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Irrational Games (Bioshock Infinite) is shutting down

minimaxir 13y ago
This is likely correlated with the absurd sales Bioshock Infinite received after release. (Down from $60 to $20 less than 6 months after release). They probably needed money.
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- Argorak 13y ago
  I don't feel like that is a good indicator. Sales start pretty early nowadays, the $60 price point is really just for people that cannot wait (there are exceptions, as always).
  - shubb 13y ago
    I think the price has come down because the number of buyers is now much bigger. Half Life 1, which was a huge blockbuster in 1998 took a year to sell 1/4 the number of coppies BioShock Infinite sold in 5 months. I'm just impressed that premier games have kept prices so high, as the price of most data products becomes so low. 'Social' games are comodity, but blockbusters are not.
    - Qworg 13y ago
      That's because art, music and design are all things that are difficult to impossible to find in a framework/do at commodity rate. Developers can make a 'social' game with some 2D art, but blockbusters actually require the input of hundreds of people.
- bhouston 13y ago
  RE: Quick price drop over 6 months. I think every game does that these days. There usually are fairly official numbers for sales of video games as it is a highly mature market. What are the real sales numbers? Here they are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite#Sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite#Sales I suspect they budget was insanely high for the game though, so they needed not just a blockbuster, but a massive one.
  - justinhj 13y ago
    I'd expect Take Two are looking for something that generates a billion in revenue from 10+ million sales, like their flagship title GTA or Activision's Call of Duty. Bioshock Infinite was a disappointment to most players despite good reviews, and the sales were unimpressive. Most likely the discussion was whether to shut the studio down or leave it open with a skeleton crew to see if they can come up with something more promising. You really cannot reboot a studio when you have 200 people due to the too many cooks problem.
  - officemonkey 13y ago
    >I think every game does that these days. Bioshock dropped pretty quick, IIRC. I remember picking it up on special during the Steam Summer Sale for $19.99. It was less than six months after release.
    - minimaxir 13y ago
      A 66% sale within 6 months for an AAA game is rare. (usually it's 33% max) However, I got Battlefield 4 for $20 in less than a month after release, so it's possible that's the new norm.
      - ericdykstra 13y ago
        The Last of Us has been out since June, and is still over $40 (down from $60) no matter where you look. I don't think it's the new standard to discount games that heavily.
- JonSkeptic 13y ago
  Sony also just recently had it featured as a free download for Playstation Plus members. /Sidenote On the PS3, it wasn't worth the bandwidth it took to download. The shoddy textures they used for the console version made it look half a step removed from a late gen PS 2 game. The gameplay and the recycled story didn't help either. It felt like they just took extra character models and levels from the previous BioShock games development, reskinned them and sold it to us it back to us with a plot that consisted of cross out the names of characters and places and writing in new ones. I hope they do better in the future, but playing that game has dispositioned me to thinking it may not be a bad time to shut down and start over: they need some new ideas.
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mjn 13y ago
Kind of a strange letter, especially given that Irrational Games is a subsidiary of Take Two. It makes it sound like Irrational is doing great, and Ken Levine just wants to try something different. But if that were the case, demolishing Irrational to try his new thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It'd be more sensible for him to just leave Irrational, starting a new endeavor (either another subsidiary under Take-Two, or his own independent thing), and leaving Irrational intact. Possible explanations include: 1) there is not as much success going on at Irrational as implied; 2) Ken Levine is just really attached to the name, and so wouldn't let it continue in present form while he leaves to do something else under a new name; 3) ...?
- millerc 13y 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...
  - mjn 13y 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.
    - danudey 13y 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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ChuckMcM 13y ago
> we will focus exclusively on content delivered digitally. Another one bites the dust. Sad to see irrational closing up but agree that 17 years is a long time for anything. My hope is that he isn't out to build the next candy crush thing.
- NDizzle 13y ago
  Ugh. I think I glossed over that line while reading the post due to not wanting to believe it. Ignore my hypothesis posted elsewhere in the thread.
- Zikes 13y ago
  That doesn't mean they're going mobile, just that they don't want to answer to a publisher.
Argorak 13y ago
Irrational created some of my favorite games, because of the amount of thought and attention to detail they poured into them. I loved most of them. * SWAT 4: How cool is a multiplayer shooter where you actually have to breach a room from multiple sides to pressure the enemy into _not shooting_? And hold your guns until you saw any indication they would? We played that game for nights in one room for better communication. * System Shock 2: Deeply flawed in some regards, but also the first game that creeped me out in a _perfectly well lit and bright environment_. Shodan, as always, was a great enemy. * Freedom Force Series: A comic strategy game. It wasn't that hard (it wasn't easy, either), but had "comic" written all over the place. The description if you hovered the cursor over a mere building was "A proud participant of the Patriot City skyline." Someone put an ironic joke on the patriotic theme of the game in the description of a boring apartment block... How fun is that? BioShock was a culmination of all that. Would you kindly pay them your respect?
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  > Would you kindly pay them your respect? No, simply because Bioshock, while being wildly entertaining to many people, was so at the cost of many of the good design choices made in the System Shock games. Just see for example your note about the bright environments and contrast with Bioshock. (It also irks me a little that your post is missing just enough detail to make it seem as if they made SS2, instead of being co-creators under the lead of Looking Glass.)
  - x1024 13y ago
    "Would you kindly" is a reference to the first Bioshock. You had to be there.
    - BlackDeath3 13y ago
      They may have understood the reference, and I think that their point stands regardless. It wasn't just a reference, after all.
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deletes 13y ago
my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience. I just read that as; we are gonna make an even more narative based System Shock 2 equivalent.
dave_sullivan 13y ago
Man, these guys made some great games. > To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable. Candy crush with a story it is... Or less cynically, a totally awesome RPG with procedurally generated storylines so no playthrough is ever the same?
- simcop2387 13y ago
  I've had a project going on like this for 20 years myself. Finally gotten enough worked out on how to do it that I think I can make it. It won't be perfectly different every time but variations (sometimes small, sometimes large) on 3 main 'stories' that are all potentially happening at the same time, each one from a different perspective. Most of the world is procedurally generated except for a few key things that are either too difficult to work out how to generate or need to be fixed to be able to more easily work out the story there (say towns and specific rooms in buildings).
- TheLoneWolfling 13y ago
  Cynical agreement. Less cynically, you mean taking the Dwarf Fortress adventure-mode route? Good luck... But even an RPG with multiple interesting endings (where choices you make actually affect things later in non-obvious ways) would fit the distinction of highly replayable.
- arrrg 13y ago
  I’m really not sure why anyone would be thinking that. That way of thinking makes no sense at all in this instance. During the last years there have been many indie games with a strong narrative focus. His mission statement together with his actions (small team, digital distribution) fits more with that than free to play mobile only games. It seems to me as though Ken Levine saw that he was making very narrative focused games (Bioshock Infinite in particular) with a side dish of shooting for that AAA appeal. Maybe he also saw all the indie developers making games with narrative focus who were not afraid of getting rid of such AAA trappings altogether because with digital distribution everyone can reach their niche and make sustainable amounts of money. Ken Levine is obviously not going all the way, but he is going pretty far with the downscaling (and it’s always worth to talk about whether he has gone the right way). AAA development gets you some nice things (God Only Knows sung by a barbershop quartet, for example) but comes with its own set of restrictions (you have to go for mass appeal) and when you want to make something smaller and more focused that doesn’t appeal to everyone then there’s lots to be said for getting smaller. (During the last few years we have seen the middle fall out from game development, with mid-sized developers and publishers going under. It seems that this gap is now filled from the bottom and the top, with former AAA developers scaling down and successful indie developers – Jonathan Blow with The Witness, Mike Bithell with Volume, … – scaling up.) There is whole diverse and crazy world below AAA titles. Some of those games are awful, but some are awesome. There is lots that can be done. And lots of cool things that are done. Why would you think of Candy Crush first? Especially the mention of the narrative focus makes me think of many excellent (and successful!) recent indie titles that also had a strong narrative focus: Stanley Parable, Gone Home, Kentucky Route Zero, … It seems to me that Ken Levine has something like that in mind plus his own game mechanics twist (the highly repayable part, whatever that means), certainly not some free to play mobile only bullshit.
lectrick 13y ago
I don't know if anyone from Irrational Games is watching this, but from an oldish gamer, thank you so much for your creative and entertaining efforts over the years and I wish you all the best in your next adventures.
