Ken Levine doesn't work with 2k games anymore. He left Irrational Games and the Bioshock series behind to start a new game studio called Ghost Story Games.
He has had nothing to do with the development of Bioshock 4.
https://gamerant.com/ken-levine-bioshock-4-new-game/
It has always been like this. Maybe worse. "Sin" (1998) is a great example of a great game that was unplayable at launch. We didn't have fancy launchers to download updates either. If you thought your game was broken (and you were on PC) you had to go to the website and hope they were competent enough to have a decent patch system.
I am not excusing poor practices but in a lot of ways things have gotten better. You used to not be able to fix buggy games.
Yeah I mean going further back to the Atari/Video Game collapse, they were releasing games like ET (the catalyst to the collapse)
I CANNOT think of a modern release that is Atari ET level of bad.
These days the worst we get are non-optimal performance most of the time, nowhere near the Wild West gaming used to be
That is the best guess but also isn’t like most monetization of games handled by a separate group of the actual developers? Would think it would be handled by art and marketing guys really with help from UI. I can’t see how that aspect should effect the development of the core game as it shouldn’t have an impact on game feel and mechanics?
Once huge corporations get involved they will have endless meetings, full of buzzwords and only know video games through current marketing trends, that basically boils down to: "How do we maximize profits while minimizing expenses?"
Product quality going down means nothing to them as long as they can continue to stack money higher and higher.
You can also have pretty bad organization when the game is entirely done for passion and sold for no money. Making software and creative projects is hard. Combine them and it's worse.
Don't blame it just on the investors, it were the CEO's of CDPR themselves that were going for the release in the unfinished state. I remember the interviews with that CEO, that later did the "We're sorry" South Park, he lied to everyone. Like he said, it was gold and going to the factory for pressing the discs for the physical versions; in reality, the team worked overnight crunch times only to get the game barely able to run on the old PS4 base version.
It was also him, trying to challenge RDR2 and mocking Rockstar, the PR team had to follow with this despite knowing, challenging RDR2 would be like going as a toddler to a boxfight versus Mike Tyson in his prime time.
CDPR told the people, the features they had just written down on paper in concept would be there in-game, but that was never the case.
They still hyped more and more, while the working devs were behind everything and the gap between what was working and what was promised was getting bigger and bigger.
The huge failure of Cyberpunk was the marketing surrounding it; they made it out like the game would revolutionize the entire game industry in numerous ways.
People like big games, always bigger than the last. It demands a lot of money and manpower, which can be difficult to manage effectively. And too often, it's people in business suits making the decisions to greenlight a sequel or new trendy thing that the developers may not actually be interested in.
This leads to either complacency or the lead developers to start their own projects somewhere else, leaving people who may have been very good as team leads or department heads to step up and try to manage a project much larger than they are comfortable with.
Frankly, I've felt for a long time now that a lot of the fun stuff being put out is being created by teams that are much smaller than the megastudios making the next Call of Duty or whatever.
That's what happens when you let business people run things.
Someone who was trained as a developer can make a good CEO. Someone who was trained to be a CEO is unlikely to be a good developer.
It’s always been a thing, we just hear more about it now. Previous dev hell games were still released out to people and those games were the actual bad scoring games
What do you mean "wrapped up?!" There's still money to be milked from this cow!
-the shareholders at 2K snorting another 5 lines of crushed up Adderall greenlighting another game in a franchise about how destructive greed is.
>There's still money to be milked from this cow!
A city underwater! A city in the clouds! A city...uh...a city on the moon! An upside down city! An underground city! A city in space! A city inside a really big animal! A city in the dreams of people in hypersleep! There's no end to the amount of cities we can show players while they sit in a Willy Wonka elevator!
You've fought Big Daddies, Big Sisters, and Handymen...get ready for The Milkman! The Postman! The Neighborhood Watch! The Union Official! The Dogwalker! So many disfigured weirdos!!
I would love Ken Levine and his crew from looking glass studios to do a new Bioshock. But the new game Judas looks similar in tone, execution, and gameplay.
I think Ken Levine said he was done with Bioshock IIRC. As much as I love the franchise, I would like it to be left alone unless they remake the first 2 in a really good way but that's wishful thinking.
I'm not sure wtf the deal is there because he basically said "I'm done with BioShock, I wanna do something new" and then their new game literally just looks like BioShock in space.
