Ken Levine needs a life. As the co-founder of Irrational Games discusses his role as an artist in what may be his final interview at the studio, even he admits the strain. “It’s been a challenge, you know, and ideally at some point I’ll have some kind of life because I haven’t really had much of one.”
Yesterday, the BioShock designer announced that the studio he co-founded in 1997 will be winding down with all but 15 members of staff laid off. Levine is making a move toward a “smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavour” within Take-Two, according to a statement on his studio’s website. It will be the first time the industry veteran has started afresh since departing from his first ever job in the business at the now-defunct Looking Glass Studios.
I’ve been running Irrational for 17 years and I’ve barely had a break, at all. It wears on you after a while."
Levine has often been lionised as a superman - wise, smart and impervious to the pressure of development, but this isn’t necessarily representative of the man himself. With his distinctly intense approach to game design, it could be argued that Levine strives to be an auteur, but is this even possible in games development, a place where your personal vision is diluted and micromanaged by teams of hundreds of individuals? Levine’s sudden announcement to shut the studio’s doors to concentrate on a much smaller team suggests otherwise.
“
“I’ve been running Irrational for 17 years and I’ve barely had a break, at all. It wears on you after a while. I’m 47 and the pressure of having 100 or 150 people that you have to keep their plates full of material is a challenging one. I don’t mean that I’m the only one providing material, but at the end of the day, if I don’t show up for a month that causes real problems. So I show up. All the time.“
During the late ’70s, a younger Levine probably wouldn’t have predicted he’d be a world famous developer creating some of our most loved games ever made. Neither, I doubt, would he have predicted that he’d sound tired of it. Having spent his school days holed up in a friend’s basement playing Dungeons & Dragons, lusting over Marvel’s Scarlet Witch as a late-blooming teenager and poring over Logan’s Run - a source he describes as “central to the development of my aesthetic” - Levine’s life has always been firmly fixed within geek culture, but not always in games.
“I loved the way comics let me dip my toe into the adult world from a safe distance,” he explained during his PAX 2008 keynote. “I secretly felt a step ahead of the other kids, more sophisticated.” If the themes presented in his games are anything to go on, this self-affirmed sophistication could be true of his status as a games developer too, but Levine’s career had modest beginnings writing screenplays for romantic comedies. Now, decades later and with BioShock tucked snugly under his belt, he’s penning the script of a Logan’s Run remake - perhaps the most poetic full circle you could ask for.
Designing any game is incredibly difficult, and studios often meet creative, mechanical and financial impasses that threaten to halt a project entirely. BioShock is no different even despite its critical and financial success, and Irrational is further bound by the strict rules of the themes it presents. Objectivism, causality, free will and quantum mechanics require a detailed understanding to incorporate them into a plotline that works, and which doesn’t alienate an audience.
“The studio dynamic during [the original] BioShock felt very much like a small indie studio", says Shawn Robertson, Irrational's animation director who has worked with Levine for many years. "We had up until this point been a small indie studio and still very much had this mindset - if you had a problem you were trying to solve, you knew who it was that you needed work with to get things done. We didn’t have a lot of planned meetings, you would just grab the people you needed, sit down and figure things out. When the studio grew during BioShock Infinite, communication certainly became an issue. Processes needed to be formalised because you had more people involved. As a result, iteration time slowed down.”
Within an environment this chaotic, extreme discipline is paramount. As Levine puts it, to create worlds that feel at one with their philosophical foundations, “You need to leave yourself open, but you need structure.” This pragmatic approach to complex themes is hard to deliver effectively.
“When you are dealing with narrative issues, sometimes you get an update to the script that you can’t support", continues Robertson. "It’s easy enough to write ‘Elizabeth jumps on the head of an octopus’ but if we don’t have the assets or bandwidth to support that, then it’s time to sit down and talk through it. One reason I sit in proximity to lead writer Drew Holmes and Ken is so that issues like these don’t tend to get out of hand. Without communication, someone is going to want that octopus.”Irrational’s two cities could have been its impossible octopuses had the studio not been so driven by Levine’s passion."