johnny635 13y ago
Get out of the gaming industry while you still can. Otherwise, you'll be looking at getting out of the software industry in no time.
- winslow 13y ago
  Care to elaborate a little bit?
  - Goosey 13y ago
    Can not speak for the grandparent post, but sharing my own experience here going from AAA game development to 'serious games' (DARPA contracted training simulators) to web development I've got to agree with them (with a caveat). Each step away from games has lead to more sane company environments and higher proportional incentives. The reality of games is that programmers are underpaid in comparison to other industries. If a web programmer with X years of experience can command a salary of Y you can expect a game programmer with X years of experience to command approximately 2/3 * Y. Exact same geographical region. In return for being underpaid you will encounter far more 'crunch time'. I was fortunate in prioritizing this concern in the companies I chose to work for, but many of my friends in the AAA games industry have become completely used to working 10 hour days, 6 days a week, for 3-6 months straight at a time. Every. Single. Fucking. Year. Around July is when it begins; holiday launch schedules being the driving factor. On top of this, as illustrated in TFA, even if your game is a huge success you have extremely little job security. Saying the industry is entirely hit driven is actually missing the point; the issue is most AAA game studios are essentially huge, expensive, single-focus (and usually single-project) consultancies. Even if you have a success the lions share of the returns is going to go to the publisher and you are immediately back to pitching to the publisher to keep the lights turned on. So why is it this way? IMHO there are two main reasons. The first is because AAA titles are ridiculously expensive now. Internally financing one is completely out of the capabilities of any studio at this point. In the past it was possible to save from a good success and self-finance the next: no way now. In the past it was possible for a rag-tag group of passionate developers to have a AAA breakaway success. Impossible now. The second is because it's something lots of people dream of doing. The only sane reason to work in games is the exact reason most people who work in games continue to work in games: they love it. They love games. They love the tech in games (which, compared to the CRUD factories the vast majority of programming gigs outside of games, is really fucking awesome). They are following the advice of 'do what you love' and paying for it. Because there are TONS of other people that also love it. It's stunning the amount of turnover in the games industry. 5 years of experience is senior. 10 years is old school veteran. Because people burn out and leave. Because there is an endless supply of less experienced cheaper developers to fill in the gaps. The answer 'go indie' is just naive. For every indie success there are ungodly numbers of complete failures and you can no longer twist the knobs of a publisher's titan AAA marketing machine to stack the deck. Going indie is doing a startup which is impossible to fund and which has no hope or aspirations of Facebook level success. It is a giant success in the indie game world is to be successful enough to just support yourselves! It is something to be done by those with the love and passion for doing so for the reason of having the love and passion of doing so. It's never a rational decision from a purely financial point of view. I have the utmost respect and admiration for those who follow this path precisely for this reason. The games industry is an entertainment industry. It's more apt to compare game developers to musicians or actors or writers in the way the economics operate. It's not a business; it never will be. And honestly, I do miss it.
venomsnake 13y ago
It was expected. Probably he got fed up with modern publishing and Bioshock Infinite didn't do that great either - the 2 Bioshocks were on the verge of greatness, but it slipped from their hand mostly due to publisher interference (like not releasing modding tools and shipping with encrypted and signed content packs) when all of the community was begging for them. Bioshock has the potential to be the pre skyrim skyrim ... And bioshock infinite was threading on too safe ground. I really hope that his new studio will have bursts of creativity and success and the left out employees find better jobs soon.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  > the 2 Bioshocks were on the verge of greatness, but it slipped from their hand mostly due to publisher interference (like not releasing modding tools and shipping with encrypted and signed content packs) I dunno about that -- what always seemed to me to be holding the Bioshocks back from greatness was that they were designed around a gameplay mechanism (FPS running and gunning) that clashed pretty severely with the type of game the designers seemed to want badly to make, namely an interactive story. The result was a sort of schizophrenia: Irrational would build these incredible environments and characters, and then stick them in the exact type of game where players couldn't linger over and savor them. They were just a blur that would flash past your gunsights as you killed people. This problem was so evident in the Bioshock games that they led people smarter than I am to eventually coin a term for it: "ludonarrative dissonance" (see http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludona...). Which basically means a game whose story is trying to do one thing while its mechanics are trying to do something completely different, pulling the player in incompatible directions. That -- and Irrational's seeming lack of interest in reconciling the two elements in their work -- always seemed like a bigger factor holding them back from greatness than their relative lack of moddability, at least to me.
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    The first bioshock was not so bad - there was a lot to explore and the mechanics were very potent and true to the world - it really only needed a level editor to allow the community to show what was possible with rapture. And the dissonance was maybe due to publisher interference the same way the main story line and every single sentece connected to said line in Dishonored are terrible and naive and overly simplistic. And the moment you get to listen, watch and read something that you are not under obligation to do - the quality jumps up next to 0.5 Torments. Probably there were moment when it was - add more action, too much horror more action, too much talking more auto regen health.
david_otoole 13y ago
I had the privilege of working at IG for a few years back during the SWAT4 / FFV3R / Bioshock 1 days, when the people who made System Shock 2 were largely still there. It's sad to see the name being retired, but it's better than seeing the name ruined by a flop or diluted by endless sequels. The announcement is pretty opaque---I expect the rumor mill to churn for awhile.
zacinbusiness 13y ago
I truly understand not wanting to do "more of the same" after 17 years (I do something different nearly every day). But I really hate it for their developers and artists. Having only ever played the original Bioshock (which was beyond amazing to me), I know that at least the senior devs and artists have the chops to get hired somewhere new, or to start their own companies. But the jr. guys might have a tough time.
wnevets 13y ago
I cant forgive them for tribes vengeance.
- floody-berry 13y ago
  In their defense, T:V was mostly Thrax' doing and Irrational were just an unfortunate contractor. Even still, they did butcher just about every mechanic in the game.
winslow 13y ago
Well this is sad. I've been thoroughly impressed with Bioshock Infinite's gameplay, plot, story, AI, art, and attention to detail. Hopefully the artists/devs/writers will find another position elsewhere. I wonder what happened. It sounds like Bioshock Infinite didn't bring in the cash they thought it would? Reminds me of Ensemble Studios closing after AoE:III and Halo Wars.
tibbon 13y ago
Maybe its just me, but there is something deeply flawed with the game industry's hiring/firing practices. If a game does well, its time to lay off half (or more) of the team. Same result happens if a game does poorly of course. But it seems the only way to 'win' is to be at the top, or simply not play. I've seen this now with everything from Harmonix to Irrational Games. There seems to be a huge amount of money made with these blockbuster games, but vanishingly few companies seem to be able to manage their game development cycles efficiently as to always need a staff. It always comes off as terrible management/project management. For example, Harmonix's Rock Band was huge. There was around $299 million of bonuses paid to people at the top. Yet, I had friends work there get laid off repeatedly (once right before Christmas), sometimes shortly after the people at the top got the bonuses. Why in the world didn't they think to diversify a bit, run a few concurrent development cycles, etc... The most sane way to do game development seems to be to start your own indie studio and keep your expenses very low. Everything else seems... irrational.
- ender7 13y ago
  The game business is like the movie business in that projects are "seasonal" rather than a constant thing. Unless you are working on a tight little indie game or a recurring blockbuster series (Call of Duty, Madden), the number of people that are required at any one time in development is incredibly variable. "Pre-production" headcounts need to be very small because the devs are still figuring out what the game is and so don't have anything for an army of artists or engineers to do. Programming jobs in the games industry (and the entertainment industry in general) are not like "normal" programming jobs, despite the fact that they require an almost identical skill set. Put another way, they require the skills of a programmer but function on the employment schedule of a Hollywood lightning technician. (It sounds like the company your friend worked at was also mismanaged on top of this cycle, which always makes things worse. Sometimes very much worse.)
  - coob 13y ago
    If this is the case then why don't they staff them like movies – on a freelance basis? To keep costs down?
beloch 13y ago
You've had critial success. You've made so much money you could retire, buy an island, and still have enough left over to turn it into a supervillain lair! I get it. You're only in it now for the love of creating, so why not leave the headaches of A titles behind? This is perfectly sensible. Handing off irrational to a protégé, taking your buddies and spinning off a smaller studio would be a great way to do this. Firing half the company that brought you success, however, is a bit of a dick move.
- bertil 13y ago