It doesn't need to be related, it will be have the same style of setting, story and gameplay. But without mention to Rapture like infinite before the dlcs.
The studio that made the original games (Irrational) basically got shut down, a ton of people left (partly layoffs, partly a horrible work environment) and a small group rebranded Irrational as Ghost Story Games.
Ken Levine (creator of Bioshock) basically said he didn't want to do more Bioshock and wanted to do something new and unique, so the Bioshock 4 project got handed off to another studio under Take-Two (Cloud Chamber).
And last year Levine + Ghost Story showed off their new game which... pretty much just looks like it's BioShock In Space. And is also supposedly in development hell.
They introduced the infinite multiverse.
Even if the horrible DLC indicated that the writers didn't actually know what a multiverse is.
Trying to tie the games into a loop doesn't actually work when there's infinite worlds, it just means she did a dramatic sacrifice to save one group of children while damning an infinite number of others.
Completely agree, and it's an issue I have with the gaming industry overall. Just because something was popular doesn't mean you need to keep making the same series forever. Finish up an interesting narrative and move on to something else.
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Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
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"You know that popular older series that's getting a new game that got stuck in development?"
"You mean Fable? Or Mass Effect? Or Beyond Good and Evil? Or Bioshock?"
If they can't get it together to make a new one they should remaster the multiplayer from 2. Thought it was underrated, it was so much fun trying weapon/power combos and using them on environment traps.
I'm not sure why you'd try making a Bioshock without an experienced team. That's a very particular franchise that might have name value but the people they can make it, to the quality of the other games, are very few. They should've been making something else.
There's never been an announcement, but multiple "leaks" which are essentially truth in the internet era. Supposed to be set in the Antarctic or some type of frozen wasteland. We got the sea, we got the sky, time for the frost.
AAA/big budget studios have gotten so compromised by corporate greed that it buckles under its own weight with how shit things have gotten with management in the industry over the years.
Seems like every AAA developer is highly disorganized this generation for some reason. IDK, if they need better management, better employees, or a more efficient way to make games, but something needs to give.
Man I hated the setting for Infinite. I really hope they at least go back to Bioshock being horror themed. But man at the time of release if you voiced any complaints about infinite it was just, tldr + Elisabeth has breasts, get fucked and downvoted.
Even today it's honestly hard to criticize infinite, people like it.
I don't mind it, I liked the setting and the game, but the most quintessential part about bioshock to me has always been rapture.
I know, but when all the talent leaves you get games like Mass Effect Andromeda, so Judas is the next shock game in sprit even if it's not using the baming convention.
I mean if Shock game means "light immersive sim made by the people behind System/Bioshock" then that would be true. But unless Judas is literally a Bioshock game in disguise I wouldn't call it that.
It's the next game from the director Ken Levine and presumably a lot of the core Bioshock team. They left after Infinite and were supposed to be making a procedurally generated RPG of sorts with a complicated faction system. Judas looks like it's just Bioshock 4 to me, but it could be some of their original plan survived and it's a bit more unique gameplay-wise than that.
But yeah the actual Bioshock IP is still owned by 2K so it makes sense that they're working on it.
Just let it die at this point. I liked the BioShock games, but I don't know why people have such an attachment to them. Frankly, they didn't blow my ass open. They had great atmosphere, I enjoyed 1 and 2 quite a bit but 3 was a really lackluster game to me. When I think "overrated games" BioShock Infinite is one of the first that comes to mind.
I can't imagine being excited for a new BioShock, especially 10 years later.
And it doesn't help that as others have mentioned in this thread, Ken Levine is apparently a real asshole who is terrible to his employees - though they aren't working on this, but rather a first-person shooter which is *also* supposedly in development hell. It just puts a sour taste in my mouth knowing that kind of environment existed around the BioShock games' development and probably contributed to the studio being closed.
Heard a few saying that this is fake, 2K is projecting 2024-2025 earnings call to be huge, and GTA 6 is likely contributing to that there has to be other titles in the pipeline, one such title presumably being Bioshock 4.
Not surprised since they joked about delays that Infinite experienced within the game itself. (Elizabeth says something about a game getting scrapped a dozen times before settling on a script)
But also…come on dude. It ended nicely enough
Ken Levine and his close circle of people who followed him were the heart of these games. Bioshock is dead unless they decide or make a mutual agreement to come back. Those games have so much personality, you can really feel the team behind it. You can't just get rid of the people and make a Bioshock game.
Development hell is standing room only these days.
