According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Ken Levine’s, creator of the 2007 game BioShock, next game has been in development hell. 15 current and former employees of Ghost Story Games, Levine’s game studio, have disclosed the information. The project went into production in 2014 and has reportedly gone through a number of reboots and changes along the way. The game is being developed for game publisher Take-Two and eight years on still does not have a name or release date.
Many of the developers involved, unfortunately, name Levine as the reason for the game’s development issues. They have said, “Levine is a flawed manager who often struggles to communicate his vision and alienates or browbeats subordinates who challenge him or fail to meet his expectations.” Most of the current and former employees who have spoken out have “requested anonymity because they feared repercussions.”
Several employees involved in Levine’s next game started a running gag around the office referencing the film Inception. The developers have described taking part in something they call “Kenception” in order to cope with Levine’s difficult working style. They say persuading Levine on an idea can be so arduous, the process is almost like needing to infiltrate a person’s dream to plant the idea so they believe they’ve come up with it themself.
Half of the original team at Ghost Story Games has now left the company according to Bloomberg. Game developer Mike Snight is one of those people who is now working elsewhere and has said, “Ken is a very hard person to work for. 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.” Employees at Ghost Story have said Levine has been given a large amount of autonomy on this new game which hasn’t necessarily been a good thing. One developer said although progress on the new game has recently improved, its release date still might not be until 2024 when it was originally planned to release in the fall of 2017.
It looks like fans of BioShock still have a while to wait for Ken Levine’s next game.