  He writes: > There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give them during this transition. I've been through that recently (individually, though: specific skill-set, not right for the stage of development of the game) and recommendations go a very long way. Gaming, especially AAA, is actually a lot like the film industry on the HR point of view, except they don't really admit it: one-to-two-year-long projects, with a release date; little need for the same workers after that; many very specific, creative, expertise; a lot of rule of thumb, best practice to master through apprenticeship; recommendation being the tell-all; producers with far too often a horrible reputation; etc. Having a structure that handles that (union, special temporary worker status) would help facing the reality, which is frequently changing employers. Studios, movies and games alike, like to work with the same people for the next projects if things went well -- but half the time, no re-employment in the film industry is not a bad review, just a different creative direction. I'm not saying Hollywood Unions are the best example (or that French’ high direct subsidies and Status d'intermittent are cheap) but thinking about the differences between the two industry would help.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Hard to say without knowing the current ownership structure of the studio. It may not have been his call to make. Or maybe they couldn't find a buyer who could offer terms they found acceptable.
- jimwalsh 13y ago
  Not really. Their last game (Infinite) was a flop (AAA game that only sold 4m units). Take Two control the money, and with those kinds of results (huge team of 300 something, that took six plus years to create Infinite) you can imagine they weren't lining up to do another title. So Ken did what he could so that some of the studio would stay alive.
hawkharris 13y ago
This isn't the end... Irrational Games will enter the waters of baptism, and a new studio will be born. An infinite number of Irrational Games studios are opening and closing at this moment, like lighthouses on an ever-expanding ocean. The only difference between past and present is semantics. If what I'm saying sounds crazy, you owe it to yourself to play Bioshock Infinite. It's without a doubt one of the most beautiful and surreal games ever created.
- vacri 13y ago
  And despite the infinite number of Irrational Games studies opening and closing, for some reason they only ever make two games... a strange limitation on 'infinity'.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    > And despite the infinite number of Irrational Games studies opening and closing, for some reason they only ever make two games... a strange limitation on 'infinity'. Let's call those two games, "pi" and "e" while we are at it.
  - vacri 13y ago
    ugh, written too quickly. s/irrational games/stories/ Infinite finishes with an Everstory, with infinite branches... yet in all of those branches, there is only one of two possible outcomes for the main character in each of them. I really need to proofread my comments more.
mariusmg 13y ago
This is really fishy (the whole situation and the studio closure). First of all Irrational Games is (wholly) owned by Take Two. So only Take Two decides what happens with the studio. From the statement i guess they decided that is "less bad" if Levine steps up and says they "wind down" instead of Take 2 announcing they close the studio. Basically PR damage. Regarding the reason....looking at their output it seems they had it coming. After the original Bioshock (2007) they took 6 (!!) years to release Infinite (and even that was codeveloped with 2K Australia). The financial losses must have been pretty big.
exgamebiz 13y ago
There's a misconception that BioShock Infinite was a massive hit. It had the kind of budget that needed to sell 3+, maybe even 4+, million units to break even. It sold 4 million, but a lot of those were at discounted prices or via Steam sales. Remember, it took five years with a large team and had a premium marketing budget. I'm going to guess about $80-100 million prior to marketing. Also, the crunch time was horrendous for much of the project. The project churned through people who left bitter and burned out. I'm not sayin' BI is a bad game, but this isn't the story of a well-managed studio.
grogenaut 13y ago
Surprised at the lack of hate for Ken at this dick move.
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leonatan 13y ago
Sad to see them go. Their latest games weren't as good as their early ones (too much shooting), but still sad. Hope to see Levine involved in a project soon.
Eric_WVGG 13y ago
This is great news for fans of Ken Levine. I just finished Bioshock Infinite a couple weeks ago, and I was left feeling weirdly angry. It was a great story, shoehorned into a mediocre shooter. All of the problems with Bioshock were amplified. Which was necessary; in order to justify that kind of budget, they needed to make a game that would sell to the lowest-common-denominator. Hating on Bioshock Infinite is a bit like criticizing a Hollywood blockbuster for being dumbed-down. What did dummies like me expect? “To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable.” This is what fans of System Shock and Bioshock have been clamoring for. Set free of Take Two's blockbuster expectations, Levin will be free to deliver it.
troymc 13y ago
Can someone here translate "core gamer" and "core gaming audience" for me? Those phrases mean nothing to me.
- sesqu 13y ago
  Wikipedia has a brief section on this[1], but essentially it means "buys on release". It's the people who follow reviewers and industry news, spread word-of-mouth, play for dozens of hours, but don't demand features that would drive other customers away. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamer#Core_gamer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamer#Core_gamer
shrnky 13y ago
Ok, time to call most of you out. Why's this company different? When nameless corporations lay everyone off I usually here how broken capitalism is and how huge companies are evil, etc., but in this case I see more people trying to rationalize it.
b0rsuk 13y ago
This is why I've backed 9 Kickstarter games already. It may not be perfect, but I'm not a part of the problem anymore. Traditional publishers put the carriage before the horse. They use money earned by Game 11 to fuel Game 12. When you're buying a game you like, you're NOT paying for its production costs. You're paying for its sequel production costs. Kickstarter success is reputation/prototype based. You need either a great reputation or a great prototype. It's essentially a form of grant. Many of the games which succeed will ultimately fail in the "fun" sense. Yet I'm convinced that, as broken as AAA publishers are, throwing dice gives me a better chance. Check out board games. There's big innovation and it's entirely game mechanic based.
b0rsuk 13y ago
I realize I'm promoting board games to the wrong people - to people who've already been trained to expect the same things from 'games' as from movies - but you should take a closer look at board games. Outside of computer/console 'game' industry, games are rules. You distinguish two games by their rules. "How do you play it ?" is the question you need to ask. In video 'game' world, "game" has become an umbrella term for: - stories, - simulations, - puzzles, - actual multiplayer games, - playgrounds/toys (Minecraft, MMO...) Basically any interactive software that is used for entertainment is called a game these days. I guess vlc also meets the criteria, after all you can use it to watch porn. There's a parallel between Test Driven Development and board games. Today, computer games have become so complex and have so many moving parts that they have more in common with simulations than board games they largely came from. This is because you no longer understand all or even most of its RULES. Computer is kind enough to calculate everything for you. You don't know why a fireball deals 23 damage or why your city suffers an epidemic. It could be because it's scripted that way, because something gives it a +20% bonus (added before or after X ? Is it actually +20% or * 1.2 ? Wording is ofter ambiguous). The player is only expected to move around in a world and bump into things. Often the quickest way to learn a game is to try it. Learn the way children learn languages - not by memorizing grammar rules, but by practicing. Why TDD ? It is often claimed that in Test Driven Development, you write tests before you write code. THEN you write minimal code to pass those tests. By definition, you have practically 100% test coverage, which can be nice. By definition, you know all the rules of a board game. The rules tell you how and when move pieces, cards, tokens around. Modding and house rules is rampant in board game world. It happens even accidentally - when you fail to learn rules correctly, and later decide it's more fun that way. It's absolutel fine to play with "wrong" rules if all players agree to do it beforehand. Board game players often make their expansions, variants, prettier game art. -------------- Fun fact: "Sacrifice" spell in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is widely considered one of worst spells in the game. Sacrifice a unit to resurrect another one ? Load game, I wasted so many resources on level5 guild!! Unless you know the formula, which is NOT specified in the game. Then you can produce a table like this: http://wstaw.org/m/2012/12/05/imps_1.png http://wstaw.org/m/2012/12/05/imps_1.png With a modest investment (3 skill points and growth bonus building), you can sacrifice 1 week worth of imps(level1) to resurrect 2 weeks worth of Archdevils (level7). Assuming you get the guild, it all comes early enough to be relevant in a cutthroat multiplayer game. And it gets better and better as the game progresses, because unlike with most spells the effect doesn't increase in a logarithmic fashion (experience levels), but with troop counts. This is not good. This is devastating. The huge discrepancy between the perceived value of the spell and its actual value is due to bad documentation and hidden rules. It is extremely common for computer games to contain hidden, unexplained rules.
uchi 13y ago
For those not in the knowhow, BioShock Infinite was in development for a very long time. Work began on the game in 2008 and the first public announcement of the project was made in 2010. One developer when interviewed at polygon was quoted as saying that they culled enough content to make five or six games. E3 footage of the game over the years (and hell, even tv commercials of the game,) have nothing in common with the final released product with the sole exception of Columbia as a setting and different character versions of Elizabeth and Booker. as soon as I get to a PC I will post sources
IE5point5 13y ago
Serves them right for turning System Shock into Tangled + "Wait a minute that card"