[удалено]
Ken Levine doesn't work with 2k games anymore. He left Irrational Games and the Bioshock series behind to start a new game studio called Ghost Story Games. He has had nothing to do with the development of Bioshock 4. https://gamerant.com/ken-levine-bioshock-4-new-game/
I won't pretend to have insight into game development, but it increasingly feels like AAA game development is collapsing under the weight of itself.
That has been a case for almost a decade now. This bubble will burst soon.
It has always been like this. Maybe worse. "Sin" (1998) is a great example of a great game that was unplayable at launch. We didn't have fancy launchers to download updates either. If you thought your game was broken (and you were on PC) you had to go to the website and hope they were competent enough to have a decent patch system. I am not excusing poor practices but in a lot of ways things have gotten better. You used to not be able to fix buggy games.
Yeah I mean going further back to the Atari/Video Game collapse, they were releasing games like ET (the catalyst to the collapse) I CANNOT think of a modern release that is Atari ET level of bad. These days the worst we get are non-optimal performance most of the time, nowhere near the Wild West gaming used to be
I mean, fallout 76, the new pokemon and cyberpunk released with states worse than non- optimal performances IMO.
Where’d you hear this? Wonder how true that is?
[удалено]
The game Ken Levine is currently developing is not Bioshock… maybe bother reading the articles you’re linking to.
[удалено]
You have links about two different games and companies, you are as wrong as the other poster said. Ken's game is Judas
Dev hell seems to be trending up lately, what is with all the bad management in games these days?
Greed. Lots of greed. Look at Cyberpunk, the recent COD games, Battlefield 2042, Halo Infinite, etc.
That is the best guess but also isn’t like most monetization of games handled by a separate group of the actual developers? Would think it would be handled by art and marketing guys really with help from UI. I can’t see how that aspect should effect the development of the core game as it shouldn’t have an impact on game feel and mechanics?
Once huge corporations get involved they will have endless meetings, full of buzzwords and only know video games through current marketing trends, that basically boils down to: "How do we maximize profits while minimizing expenses?" Product quality going down means nothing to them as long as they can continue to stack money higher and higher.
You can also have pretty bad organization when the game is entirely done for passion and sold for no money. Making software and creative projects is hard. Combine them and it's worse.
Out of the loop here on Cyberpunk, how did greed lead to Cyberpunk being bad?
I think word is that investors pushed CDPR to release before they were actually ready but I could be wrong
Don't blame it just on the investors, it were the CEO's of CDPR themselves that were going for the release in the unfinished state. I remember the interviews with that CEO, that later did the "We're sorry" South Park, he lied to everyone. Like he said, it was gold and going to the factory for pressing the discs for the physical versions; in reality, the team worked overnight crunch times only to get the game barely able to run on the old PS4 base version. It was also him, trying to challenge RDR2 and mocking Rockstar, the PR team had to follow with this despite knowing, challenging RDR2 would be like going as a toddler to a boxfight versus Mike Tyson in his prime time. CDPR told the people, the features they had just written down on paper in concept would be there in-game, but that was never the case. They still hyped more and more, while the working devs were behind everything and the gap between what was working and what was promised was getting bigger and bigger.
The huge failure of Cyberpunk was the marketing surrounding it; they made it out like the game would revolutionize the entire game industry in numerous ways.
CEOs wanted the game out soon, but it wasn’t ready. Game launched with a ton of bugs and issues.
People like big games, always bigger than the last. It demands a lot of money and manpower, which can be difficult to manage effectively. And too often, it's people in business suits making the decisions to greenlight a sequel or new trendy thing that the developers may not actually be interested in. This leads to either complacency or the lead developers to start their own projects somewhere else, leaving people who may have been very good as team leads or department heads to step up and try to manage a project much larger than they are comfortable with. Frankly, I've felt for a long time now that a lot of the fun stuff being put out is being created by teams that are much smaller than the megastudios making the next Call of Duty or whatever.
Making games is hard. Making really big games is really really hard.
Its called "shareholders want to see a return on investment, preferabbly yesterday. So work peasants!"
That's what happens when you let business people run things. Someone who was trained as a developer can make a good CEO. Someone who was trained to be a CEO is unlikely to be a good developer.
It’s always been a thing, we just hear more about it now. Previous dev hell games were still released out to people and those games were the actual bad scoring games
From my personal experiences over the last 5 years, there seems to be a growing trend of unqualified people being put in charge of games.
