Ken Levine never expected Take-Two to shutter Irrational after Bioshock Infinite: 'The decision was made at a corporate level'
The latest issue of Edge magazine includes a retrospective interview with Ken Levine, going over his career from Looking Glass Studios to Ghost Story Games and the upcoming Judas. When it gets to the latter, Levine's first game since the release of Bioshock Infinite, the director opens up about the subsequent closure of Irrational Games, which it's fair to say came as something of a shock: Both to the studio's staff, and the wider industry.
Bioshock Infinite was released in March 2013 and, while its reputation is now decidedly mixed, it was greeted with almost uniform critical praise and high sales. Less than a year later, on February 8 2014, Levine announced that Irrational Games would close and almost all staff would be made redundant. The way Levine tells it now, it seems it was almost as much of a surprise to him.
«The closure of Irrational was complicated,» says Levine. «I felt out of my depth in the role. You're this creative person and, all of a sudden, as your vision increases of what you want to do, you have to become a manager, in a way that you don't necessarily have any training or skill in. My mental health was a mess during Infinite. I was stressed out, a lot of personal things were going on in my life at the time, and then my parents both died. I just couldn't do it any more, and I didn't think I had the team's confidence.»
The closing stages of Infinite's development are infamous within the industry, with Rod Fergusson brought in from Epic Games in order to take a hacksaw to the studio's ambitious plans and get the game shipped. The development of Infinite seems to have taken a lot out of Levine, and made him want to get away from projects on that scale.
«So my intention was to go [to Take-Two] and say, 'Look, I just need to go start a new thing, and Irrational should continue,'» says Levine. «That's why I didn't maintain the name Irrational. I thought they were going to continue. But it wasn't my company–I sold the company, so I worked for Take-Two,
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