This is likely correlated with the absurd sales Bioshock Infinite received after release. (Down from $60 to $20 less than 6 months after release). They probably needed money.

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Argorak 13y ago
I don't feel like that is a good indicator. Sales start pretty early nowadays, the $60 price point is really just for people that cannot wait (there are exceptions, as always).
- shubb 13y ago
  I think the price has come down because the number of buyers is now much bigger. Half Life 1, which was a huge blockbuster in 1998 took a year to sell 1/4 the number of coppies BioShock Infinite sold in 5 months. I'm just impressed that premier games have kept prices so high, as the price of most data products becomes so low. 'Social' games are comodity, but blockbusters are not.
  - Qworg 13y ago
    That's because art, music and design are all things that are difficult to impossible to find in a framework/do at commodity rate. Developers can make a 'social' game with some 2D art, but blockbusters actually require the input of hundreds of people.
bhouston 13y ago
RE: Quick price drop over 6 months. I think every game does that these days. There usually are fairly official numbers for sales of video games as it is a highly mature market. What are the real sales numbers? Here they are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite#Sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite#Sales I suspect they budget was insanely high for the game though, so they needed not just a blockbuster, but a massive one.
- justinhj 13y ago
  I'd expect Take Two are looking for something that generates a billion in revenue from 10+ million sales, like their flagship title GTA or Activision's Call of Duty. Bioshock Infinite was a disappointment to most players despite good reviews, and the sales were unimpressive. Most likely the discussion was whether to shut the studio down or leave it open with a skeleton crew to see if they can come up with something more promising. You really cannot reboot a studio when you have 200 people due to the too many cooks problem.
- officemonkey 13y ago
  >I think every game does that these days. Bioshock dropped pretty quick, IIRC. I remember picking it up on special during the Steam Summer Sale for $19.99. It was less than six months after release.
  - minimaxir 13y ago
    A 66% sale within 6 months for an AAA game is rare. (usually it's 33% max) However, I got Battlefield 4 for $20 in less than a month after release, so it's possible that's the new norm.
    - ericdykstra 13y ago
      The Last of Us has been out since June, and is still over $40 (down from $60) no matter where you look. I don't think it's the new standard to discount games that heavily.
JonSkeptic 13y ago
Sony also just recently had it featured as a free download for Playstation Plus members. /Sidenote On the PS3, it wasn't worth the bandwidth it took to download. The shoddy textures they used for the console version made it look half a step removed from a late gen PS 2 game. The gameplay and the recycled story didn't help either. It felt like they just took extra character models and levels from the previous BioShock games development, reskinned them and sold it to us it back to us with a plot that consisted of cross out the names of characters and places and writing in new ones. I hope they do better in the future, but playing that game has dispositioned me to thinking it may not be a bad time to shut down and start over: they need some new ideas.
deleted 13y ago
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mjn 13y ago