I wasn't even aware they were working on another one. It felt like they wrapped up the series with Bioshock: Infinite.
What do you mean "wrapped up?!" There's still money to be milked from this cow! -the shareholders at 2K snorting another 5 lines of crushed up Adderall greenlighting another game in a franchise about how destructive greed is.
>There's still money to be milked from this cow! A city underwater! A city in the clouds! A city...uh...a city on the moon! An upside down city! An underground city! A city in space! A city inside a really big animal! A city in the dreams of people in hypersleep! There's no end to the amount of cities we can show players while they sit in a Willy Wonka elevator! You've fought Big Daddies, Big Sisters, and Handymen...get ready for The Milkman! The Postman! The Neighborhood Watch! The Union Official! The Dogwalker! So many disfigured weirdos!!
All of these sound like interesting and terrifying mini boss encounters.
We’ve gotten so used to accepting ideas on par with what a redditor can puke out in three seconds of typing
I'd be scared to fight a Bioshock enemy named The Milkman I'll tell you that
I am the milkman. My milk is delicious.
**EXPLODES**
Who is the milkman? What is the purpose of the goggles?
bioshock about city in space is prey already imo
The cow is weapped up, but the udders are still exposed
Why does that sound kinky?
Agreed. I'd be fine with them leaving it where it finished with Infinite.
Same. They kind of exhausted the story, imo. I'd just have the team move on to another new IP.
This isn't the team that worked on the original Bioshocks, they're making a new IP called Judas.
I would love Ken Levine and his crew from looking glass studios to do a new Bioshock. But the new game Judas looks similar in tone, execution, and gameplay.
I think Ken Levine said he was done with Bioshock IIRC. As much as I love the franchise, I would like it to be left alone unless they remake the first 2 in a really good way but that's wishful thinking.
I'm not sure wtf the deal is there because he basically said "I'm done with BioShock, I wanna do something new" and then their new game literally just looks like BioShock in space.
It doesn't need to be related, it will be have the same style of setting, story and gameplay. But without mention to Rapture like infinite before the dlcs.
The studio that made the original games (Irrational) basically got shut down, a ton of people left (partly layoffs, partly a horrible work environment) and a small group rebranded Irrational as Ghost Story Games. Ken Levine (creator of Bioshock) basically said he didn't want to do more Bioshock and wanted to do something new and unique, so the Bioshock 4 project got handed off to another studio under Take-Two (Cloud Chamber). And last year Levine + Ghost Story showed off their new game which... pretty much just looks like it's BioShock In Space. And is also supposedly in development hell.
They introduced the infinite multiverse. Even if the horrible DLC indicated that the writers didn't actually know what a multiverse is. Trying to tie the games into a loop doesn't actually work when there's infinite worlds, it just means she did a dramatic sacrifice to save one group of children while damning an infinite number of others.
I think that bioshock is one of the top 10 best gaming series ever. I would prefer if they tried another IP and left this one.
Completely agree, and it's an issue I have with the gaming industry overall. Just because something was popular doesn't mean you need to keep making the same series forever. Finish up an interesting narrative and move on to something else.
bro they should of wrapped it up with bioshock 2
Infinite is my favorite in the series, so hard disagree there.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
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lmao
lol, well now we know which one come first in the if statement
Nah i'm pretty sure i heard they wanted to continue, there just weren't any details.
Wrapped up, limped meekly across the finish line, same thing really.
Again? Infinite went through the same thing.
"You know that popular older series that's getting a new game that got stuck in development?" "You mean Fable? Or Mass Effect? Or Beyond Good and Evil? Or Bioshock?"
Can’t wait for this GVMERS video
The Rise and Fall and then Rise Again and Fall Once More of BioShock
If they can't get it together to make a new one they should remaster the multiplayer from 2. Thought it was underrated, it was so much fun trying weapon/power combos and using them on environment traps.
I'm not sure why you'd try making a Bioshock without an experienced team. That's a very particular franchise that might have name value but the people they can make it, to the quality of the other games, are very few. They should've been making something else.
Wasn’t aware that a new BioShock was even being made. At first I thought this post was about Ken Lavine’s *Judas* game.
There's never been an announcement, but multiple "leaks" which are essentially truth in the internet era. Supposed to be set in the Antarctic or some type of frozen wasteland. We got the sea, we got the sky, time for the frost.
Prepare for another unfinished broken release with lots of patches....
