^ Mmmh yeah rereading up on the sitation it seems like while infinite sold well it may not have been good enough for the size of the team over the span of 4-5 years. Seems likely that he just couldn't see a way to make it work out, the way he was working doing a lot of iteration and basically using up a ton of resources each time with that.
Bioshock Infinite
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Really shitty for all those people losing their jobs. Funny how all the PR focuses on what "Levine wants to do" and not that angle, like they were disposable from inception.
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Yeah….if this was just "Levine wanted to do something", they would jut put up another lead at the studio I would think. I'm guessing that there were some kind of financial problems, and it was deemed that they didn't have the resources to have a team that big? Also possible BI didn't sell enough to make a good profit.
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I wouldn't be surprised if he's just taking the fall on this one. He is obviously a great designer but a finicky and unpredictable one, and in today's environment it's extremely risky to keep budgeting AAA titles on a 4-5 year timetable, especially if they are not firmly based in extremely safe and conventional standards – and feedback would suggest that the "safe" parts of Infinite, the part where you shoot a bunch of people in the face, were supported by the framework of the game more tenuously and awkwardly than ever before.
Star Citizen has raised nearly 39 million in crowd funding alone - essentially making it AAA funded for development (Marketing Budget is separate)
I think things like this are making people like Levine think perhaps they can make the game they want instead of the "safe" bets. -
Thought this was a fair rendition of why the way this closure has been framed sucks:
Hang in there, Kierkegaard.
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This indeed sucks but… call me an ass cause I'm not really bothered by it. Bioshock Infinite was, from a gameplay standpoint; a colossal disappointment. They definitely needed to do some sort of restructuring after 5-years of work resulted in what we got.
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Thought this was a fair rendition of why the way this closure has been framed sucks:
That was a pretty good read. Sometimes it's easy to forget the people behind all the hard work and focus on a single individual. Although come to think about it, is the pay for the ground workers really bad in general? The article seems to imply so.
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http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/211139/Irrational_Games_journalism_and_airing_dirty_laundry.php also an interesting article.
Been reading a bit here and there. Not quite sure where to land on this yet but I definitely think I can safely say that again it's not as simple as painting cross hairs on single person. It rarely is with so many moving pieces for those big studios being backed by even bigger publishers. -
@Article:
My suspicion would be that publishers 2K are closing down Irrational for far more typical financial reasons; but in an effort to hold onto the valuable source that is Levine’s auteur-ness for future products, allowed him to write this heartfelt letter about what he would like to do next.
I hope this is the case because it makes no sense to me to disband an entire large, successful studio just because one of the founders got bored. That's like a large corporation shutting down because the CEO leaves.
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I hope this is the case because it makes no sense to me to disband an entire large, successful studio just because one of the founders got bored. That's like a large corporation shutting down because the CEO leaves.
Seems more and more to be the case. I really thought Infinite was ok the number I've been seeing is 4 million in 4 months. But I didn't line that up with the time it took to develop and the number of people that worked on it.
Doesn't seem that surprising anymore.Also take two seems to have skipped mentioning infinite in their latest earnings call.
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Keep in mind that even something like Dead Space 3 was aiming for 5 million sales and between the development hell and just how expensive the game was anyway, I'm guessing that the required amount of sales would be more than that. And companies only care really about the immediate sales.
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That was a pretty good read. Sometimes it's easy to forget the people behind all the hard work and focus on a single individual. Although come to think about it, is the pay for the ground workers really bad in general? The article seems to imply so.
i can't really say for sure. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Irrational-Games-Reviews-E393081.htm implies that the lower level positions paid fairly low (keep in mind their work hours were probably very long and possibly extended through the weekends)
I never played bioshock but this seems like a shitty move and I hope it bites that idiot in the ass
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i can't really say for sure. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Irrational-Games-Reviews-E393081.htm implies that the lower level positions paid fairly low (keep in mind their work hours were probably very long and possibly extended through the weekends)
I never played bioshock but this seems like a shitty move and I hope it bites that idiot in the ass
It would be nice if pitchforks weren't the first item people grabbed after seeing an incomplete picture of a situation.
In this case after some little research I can say a 100% this wasn't his decision alone.The studio doesn't belong to him. It belongs to Take Two, Irrational Games is actually just a moniker for 2k Boston, well over the years it became its own brand I guess. You don't just close studios because the studio head leaves. There are generally people in place to move up.