Kind of a strange letter, especially given that Irrational Games is a subsidiary of Take Two. It makes it sound like Irrational is doing great, and Ken Levine just wants to try something different. But if that were the case, demolishing Irrational to try his new thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It'd be more sensible for him to just leave Irrational, starting a new endeavor (either another subsidiary under Take-Two, or his own independent thing), and leaving Irrational intact. Possible explanations include: 1) there is not as much success going on at Irrational as implied; 2) Ken Levine is just really attached to the name, and so wouldn't let it continue in present form while he leaves to do something else under a new name; 3) ...?

millerc 13y 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...
- mjn 13y 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.
  - danudey 13y 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.
  - 13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago

> we will focus exclusively on content delivered digitally. Another one bites the dust. Sad to see irrational closing up but agree that 17 years is a long time for anything. My hope is that he isn't out to build the next candy crush thing.

NDizzle 13y ago
Ugh. I think I glossed over that line while reading the post due to not wanting to believe it. Ignore my hypothesis posted elsewhere in the thread.
Zikes 13y ago
That doesn't mean they're going mobile, just that they don't want to answer to a publisher.

Argorak 13y ago

Irrational created some of my favorite games, because of the amount of thought and attention to detail they poured into them. I loved most of them. * SWAT 4: How cool is a multiplayer shooter where you actually have to breach a room from multiple sides to pressure the enemy into _not shooting_? And hold your guns until you saw any indication they would? We played that game for nights in one room for better communication. * System Shock 2: Deeply flawed in some regards, but also the first game that creeped me out in a _perfectly well lit and bright environment_. Shodan, as always, was a great enemy. * Freedom Force Series: A comic strategy game. It wasn't that hard (it wasn't easy, either), but had "comic" written all over the place. The description if you hovered the cursor over a mere building was "A proud participant of the Patriot City skyline." Someone put an ironic joke on the patriotic theme of the game in the description of a boring apartment block... How fun is that? BioShock was a culmination of all that. Would you kindly pay them your respect?

Mithaldu 13y ago
> Would you kindly pay them your respect? No, simply because Bioshock, while being wildly entertaining to many people, was so at the cost of many of the good design choices made in the System Shock games. Just see for example your note about the bright environments and contrast with Bioshock. (It also irks me a little that your post is missing just enough detail to make it seem as if they made SS2, instead of being co-creators under the lead of Looking Glass.)
- x1024 13y ago
  "Would you kindly" is a reference to the first Bioshock. You had to be there.
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    They may have understood the reference, and I think that their point stands regardless. It wasn't just a reference, after all.
    - 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

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deletes 13y ago

my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience. I just read that as; we are gonna make an even more narative based System Shock 2 equivalent.

dave_sullivan 13y ago

Man, these guys made some great games. > To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable. Candy crush with a story it is... Or less cynically, a totally awesome RPG with procedurally generated storylines so no playthrough is ever the same?