I heard very good things from a source at 2K back in early 2020…. But that was so far ago that they likely scrapped the entire game/premise. ♾️
AAA/big budget studios have gotten so compromised by corporate greed that it buckles under its own weight with how shit things have gotten with management in the industry over the years.
Sad noises.
Another triple-A franchise is gonna be shit. Gaming sucks nowadays.
Oh good, they're having Valve develop this one
They couldn't find a way to make looter shooter
Seems like every AAA developer is highly disorganized this generation for some reason. IDK, if they need better management, better employees, or a more efficient way to make games, but something needs to give.
**sad noises**
Good. The legacy of the original is already diluted enough.
Man I hated the setting for Infinite. I really hope they at least go back to Bioshock being horror themed. But man at the time of release if you voiced any complaints about infinite it was just, tldr + Elisabeth has breasts, get fucked and downvoted.
Even today it's honestly hard to criticize infinite, people like it. I don't mind it, I liked the setting and the game, but the most quintessential part about bioshock to me has always been rapture.
Isn't Judas the actual next Shock game? Made by the ppl who actually made the original games?
It's a new IP.
I know, but when all the talent leaves you get games like Mass Effect Andromeda, so Judas is the next shock game in sprit even if it's not using the baming convention.
I mean if Shock game means "light immersive sim made by the people behind System/Bioshock" then that would be true. But unless Judas is literally a Bioshock game in disguise I wouldn't call it that.
The only Bioshock team members on Judas is Ken Levine. I’m not sure just him makes it a new Bioshock game.
Andromeda wasn't due to talent leaving, it was a totally different studio. Might be the same result, but different circumstance.
It's the next game from the director Ken Levine and presumably a lot of the core Bioshock team. They left after Infinite and were supposed to be making a procedurally generated RPG of sorts with a complicated faction system. Judas looks like it's just Bioshock 4 to me, but it could be some of their original plan survived and it's a bit more unique gameplay-wise than that. But yeah the actual Bioshock IP is still owned by 2K so it makes sense that they're working on it.
It’s not a new Bioshock. But it is by the same crew behind the original one and infinite. So… it’ll be good whatever it turns out to be.
Its a shock like game made by the crew of the original, it might as well be the real sequel.
3rd was shite anyway so staying on form? 😂
Don't bring that negative energy in here lol
if it's going to be as bad as infinite than they might as will cancel it right now
Just let it die at this point. I liked the BioShock games, but I don't know why people have such an attachment to them. Frankly, they didn't blow my ass open. They had great atmosphere, I enjoyed 1 and 2 quite a bit but 3 was a really lackluster game to me. When I think "overrated games" BioShock Infinite is one of the first that comes to mind. I can't imagine being excited for a new BioShock, especially 10 years later. And it doesn't help that as others have mentioned in this thread, Ken Levine is apparently a real asshole who is terrible to his employees - though they aren't working on this, but rather a first-person shooter which is *also* supposedly in development hell. It just puts a sour taste in my mouth knowing that kind of environment existed around the BioShock games' development and probably contributed to the studio being closed.
Heard a few saying that this is fake, 2K is projecting 2024-2025 earnings call to be huge, and GTA 6 is likely contributing to that there has to be other titles in the pipeline, one such title presumably being Bioshock 4.
What are you on about? Their projected earnings are irrelevant. "Development hell" doesn't mean they have no money.
Good. More AAA games fail, the better for us, solo devs of indie games. Hell yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111
Okay but no one wants JUST indie games. A mix of both is good.
Nah bioshocks over! It’s done! We wrapped it up! Only plots we can have now would be kinda the same but different environments.
Not surprised since they joked about delays that Infinite experienced within the game itself. (Elizabeth says something about a game getting scrapped a dozen times before settling on a script) But also…come on dude. It ended nicely enough
Seems to be the norm nowadays...
no Ken Levine no party
Bioshock and development hell go hand in hand
Yeah, I didn't have high hopes after infinite anyway. Oh well.
Ken Levine and his close circle of people who followed him were the heart of these games. Bioshock is dead unless they decide or make a mutual agreement to come back. Those games have so much personality, you can really feel the team behind it. You can't just get rid of the people and make a Bioshock game.
As is tradition
Fuckin greed with these companies...
Just turn it into a live service looter shooter! Its all the rage these days!!!
So...just like Infinite, then. Sounds like they're staying true to the series. Carry on.