When we look at the dev history of Infinite and the numbers I think we can make somewhat reasonable speculations of what might have been the case, but still we can't know for sure. Very likely this shut down happened because of financial reasons not because Levine needs to take a breather from AAA.
That said I probably won't challenge anyone questioning his competence leading up to this. Seeing the high turnover rate during Infinite's development and the stories about lots of iterations and also whole parts of the games being scrapped I can see that Irrational might not have been the nicest place to work at.
But that knee-jerk reaction of screw him, for treating his team like disposable trash… just cause he wants to do smaller games, yeah I find that rather questionable.
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It would be nice if pitchforks weren't the first item people grabbed after seeing an incomplete picture of a situation.
In this case after some little research I can say a 100% this wasn't his decision alone.The studio doesn't belong to him. It belongs to Take Two, Irrational Games is actually just a moniker for 2k Boston, well over the years it became it's own brand I guess. You don't just close studios because the studio head leaves. There are generally people in place to move up.
When we look at the dev history of Infinite and the numbers I think we can make somewhat reasonable speculations of what might have been the case, but still we can't know for sure. Very like this shut down happened because of financial reasons not because Levine needs to take a breather from AAA.
That said I probably won't challenge anyone questioning his competence leading up to this. Seeing the high turnover rate during Infinite's development and the stories about lots of iterations and also whole parts of the games being scrapped I can see that Irrational might not have been the nicest place to work at.
Couldn't have possibly been that much worse than Lucasarts or Silicon Knights but hey presumably some dark secrets might come out.
I've often wondered about that myself; seems like being supported by people who only want you there so the world can end in fire (with you going to Hell in the process) would be somewhat off-putting
3DS Friend Code 0044-2806-5284
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Couldn't have possibly been that much worse than Lucasarts or Silicon Knights but hey presumably some dark secrets might come out.
I think team bondi still takes that cake.
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Oh yea forgot about them and 38 Studios.
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It would be nice if pitchforks weren't the first item people grabbed after seeing an incomplete picture of a situation.
In this case after some little research I can say a 100% this wasn't his decision alone.The studio doesn't belong to him. It belongs to Take Two, Irrational Games is actually just a moniker for 2k Boston, well over the years it became its own brand I guess. You don't just close studios because the studio head leaves. There are generally people in place to move up.
When we look at the dev history of Infinite and the numbers I think we can make somewhat reasonable speculations of what might have been the case, but still we can't know for sure. Very likely this shut down happened because of financial reasons not because Levine needs to take a breather from AAA.
That said I probably won't challenge anyone questioning his competence leading up to this. Seeing the high turnover rate during Infinite's development and the stories about lots of iterations and also whole parts of the games being scrapped I can see that Irrational might not have been the nicest place to work at.
But that knee-jerk reaction of screw him, for treating his team like disposable trash… just cause he wants to do smaller games, yeah I find that rather questionable.
someone made that decision and I hope it bites them in the ass end of story
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Double the misery for twice the money I guess.
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I heard from Eric "WingMan" Peterson (President of Development, Producer & Designer) at Star Citizen they are going to an event being held for Irrational Games dev staff that have been let go - looking for talent to join them making their game. So while its not a great ending for the staff, a lot of them have the talent needed on that project so if any of them are able to move to LA TX or the UK they might have work waiting for them ^_^.
They're actually kind of excited to go to the event and meet the people there.
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Double the misery for twice the money I guess.
they made one of the biggest games of the year last year. "Maybe we should rethink our process!"
Pls
Pls
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they made one of the biggest games of the year last year. "Maybe we should rethink our process!"
Pls
Pls
Selling 4 mil after being such a massive money sink=/= acceptable. It sold less than bioshock 1 LTD and only a bit more than bioshock 2 LTD. 6 years development time costs u know, especially if u consider the tons of cut content that was made for no gain.
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they made one of the biggest games of the year last year. "Maybe we should rethink our process!"
Pls
Pls
There is a very understandable rational behind a lot of business decisions. But even I don't really care to defend cause it's pretty terrible ethically.
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Not sure if people are still interested in this but I thought this was pretty interesting probably that's as close as we can get to what happened behind the scenes.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/6/5474722/why-did-irrational-close-bioshock-infinite -
Nice read .