Irrational’s two cities could have been its impossible octopusses had the studio not been so driven by Levine’s passion; it’s these iconic worlds that Irrational leaves as its most impressive legacy. Rapture was an inspired chunk of world creation built on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, rooted in Art Deco architecture and lathered in ancient Greek mythology.
“
Indeed, Rand is extremely important to the BioShock franchise, and Levine carefully analyses her every word with pure admiration for her certitude. “It’s not just her rhythms but her choice of words and the way she structures her sentences, she sounds like Doctor Doom. It’s the unswerving confidence in her own beliefs, that a guy like Doom or Magneto would have, and it was so great to find that in a real human person, and to work from that to create a character that was both a bit over the top and believable.”
While few people nowadays can afford the unwavering conviction that Rand possessed, Levine’s deep interest in her speaks to a fetishisation of her character. If anything hints at Levine’s auteur nature, it’s Levine’s adoration for Rand. His decision to shut an entire studio and lay off hundreds of staff members to pursue his personal aims as an artist is further proof of that confidence in oneself.
“Without getting into the whole ‘games are art’ argument, I think that any time you have a strong creative individual with an interesting viewpoint making games, how can that not be healthy for our industry?” says Robertson. “That statement is true, even if you don’t like the style or subject matter of a particular game.”
The characters in Rand's novels were also essential to the conception of Andrew Ryan. As an amalgamation of both Rand and John Galt, the protagonist of one of her most iconic works, Atlas Shrugged, Ryan perfectly epitomises that perfect balance between extravagance and believability. “He was a Jewish Russian immigrant whose family was destroyed by the Bolsheviks in the way Rand’s was,” says Levine, “but he became a wealthy industrialist, because I thought it would be really interesting to make him a combination of both people.”
With Ayn Rand having become a huge influence for parts of right-wing American politics in the last few years, the original BioShock is even lauded for bringing objectivism to the modern stage - something very few games can stick on their résumé. “I think the ideology of Rapture is uniquely interesting,” says Levine, “It’s such a big part of the political scene in America, especially in the years since BioShock came out, that it feels very, very current.”
It’s only when people then take a belief system that doesn’t respond to empiricism and try to put it on people who don’t necessarily share their beliefs. We deal with that a lot in Rapture and Columbia.”
Levine’s confidence in handling these themes makes the series especially compelling, and BioShock Infinite further broadened Irrational’s vision. A hyper-real carousel of early 20th century injustices and inequalities packed into a utopia in the clouds, the game is an expressionist painting of American exceptionalism and ugly nationalism. One of the game’s early scenes depicts the public humiliation of an interracial couple at a lottery, in which you as a player take a direct part. “The scene was specifically created to show that Columbia, what you thought was an idyllic city, actually has these horrible undertones.” says Robertson “Whether or not we succeeded in the balance of these themes correctly is really in the eye of the beholder.”
“
Levine himself assures that his commentaries on social issues aren't reflective of his personal opinion, though, and that the art of building worlds is primarily a creative one. “I’m an atheist, so if you want to go to church on Sundays then that’s great, go for it. It’s only when people then take a belief system that doesn’t respond to empiricism and try to put it on people who don’t necessarily share their beliefs. We deal with that a lot in Rapture and Columbia.”
He goes on to express reserved frustration at the criticisms of BioShock Infinite. “People think we were trying to make more a point about racism than we were. Until fairly recently it was that society was just openly, and broadly, and depressingly, bitterly exclusionary and racist.”
“Go read speeches that famous people made [around that time]. Go look at major newspapers openly using the N-word with incredibly racist caricatures of African Americans and Chinese Americans. Go look at all these things that were just part of society. It wasn’t like we were trying to heighten anything there - that was just the world. Presenting 1912 in a world separate from class and racial tension would be kind of impossible. In 100 years from now, we’re going to look back on stuff that we’re doing now and somebody’s going to say ‘wow, they were real barbarians back then.’ People are people of their times. To deny that - to make a game in that time period and not reflect that - was just weird to me.”
