Topic: Irrational Games shutting down

It seems he wanted to have the benefits of being indie without the risks. Definitely not the way of doing this, if you ask me.

Any project Levine would have made as an actual indie would have been in development hell forever.

It is not that different to what 2 Tribes have done.

Link doesn't work, looks like the original article was deleted. I just would like to know what was in there in the first place.

Let's see
Platinum Games "Hey Irrational games, we're open for job positions if you want!"
Irrational game guy? "Hey I work for Irrational games.... I like to work for games on a healthy platform not on a dead console."
Platinum Games "You quote doesn't insult me, it's insulting the people that has a mouth to feed."

Well, looks like the big, tripple A machine is starting to fall apart bit by bit.
That was certainly unforseen. But seeing that even the biggest names are having more and more hicups isnt really the best sign for the industry as a whole.

@Einherjar

You do realize this was due to the head if studio wanting to make smaller games and not the game selling badly right?

Its telling since Levine and his 15 guys are still at 2K and others are being shifted else where in 2K.

This has little to do with some Tin foil the current regime is falling down as much as it is the main guy of irrational said screw it, and instead of keeping the together 2K is going to shift BioShock to 2K Marin.

@shingi_70 Im aware of that, but honestly: If you would be the producer of a well running and critically acclaimed game series, why would you suddenly stop, reduce your team to basicly nothing and start making "smaller games" ? Doesnt this smell at least a tiny bit fishy to you ?
I cant speak for him, but if something is important to me, and i like working on it, i continue working on it.
To me, this sounds like working on these games wasnt as "fun" as he hoped it to be. But whatever, its none of my concerns really.

Dude has gotten bored with the AAA cycle , and seeing how Infinite took six years to make I understand. Dude pretty much has carte Blanche to do whatever he wants.

Take a two already said they'll be making BioShock games without irrational .

But well probably never know until a former 2Ker decides to go on twitter or someone writes an expose on the matter.

If I felt my vision would be better served by a smaller team that I get to work more closely with, and ultimately have more control over, then yeah, probably. And hey, not every artist likes to paint a Sistine Chapel every single time. Sometimes its good to work on smaller projects from time to time, to mix things up. Companies these days really need to suppliment their output with smaller games, anyways, so I can see why 2K might be okay with it.

@shingi_70
How exactly did Bioshock Infinite take 6 years to make? Bioshock 2 wasn't even out 6 years ago.

Also, I think Bioshock Infinite not doing that well probably had more to do with this than you're giving credit.
I'm not saying for sure, but he probably saw how poorly it did and decided he needed to do some cutbacks so he can start fresh again.

If Bioshock Infinite had done well, we most likely wouldn't have seen this happen, but they obviously aren't gonna come out and say that unless they're a total dumba$$ and basically tell other people that it's their fault. That's why people are pissed off at EA or Bathesda. People involved want to place blame on other people, and it makes them look like idiots.

The way he cut these people was more respectable, but the fact that he did it at all kind of isn't, and implies more than what he's saying, or what he hasn't said,

So they were making Bioshock Infinite while 2K Marin worked on the sequel to the first game. Well, seeing as his decision to cut workers was supposedly based on his "artist" viewpoint, you'd think he wouldn't have let 2K Marin make Bioshock 2.