simcop2387 13y ago
I've had a project going on like this for 20 years myself. Finally gotten enough worked out on how to do it that I think I can make it. It won't be perfectly different every time but variations (sometimes small, sometimes large) on 3 main 'stories' that are all potentially happening at the same time, each one from a different perspective. Most of the world is procedurally generated except for a few key things that are either too difficult to work out how to generate or need to be fixed to be able to more easily work out the story there (say towns and specific rooms in buildings).
TheLoneWolfling 13y ago
Cynical agreement. Less cynically, you mean taking the Dwarf Fortress adventure-mode route? Good luck... But even an RPG with multiple interesting endings (where choices you make actually affect things later in non-obvious ways) would fit the distinction of highly replayable.
arrrg 13y ago
I’m really not sure why anyone would be thinking that. That way of thinking makes no sense at all in this instance. During the last years there have been many indie games with a strong narrative focus. His mission statement together with his actions (small team, digital distribution) fits more with that than free to play mobile only games. It seems to me as though Ken Levine saw that he was making very narrative focused games (Bioshock Infinite in particular) with a side dish of shooting for that AAA appeal. Maybe he also saw all the indie developers making games with narrative focus who were not afraid of getting rid of such AAA trappings altogether because with digital distribution everyone can reach their niche and make sustainable amounts of money. Ken Levine is obviously not going all the way, but he is going pretty far with the downscaling (and it’s always worth to talk about whether he has gone the right way). AAA development gets you some nice things (God Only Knows sung by a barbershop quartet, for example) but comes with its own set of restrictions (you have to go for mass appeal) and when you want to make something smaller and more focused that doesn’t appeal to everyone then there’s lots to be said for getting smaller. (During the last few years we have seen the middle fall out from game development, with mid-sized developers and publishers going under. It seems that this gap is now filled from the bottom and the top, with former AAA developers scaling down and successful indie developers – Jonathan Blow with The Witness, Mike Bithell with Volume, … – scaling up.) There is whole diverse and crazy world below AAA titles. Some of those games are awful, but some are awesome. There is lots that can be done. And lots of cool things that are done. Why would you think of Candy Crush first? Especially the mention of the narrative focus makes me think of many excellent (and successful!) recent indie titles that also had a strong narrative focus: Stanley Parable, Gone Home, Kentucky Route Zero, … It seems to me that Ken Levine has something like that in mind plus his own game mechanics twist (the highly repayable part, whatever that means), certainly not some free to play mobile only bullshit.

lectrick 13y ago

I don't know if anyone from Irrational Games is watching this, but from an oldish gamer, thank you so much for your creative and entertaining efforts over the years and I wish you all the best in your next adventures.

johnny635 13y ago

Get out of the gaming industry while you still can. Otherwise, you'll be looking at getting out of the software industry in no time.

winslow 13y ago
Care to elaborate a little bit?
- Goosey 13y ago
  Can not speak for the grandparent post, but sharing my own experience here going from AAA game development to 'serious games' (DARPA contracted training simulators) to web development I've got to agree with them (with a caveat). Each step away from games has lead to more sane company environments and higher proportional incentives. The reality of games is that programmers are underpaid in comparison to other industries. If a web programmer with X years of experience can command a salary of Y you can expect a game programmer with X years of experience to command approximately 2/3 * Y. Exact same geographical region. In return for being underpaid you will encounter far more 'crunch time'. I was fortunate in prioritizing this concern in the companies I chose to work for, but many of my friends in the AAA games industry have become completely used to working 10 hour days, 6 days a week, for 3-6 months straight at a time. Every. Single. Fucking. Year. Around July is when it begins; holiday launch schedules being the driving factor. On top of this, as illustrated in TFA, even if your game is a huge success you have extremely little job security. Saying the industry is entirely hit driven is actually missing the point; the issue is most AAA game studios are essentially huge, expensive, single-focus (and usually single-project) consultancies. Even if you have a success the lions share of the returns is going to go to the publisher and you are immediately back to pitching to the publisher to keep the lights turned on. So why is it this way? IMHO there are two main reasons. The first is because AAA titles are ridiculously expensive now. Internally financing one is completely out of the capabilities of any studio at this point. In the past it was possible to save from a good success and self-finance the next: no way now. In the past it was possible for a rag-tag group of passionate developers to have a AAA breakaway success. Impossible now. The second is because it's something lots of people dream of doing. The only sane reason to work in games is the exact reason most people who work in games continue to work in games: they love it. They love games. They love the tech in games (which, compared to the CRUD factories the vast majority of programming gigs outside of games, is really fucking awesome). They are following the advice of 'do what you love' and paying for it. Because there are TONS of other people that also love it. It's stunning the amount of turnover in the games industry. 5 years of experience is senior. 10 years is old school veteran. Because people burn out and leave. Because there is an endless supply of less experienced cheaper developers to fill in the gaps. The answer 'go indie' is just naive. For every indie success there are ungodly numbers of complete failures and you can no longer twist the knobs of a publisher's titan AAA marketing machine to stack the deck. Going indie is doing a startup which is impossible to fund and which has no hope or aspirations of Facebook level success. It is a giant success in the indie game world is to be successful enough to just support yourselves! It is something to be done by those with the love and passion for doing so for the reason of having the love and passion of doing so. It's never a rational decision from a purely financial point of view. I have the utmost respect and admiration for those who follow this path precisely for this reason. The games industry is an entertainment industry. It's more apt to compare game developers to musicians or actors or writers in the way the economics operate. It's not a business; it never will be. And honestly, I do miss it.

venomsnake 13y ago

It was expected. Probably he got fed up with modern publishing and Bioshock Infinite didn't do that great either - the 2 Bioshocks were on the verge of greatness, but it slipped from their hand mostly due to publisher interference (like not releasing modding tools and shipping with encrypted and signed content packs) when all of the community was begging for them. Bioshock has the potential to be the pre skyrim skyrim ... And bioshock infinite was threading on too safe ground. I really hope that his new studio will have bursts of creativity and success and the left out employees find better jobs soon.

smacktoward 13y ago
> the 2 Bioshocks were on the verge of greatness, but it slipped from their hand mostly due to publisher interference (like not releasing modding tools and shipping with encrypted and signed content packs) I dunno about that -- what always seemed to me to be holding the Bioshocks back from greatness was that they were designed around a gameplay mechanism (FPS running and gunning) that clashed pretty severely with the type of game the designers seemed to want badly to make, namely an interactive story. The result was a sort of schizophrenia: Irrational would build these incredible environments and characters, and then stick them in the exact type of game where players couldn't linger over and savor them. They were just a blur that would flash past your gunsights as you killed people. This problem was so evident in the Bioshock games that they led people smarter than I am to eventually coin a term for it: "ludonarrative dissonance" (see http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludona...). Which basically means a game whose story is trying to do one thing while its mechanics are trying to do something completely different, pulling the player in incompatible directions. That -- and Irrational's seeming lack of interest in reconciling the two elements in their work -- always seemed like a bigger factor holding them back from greatness than their relative lack of moddability, at least to me.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  The first bioshock was not so bad - there was a lot to explore and the mechanics were very potent and true to the world - it really only needed a level editor to allow the community to show what was possible with rapture. And the dissonance was maybe due to publisher interference the same way the main story line and every single sentece connected to said line in Dishonored are terrible and naive and overly simplistic. And the moment you get to listen, watch and read something that you are not under obligation to do - the quality jumps up next to 0.5 Torments. Probably there were moment when it was - add more action, too much horror more action, too much talking more auto regen health.