Irrational has always been extremely reticent about Infinite’s journey from A to B. With communication difficulties, the game’s prolonged development was plagued by very public setbacks, staff departures and features being entirely removed. Despite critical acclaim, many critics and fans backlashed post-release, accusing the game of being unfinished and disjointed. Levine discusses his own working philosophies honestly, describing the “sausage making” of art and media. How, upon further investigation, the creative processes are far, far more difficult than you first anticipate.
“In the beginning, [Elizabeth] didn’t really understand her tear powers at all.” explains Levine. “Booker and Elizabeth sort of discovered it together as they went along. The problem was, this pushed back the introduction of the whole notion of the tears in reality so late, that nothing was really happening and Elizabeth just wasn’t very interesting.”
“We were struggling to find [her] place in the game.” continues Robertson. “We weren’t quite sure exactly how to use her in our levels properly. We started experimenting with different systems that Elizabeth could support in order to get her back into the game, so to speak.”
Time is always a constant pressure. The clock is always the hardest thing for me now as a games developer.”
Levine’s ruthlessness in discarding huge amounts of content - a method of working that led to huge creative differences and the volatile departure of Art Director Nate Wells - creates the deceptive illusion that he may be taking stabs in the dark. “The only reason I’ve ever been scared to discard something is, do I have time to replace it? Time is always a constant pressure. The clock is always the hardest thing for me now as a games developer.”
“
With the clock ticking, the episodic Burial at Sea content goes against many of Levine’s working processes. “It’s a very different trick!” exclaims Levine, “and I try not to just maintain or do something as good. I try to do something that has its own merits and takes it own risks each time.” Stepping into Elizabeth’s shoes, Irrational is going for a very different approach, but revisiting Rapture doesn’t feel like an augmentation of the franchise in the same way that an entirely new world would add to the series’ stature.
“One of the main difficulties that we faced was taking an engine that was built for large combats and creating a stealth game out of it without a ton of development time.” explains Robertson. “We wanted Elizabeth to feel different, so we tweaked the weapon and global interaction animations. Booker had served in the military, so there was an expectation that he was an expert and knew how to handle weapons, whereas Elizabeth didn’t have that institutional knowledge.”
“Elizabeth is also not angry at the elevator button and pushes it like a proper person rather than punching it,” Robertson quips.
Levine describes the new story as “much more oriented towards the fans” but it feels like his opportunity have some genuine fun with the characters and worlds that have consumed much of his adult life. After the immensity of developing Infinite, Rapture feels like safe haven. He talks frankly about his usual forward-thinking approach to games and the desire to tinker and play with creations, tampering with ideas and never giving a game the final push into the open - no doubt something that lengthened Infinite’s time in development. “You only have so many years on this planet, so to spend a ton of time going back and trying to polish a particular apple... I don’t think that’s necessarily healthy.
“I always reserve the right to change my f***ing mind,” he adds, “but at the end of the day it doesn’t seem like something that would be the best use of limited time that I have on the planet.”
You only have so many years on this planet, so to spend a ton of time going back and trying to polish a particular apple...I don’t think that’s necessarily healthy.”
Levine’s departure feels like the natural progression for him as an artist; in Rapture, where it all began. Rand’s own words echo with Levine’s decision; “Objectivism is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” It makes poetic sense that Rapture be BioShock’s final resting place.
“
For now, the future is uncertain. Levine’s new pastures are sure to reveal some interesting new ideas. “Spending years working on an experience that some players plow through in 12 hours is heart breaking,” says Robertson. “Especially when once you know the story, there isn’t a lot of incentive to replay through the game. Because of this, we have been talking about the idea of re-playable narrative for a while, a conversation that Ken is a huge part of.”
And of Booker and Elizabeth, two characters that have driven the series forward and progressed BioShock’s humanity, Levine finishes by describing them as “people who show their strength by the way they’re tested.” In that sense, he isn’t too dissimilar himself.
Ken Levine needs a life - perhaps the closure of Irrational Games marks the perfect start.
Sam White is a freelancer for IGN, The Guardian and more. Follow him on Twitter.
