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by millerc 4502 days ago
I'd bet on 3) Levine isn't interested in just "more of the same", and his mission (Irrational's) is to create. I'm sure someone else can license the names and characters if what they want is "more of the same".

Best of luck to the new team, looking forward to awesome stuff...
3 comments
mjn 4502 days ago
If that's true, then it'd make Ken Levine just an asshole. If he wants to leave and do something different, fine, but why set the building on fire on your way out? It doesn't require firing a successful team for you to go do something different, plenty of people leave successful companies to start something new.

My guess, though, is that he didn't actually make that choice and was told by Take-Two to downsize, and this is him pretending it was a voluntary "creative" decision, like politicians who want to spend more time with their family.

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danudey 4502 days ago
The other possibility is that the 15 people he's taking with him are part of the company's top-tier leadership/talent; creative directors, art directors, etc. Maybe taking those 15 people is cutting off the head of the snake, and there's no one left to steer the ship after they're gone.
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nousernamesleft 4502 days ago
>If that's true, then it'd make Ken Levine just an asshole

That would probably be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about him. He is not well liked by past co-workers or employees.

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NDizzle 4502 days ago
A lot of studios seem to grow to a size where their product looks like this:

A game that would be considered incomplete ~5 years ago is launched. You then ship up to a dozen DLC packages that add incremental content so that the complete purchase price of the game and all DLC is 2 to 3x the original retail price.

That's how they justify the huge teams. I know it's very different market, but just look at how Turbine went from 500-600 employees to under 200. Look at how Zynga had 2,000 employees. Now wonder what, exactly, all those people were doing?

It's compelling, especially to veterans like Levine, to return a team that's no more than 3 or 4 dozen people and create / ship a complete product that they have a high amount of creative control over. Reminiscent of Double Fine / Psychonauts.

At least I hope that is what they are doing.

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bitwize 4502 days ago
It wouldn't surprise me. BioShock Infinite was hailed as literally the best game ever by the gaming press, but the storyline contains strong indicators that Levine has squeezed all the juice out of the BioShock concept.
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