david_otoole 13y ago

I had the privilege of working at IG for a few years back during the SWAT4 / FFV3R / Bioshock 1 days, when the people who made System Shock 2 were largely still there. It's sad to see the name being retired, but it's better than seeing the name ruined by a flop or diluted by endless sequels. The announcement is pretty opaque---I expect the rumor mill to churn for awhile.

zacinbusiness 13y ago

I truly understand not wanting to do "more of the same" after 17 years (I do something different nearly every day). But I really hate it for their developers and artists. Having only ever played the original Bioshock (which was beyond amazing to me), I know that at least the senior devs and artists have the chops to get hired somewhere new, or to start their own companies. But the jr. guys might have a tough time.

wnevets 13y ago

I cant forgive them for tribes vengeance.

floody-berry 13y ago
In their defense, T:V was mostly Thrax' doing and Irrational were just an unfortunate contractor. Even still, they did butcher just about every mechanic in the game.

winslow 13y ago

Well this is sad. I've been thoroughly impressed with Bioshock Infinite's gameplay, plot, story, AI, art, and attention to detail. Hopefully the artists/devs/writers will find another position elsewhere. I wonder what happened. It sounds like Bioshock Infinite didn't bring in the cash they thought it would? Reminds me of Ensemble Studios closing after AoE:III and Halo Wars.

tibbon 13y ago

Maybe its just me, but there is something deeply flawed with the game industry's hiring/firing practices. If a game does well, its time to lay off half (or more) of the team. Same result happens if a game does poorly of course. But it seems the only way to 'win' is to be at the top, or simply not play. I've seen this now with everything from Harmonix to Irrational Games. There seems to be a huge amount of money made with these blockbuster games, but vanishingly few companies seem to be able to manage their game development cycles efficiently as to always need a staff. It always comes off as terrible management/project management. For example, Harmonix's Rock Band was huge. There was around $299 million of bonuses paid to people at the top. Yet, I had friends work there get laid off repeatedly (once right before Christmas), sometimes shortly after the people at the top got the bonuses. Why in the world didn't they think to diversify a bit, run a few concurrent development cycles, etc... The most sane way to do game development seems to be to start your own indie studio and keep your expenses very low. Everything else seems... irrational.

ender7 13y ago
The game business is like the movie business in that projects are "seasonal" rather than a constant thing. Unless you are working on a tight little indie game or a recurring blockbuster series (Call of Duty, Madden), the number of people that are required at any one time in development is incredibly variable. "Pre-production" headcounts need to be very small because the devs are still figuring out what the game is and so don't have anything for an army of artists or engineers to do. Programming jobs in the games industry (and the entertainment industry in general) are not like "normal" programming jobs, despite the fact that they require an almost identical skill set. Put another way, they require the skills of a programmer but function on the employment schedule of a Hollywood lightning technician. (It sounds like the company your friend worked at was also mismanaged on top of this cycle, which always makes things worse. Sometimes very much worse.)
- coob 13y ago
  If this is the case then why don't they staff them like movies – on a freelance basis? To keep costs down?

beloch 13y ago

You've had critial success. You've made so much money you could retire, buy an island, and still have enough left over to turn it into a supervillain lair! I get it. You're only in it now for the love of creating, so why not leave the headaches of A titles behind? This is perfectly sensible. Handing off irrational to a protégé, taking your buddies and spinning off a smaller studio would be a great way to do this. Firing half the company that brought you success, however, is a bit of a dick move.

bertil 13y ago
He writes: > There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give them during this transition. I've been through that recently (individually, though: specific skill-set, not right for the stage of development of the game) and recommendations go a very long way. Gaming, especially AAA, is actually a lot like the film industry on the HR point of view, except they don't really admit it: one-to-two-year-long projects, with a release date; little need for the same workers after that; many very specific, creative, expertise; a lot of rule of thumb, best practice to master through apprenticeship; recommendation being the tell-all; producers with far too often a horrible reputation; etc. Having a structure that handles that (union, special temporary worker status) would help facing the reality, which is frequently changing employers. Studios, movies and games alike, like to work with the same people for the next projects if things went well -- but half the time, no re-employment in the film industry is not a bad review, just a different creative direction. I'm not saying Hollywood Unions are the best example (or that French’ high direct subsidies and Status d'intermittent are cheap) but thinking about the differences between the two industry would help.
jamesaguilar 13y ago
Hard to say without knowing the current ownership structure of the studio. It may not have been his call to make. Or maybe they couldn't find a buyer who could offer terms they found acceptable.
jimwalsh 13y ago
Not really. Their last game (Infinite) was a flop (AAA game that only sold 4m units). Take Two control the money, and with those kinds of results (huge team of 300 something, that took six plus years to create Infinite) you can imagine they weren't lining up to do another title. So Ken did what he could so that some of the studio would stay alive.

hawkharris 13y ago

This isn't the end... Irrational Games will enter the waters of baptism, and a new studio will be born. An infinite number of Irrational Games studios are opening and closing at this moment, like lighthouses on an ever-expanding ocean. The only difference between past and present is semantics. If what I'm saying sounds crazy, you owe it to yourself to play Bioshock Infinite. It's without a doubt one of the most beautiful and surreal games ever created.

vacri 13y ago
And despite the infinite number of Irrational Games studies opening and closing, for some reason they only ever make two games... a strange limitation on 'infinity'.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  > And despite the infinite number of Irrational Games studies opening and closing, for some reason they only ever make two games... a strange limitation on 'infinity'. Let's call those two games, "pi" and "e" while we are at it.
- vacri 13y ago
  ugh, written too quickly. s/irrational games/stories/ Infinite finishes with an Everstory, with infinite branches... yet in all of those branches, there is only one of two possible outcomes for the main character in each of them. I really need to proofread my comments more.

