (Which precludes it from being “indie” in the “independent” sense, right?), so it’s more of a change than a departure.
Fingers crossed that he and his team manage to make some unique and awesome stuff! It actually sounds like he wants to make the kind of stuff I think video games could be best at.
A lot of people lost their jobs with this though…
Yeah, as Angrypenguin said, he hasn’t gone indie, he is still running Irrational Games with the 15 (or is it 14 excluding him?) other people who weren’t let go and Irrational are still owned by Take Two, he is just changing focus and direction. Whatever he makes will no doubt be gold but it won’t be something like Bioshock. Hopefully he does something completely new instead of following in the footsteps of his previous games. Sad day for the staff which were let go but hopefully this gives Levine more freedom to express his creativity with.
Regarding Bioshock, Take Two still own it and will no doubt want more games to be made in the franchise, it’s far too popular and successful to be thrown away just because Levine isn’t involved any more. After all, they had 2k Marin make Bioshock 2 to cash in on the original’s success without Levine’s involvement. They’ll just get Marin or another studio to make Infinite 2 or whatever sequel they decide on.
And I think Marin did a pretty good job of Bioshock 2, too.
The loss of jobs certainly does suck. I guess it just wasn’t the first thing that popped into my mind as I’m kind of numb to hearing about that now. Hopefully it’s a matter of re-branding and re-structuring moreso than actually closing studios and losing the physical reality of the jobs. I mean, assuming that Take Two does still want to continue the franchise they’ve got a team and studio who are able to do it should new leadership be put in place… fingers crossed they see it that way too.
Actually, it sounds like Levine is completely shutting down Irrational and creating a completely new company/team within Take Two. Although that might just be how I’m reading into the kind of vague press release about the future of Irrational and Levine. I guess we’ll find out over the next few months/years.
Press release link: http://www.irrationalgames.com/
The press release makes it sound like most jobs have been lost but that there are active recruiting drives to try and get the workers jobs in other Take-Two studios or external studios.
Reading between the lines, I suspect “I want to work on smaller projects” actually means “because the big ones are too hard to make without going bankrupt.”
I mean, if Irrational was doing perfectly well then Levine could have sold it or just had someone else take his place. Shutting it down only ever means one thing.