Wombat
Trakanon Raider
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I am Jack's complete lack of surprise:
Gamasutra - Irrational Games, journalism, and airing dirty laundry
Gamasutra - Irrational Games, journalism, and airing dirty laundry
Irrational Games being shut down
- Thread starter Gavinmad
- Start date
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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No, it means a new bioshock game every 2 years, each blander than the last!So does this mean no more Bioshock?
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You never know. A new team could actually do something interesting. The old team was clearly unable to come up with any good ideas for Infinite besides Elizabeth herself. They spent 5 years making a pretty fucking shallow game, which was only saved by good writing (especially dialogue writing, which is hard) and memorable voice acting. The gameplay itself is almost unbearably bad, specifically the layout of the areas being just an awful pixel hunt for coins, picks and basically useless gear.
Bioshock Infinite is basically good in spite of itself, the good parts shining so brightly that they overshadow all the terribly bland parts.
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Part 2 is coming out next month, and that's the last DLC. Ken Levine said he considers it the ending to both the Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite storylines together, which means prepare to be upset if you ask me.
Maybe it will end with a machine where Elizabeth can destroy all universe, save all universes, or combine all universes, and they can be conveniently color coded red, blue, and green.
Cantatus
Lord Nagafen Raider
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I'm not exactly thrilled that Take Two plans to continue to milk (and undoubtedly run into the ground) one of my favorite series, but I think one of the good things about Bioshock is it's a unique franchise in the amount of freedom it will allow future teams. Between the first and Infinite, it's been established that they can put the game in any setting with only tenuous connections to the previous games and still market it as a Bioshock game. Hopefully this will allow them to continue to churn out unique games rather than just doing something like Bioshock 2 again. I'm not really holding my breath though.
I don't care for Ken Levine personally or professionally, however I will give him credit as someone with "artistic vision" or whatever you want to call it and a strong tendency to stick to his guns, of better or worse, so none of this surprises me at all.
Best of luck to the others being laid off though. Hope y'all land on your feet!
Best of luck to the others being laid off though. Hope y'all land on your feet!
Quineloe
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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they're going the EA path, Bioshock mobile, with cash shop.So does this mean no more Bioshock?
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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you know. There IS something to be said about the underpinings of both bioshocks, and Irrational itself.
Cult of personality in charge. Slave labor eating a shit sandwhich, when that guy on top goes powermad.
Does Ken live in a lighthouse?
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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Probably? I've worked for a couple of "creative visionaries" in my time and it was never a good experience. What you tend to learn is that the public perception is false and the success came from people whose names you don't know that were too busy working hard and putting out fires to be the public face of something.
Star Wars is an excellent example of this.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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Small reminder. This vid just touches on the superficial. But if you really go back and look at art, and all the videos over the time. Seriously its like 2-3 different games entirely. Only people at the studio might be able to tell us what happened. Was it just not fun? were they unable to actually get things to work as seen int he videos? were xbox/ps3 tech restraints too much causing the game to be gutted for consoles? Doe someone at Irrational just have no idea what makes good gameplay? This game clearly had a shit ton of bloat. work was done over and over.
They had to higher a guy to come and and get the game ready to ship, because the studio would not allow them to blow more millions on more revisions.
Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Working with him wouldn't be my first choice, but I wouldn't turn it down. While that article was a good read, some of it was just bullshit. Like people complaining about crunch time? Motherfucker, EVERYBODY CRUNCHES. If I was taking another industry job and someone told me I would have minimal crunch time on the project, I'd laugh in his face.
Evernothing
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Vlett
Lord Nagafen Raider
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Yea, I read that article knowing this is a guy with friends loosing their job. He even admits that some of it is guilt driven since he hated the game too. There were a few good points though.
As far as crunch time? The only example I have even close to this field is a web team of about 25 people, and we had someone in the office who's sole job was to poke the team lead a few times a day saying "Focus, focus, focus" simply because that was his personality type and we knew it. He didn't have an ego about it because I hired his wife for the job. They had a huge bonus incentive (Not in the contract) that everyone (Even admin) would receive if goals were timely. This company's web team is basically just a support role that overlaps customer service so I make this comparison very loosely.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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Long-term and/or frequent crunching is a net productivity loss after only 4-6 weeks. This is pretty well documented and has been for a while now. I did that once and I learned first hand how ineffective it is. At this point I would never participate in mandatory crunch. Sometimes I work late or extra but only because I am so excited or engaged I can't help myself. Other times I get a little burned out from working even normal hours and I might just take a day off if I feel like it. With this setup I am ridiculously productive.