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New details have emerged regarding BioShock creator Ken Levine’s new game that he is making for Take-Two, and the project seems to be facing some issues. 15 current and former developers at Levine’s Ghost Story Games studio told Bloomberg that the project has undergone reboots and changes to its direction since work began in 2014.
The developers speaking to the site said Levine “struggles to communicate his vision and alienates or browbeats subordinates who challenge him or fail to meet his expectations.”
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Now Playing: Narrative Legos with Ken Levine – GDC 2014
Developers joked about taking part in a “Kenception,” which would be entering Levine’s dreams and giving him ideas that he believes he devised himself, like Leonardo DiCaprio does in the Christopher Nolan movie Inception.
The report says Levine is given a good amount of autonomy given the success of his past games, but some workers said the level of freedom that Levine has is not actually good for the project.
Developer Mike Snight told Bloomberg that “Ken is a very hard person to work for.” Snight added: “I think he tried a lot to change, and he really excels better at this company than Irrational because it is a smaller group of people.”
Snight, and half of the original team that made up Ghost Story, have left the company, the report said. Whatever the new game is, one employee said it is making better progress but still might not release until 2024.
As for Ghost Story’s new game, the report said the first idea the company came up with was a sci-fi shooter akin to BioShock set on a space station. It was projected to release in fall 2017, the report said, but this never happened.
Levine is said to have worked out a special deal whereby he reports directly to Take-Two management instead of 2K Games, the publisher of the BioShock series. Levine is reported to have told staff that Ghost Story’s budget is nothing more than a “rounding error” for Take-Two, which may explain why the company has been given so much time without releasing a product.
Neither Levine nor Take-Two have commented on the story–GameSpot has followed up with both in an attempt to get more details. Go to Bloomberg to read the full story.
As for the BioShock series, 2K’s new studio, Cloud Chamber, is developing the next entry in the series–and it might be an open-world title. The BioShock series has been dormant for some years now, with the latest mainline release, BioShock Infinite, coming in 2013.
Before this, job listings at Cloud Chamber suggested that the new BioShock would feature a “new and fantastical world,” suggesting it won’t return to Rapture or Columbia.
