Ken Levine Might Not Start Irrational if He Had to Do It All Again

Making games is hard. Making games and running the entire business supporting the development is almost impossible.

Ken Levine, the main man at BioShock studio Irrational Games, has somehow been able to do it all. He’s created a successful company, produced some of the most loved games of all time, and will be the inaugural recipient of the Golden Joysticks Lifetime Achievement award this Friday. There’s plenty to be proud of if you’re Levine, but if he knew all the struggles that went into the process back when he first started Irrational, he might have been too scared to even try.

"Had I known back then how much work is required, how many challenges I would face in the future, I think it would have been pretty hard for me to swallow," he told CVG in a recent interview.

"If I gave the younger me an idea of the amount of work, and the amount of heartache, and the amount struggle it takes to do this, I think I'd have scared him off. I mean, I had never run a company before Irrational, and it has been really difficult."

Thankfully, Irrational did come to exist, as well as hits like BioShock and BioShock Infinite. The road was easy for Levine, but the years of hard work, risks, and challenges have led him to one of the most successful careers in the industry.