mariusmg 13y ago

This is really fishy (the whole situation and the studio closure). First of all Irrational Games is (wholly) owned by Take Two. So only Take Two decides what happens with the studio. From the statement i guess they decided that is "less bad" if Levine steps up and says they "wind down" instead of Take 2 announcing they close the studio. Basically PR damage. Regarding the reason....looking at their output it seems they had it coming. After the original Bioshock (2007) they took 6 (!!) years to release Infinite (and even that was codeveloped with 2K Australia). The financial losses must have been pretty big.

exgamebiz 13y ago

There's a misconception that BioShock Infinite was a massive hit. It had the kind of budget that needed to sell 3+, maybe even 4+, million units to break even. It sold 4 million, but a lot of those were at discounted prices or via Steam sales. Remember, it took five years with a large team and had a premium marketing budget. I'm going to guess about $80-100 million prior to marketing. Also, the crunch time was horrendous for much of the project. The project churned through people who left bitter and burned out. I'm not sayin' BI is a bad game, but this isn't the story of a well-managed studio.

grogenaut 13y ago

Surprised at the lack of hate for Ken at this dick move.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

leonatan 13y ago

Sad to see them go. Their latest games weren't as good as their early ones (too much shooting), but still sad. Hope to see Levine involved in a project soon.

Eric_WVGG 13y ago

This is great news for fans of Ken Levine. I just finished Bioshock Infinite a couple weeks ago, and I was left feeling weirdly angry. It was a great story, shoehorned into a mediocre shooter. All of the problems with Bioshock were amplified. Which was necessary; in order to justify that kind of budget, they needed to make a game that would sell to the lowest-common-denominator. Hating on Bioshock Infinite is a bit like criticizing a Hollywood blockbuster for being dumbed-down. What did dummies like me expect? “To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable.” This is what fans of System Shock and Bioshock have been clamoring for. Set free of Take Two's blockbuster expectations, Levin will be free to deliver it.

troymc 13y ago

Can someone here translate "core gamer" and "core gaming audience" for me? Those phrases mean nothing to me.

sesqu 13y ago
Wikipedia has a brief section on this[1], but essentially it means "buys on release". It's the people who follow reviewers and industry news, spread word-of-mouth, play for dozens of hours, but don't demand features that would drive other customers away. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamer#Core_gamer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamer#Core_gamer

shrnky 13y ago

Ok, time to call most of you out. Why's this company different? When nameless corporations lay everyone off I usually here how broken capitalism is and how huge companies are evil, etc., but in this case I see more people trying to rationalize it.

b0rsuk 13y ago

This is why I've backed 9 Kickstarter games already. It may not be perfect, but I'm not a part of the problem anymore. Traditional publishers put the carriage before the horse. They use money earned by Game 11 to fuel Game 12. When you're buying a game you like, you're NOT paying for its production costs. You're paying for its sequel production costs. Kickstarter success is reputation/prototype based. You need either a great reputation or a great prototype. It's essentially a form of grant. Many of the games which succeed will ultimately fail in the "fun" sense. Yet I'm convinced that, as broken as AAA publishers are, throwing dice gives me a better chance. Check out board games. There's big innovation and it's entirely game mechanic based.

b0rsuk 13y ago

I realize I'm promoting board games to the wrong people - to people who've already been trained to expect the same things from 'games' as from movies - but you should take a closer look at board games. Outside of computer/console 'game' industry, games are rules. You distinguish two games by their rules. "How do you play it ?" is the question you need to ask. In video 'game' world, "game" has become an umbrella term for: - stories, - simulations, - puzzles, - actual multiplayer games, - playgrounds/toys (Minecraft, MMO...) Basically any interactive software that is used for entertainment is called a game these days. I guess vlc also meets the criteria, after all you can use it to watch porn. There's a parallel between Test Driven Development and board games. Today, computer games have become so complex and have so many moving parts that they have more in common with simulations than board games they largely came from. This is because you no longer understand all or even most of its RULES. Computer is kind enough to calculate everything for you. You don't know why a fireball deals 23 damage or why your city suffers an epidemic. It could be because it's scripted that way, because something gives it a +20% bonus (added before or after X ? Is it actually +20% or * 1.2 ? Wording is ofter ambiguous). The player is only expected to move around in a world and bump into things. Often the quickest way to learn a game is to try it. Learn the way children learn languages - not by memorizing grammar rules, but by practicing. Why TDD ? It is often claimed that in Test Driven Development, you write tests before you write code. THEN you write minimal code to pass those tests. By definition, you have practically 100% test coverage, which can be nice. By definition, you know all the rules of a board game. The rules tell you how and when move pieces, cards, tokens around. Modding and house rules is rampant in board game world. It happens even accidentally - when you fail to learn rules correctly, and later decide it's more fun that way. It's absolutel fine to play with "wrong" rules if all players agree to do it beforehand. Board game players often make their expansions, variants, prettier game art. -------------- Fun fact: "Sacrifice" spell in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is widely considered one of worst spells in the game. Sacrifice a unit to resurrect another one ? Load game, I wasted so many resources on level5 guild!! Unless you know the formula, which is NOT specified in the game. Then you can produce a table like this: http://wstaw.org/m/2012/12/05/imps_1.png http://wstaw.org/m/2012/12/05/imps_1.png With a modest investment (3 skill points and growth bonus building), you can sacrifice 1 week worth of imps(level1) to resurrect 2 weeks worth of Archdevils (level7). Assuming you get the guild, it all comes early enough to be relevant in a cutthroat multiplayer game. And it gets better and better as the game progresses, because unlike with most spells the effect doesn't increase in a logarithmic fashion (experience levels), but with troop counts. This is not good. This is devastating. The huge discrepancy between the perceived value of the spell and its actual value is due to bad documentation and hidden rules. It is extremely common for computer games to contain hidden, unexplained rules.

uchi 13y ago

For those not in the knowhow, BioShock Infinite was in development for a very long time. Work began on the game in 2008 and the first public announcement of the project was made in 2010. One developer when interviewed at polygon was quoted as saying that they culled enough content to make five or six games. E3 footage of the game over the years (and hell, even tv commercials of the game,) have nothing in common with the final released product with the sole exception of Columbia as a setting and different character versions of Elizabeth and Booker. as soon as I get to a PC I will post sources

IE5point5 13y ago

Serves them right for turning System Shock into Tangled + "Wait a minute that card"