Irrational Games Development

Irrational Games is no more. After 17 years and 3 big games, the studio closes its doors and around 100 people lose their jobs.

Massive news at the start of the week, yet the only article worth reading that i found was this: a blog post about the people who actually worked there, you know those that lost their job. Everyone else, after mentioning commiserations in passing, quickly moved on to the REAL topic: What on earth can Levine do next? O M G so exciting!! It could be awesome!!! I kid you not, sites like Kotaku and others read Levine’s rather short and unimaginative final post on the IG website and extrapolated potential awesomeness, started speculating and capitalized on a hot topic. That’s despite nothing at all being known and Levine having a track record of taking 7 years to deliver a game. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s a bit early to start the Levine hype. 2020 will be soon enough.

And that, in my opinion, is exactly the problem. In my opinion it is the real reason why Irrational Games had to close down. Because it took more than 6 years to release Bioshock Infinite, it cost a massive amount of money and while it well may have broken even, it certainly did not make a massive amount of profit, nor did it push the franchise into a new market. The same people who bought Bioshock 1 bought Infinite. This is not really a bad thing, and 4 millions sales is by no means a bad achievement, but for a high profile project, a high profile “creative” and a budget like that of Infinite, it simply is not enough. It’s no surprise that 2K decided it’s time to end things. And the most valuable asset that 2K has from Irrational is Ken Levine. Not because he is such an outstanding creative, after playing all his games i would argue he isn’t. Not because he is an inspiring leader, after talking to some people who worked at IG i would argue he isn’t. No, it’s simply because he is a big name, the press love him and sites like Kotaku are already foaming at the mouth at him only mentioning a new project – Ken Levine is good PR.

I have never worked with him, but i have worked with other “big names” in the industry. Most of them made their name in 90s (like Levine) and my experience has generally been that they are not actually that good. And they are certainly not good for development. Their ego gets in the way and those that i worked with felt they could do no wrong and every idea they had was solid gold. That their vision changed every couple of weeks or months (depending on the movie they had seen or game they played) mattered little. The fact that months and sometimes years of work had to be thrown away meant little. The fact that people no longer believed in the vision, often did not even understand it even, meant little.

People like Levine, Molyneux, Braben, Black and others are great PR. They talk up a storm and the press laps it all up. They often cause controversy (none more so than Molyneux) outside the studio and chaos and terror inside the studio. Everytime someone like Molyneux or Levine make a public statement about the game, mention a feature or new idea, everyone actually working hands on in the studio and every marketing and PR person wants to strangle the lead creative.

Those big names often are indecisive, impulsive and most of the time have no actual clue about game development. They shot to fame in the 90s when making games was a much different affair and since then sat on their high seats when technology, tools and understanding of games, gamers and demographics passed them by. They took they higher budgets and used it to drag out development in the elusive hunt of realizing “their vision”. No thought was/is given to those actually making the project happen.

Look at Bioshock Infinite. It tries to tell a story, and by all accounts it’s not a bad story for a game, but it’s not nearly enough to mask the outdated core mechanics, which to a large degree are unchanged since System Shock. There were hints at new things, such as the sky-hook, but implemented half assed (it was not freely usable everywhere, which would have transformed the game in my opinion) and there was no multiplayer (which was promised at some point), so the game had no replay value and sales quickly shifted to second hand as the first wave finished their copy and returned it to the store. The story was not really compelling enough or provided enough choice to warrant a second playthrough. Levine tells a good story, but he uses the wrong medium to do it. He does not utilize the unique aspect of games: interactivity and player choice. According to his letter he seems to have seen the light, but honestly: after the last deliveries he did in 17 years, i won’t hold my breath.

All this took 6 years to make. It probably took thousands of unpaid overtime hours on the side of the team and, i am guessing here, a lot of that was down to Levine changing his vision, interfering with development and not having a clue. People slaved away, did not see family, probably could not even take sick or holidays in some cases. People sacrificed and now they got their reward. 

But it is the people like Levine who will always land on their feet, in this case even within the same publishing company. The rest of the people hopefully will find another job soon, and having Infinite on the CV will definitely help. I really hope so, because it was the team that created Infinite, not because of Levine but, in my opinion, in spite of him. They did what they could with what the had to work with, in a competitive and harsh environment.

So i don’t get this Levine or Molyneux or [insert other famous developer name] hype. Because, from personal experience, i think they are not actually that good and in many cases actually are a block to development. Real creative leadership does not come from promising the moon and constantly talking about a “vision”, which changes every few months. Real creative leadership comes from an understanding of the team that actually delivers the vision and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of both team and tech. Understanding what can and can’t be done. Realizing where to push the boundaries and where not to. And also it comes from understanding the potential target audience and realizing that any budget available needs to be recuperated from that target audience. Of course people like Levine, Molyneux and Braben don’t care about this. All they care about is to realize their vision (which some of them might have had for 20+ years but never had a chance to work on ). Because they know if they fail, if the game gets binned or never sells well, they won’t be affected. They move on to the next thing, while the grunts on the ground are left with the ruins. Their names guarantee another top job. The grunts are not so lucky.

But thankfully not every studio is like this, not every creative lead is a Levine. One has only to look at Naughty Dog among others, delivering amazing games every 2 years or so. Innovating, telling stories and entertaining a much broader audience. Despite personally not being a big fan of their games, i have to concede that this shows creative leadership as it should be. I doubt we will see Nate Wells post a letter citing the “desires to do something new, with a smaller team”  or “leaving over creative differences” anytime soon. I doubt we will see Naughty Dog closing it’s doors, leaving behind 100+ exploited and emotionally as well as financially drained grunts.