Three years ago, Take-Two Interactive finally removed the wraps on Ken Levine’s long gestating project after BioShock. Judas, developed by Ghost Story Games, certainly looks a lot like Levine’s signature franchise, but with an intriguing new storyline and the promise of an evolved vision.
Today, Ghost Story Games marks a dubious anniversary that we cannot fully comprehend without reviewing Levine’s history with BioShock.
Jason Schreier revealed this anniversary on BlueSky, saying:
Tomorrow marks the 11-year anniversary of the closure of BioShock developer Irrational Games and the subsequent founding of Ken Levine’s Ghost Story Games, which has not yet released a game. Almost all of Ghost Story’s original 15 employees have since quit.
One of the most tragic parts of this story is that it’s left throngs of artists and designers with massive gaps in their portfolios — work both old and new, sometimes years in the making, that can’t be shown to prospective employers, even if it was probably discarded by now.”
As sad as this revelation may seem on the surface, there’s an even bigger story behind it. For those who don’t remember, Irrational Games was founded in 2017 by the developers of BioShock. At the time, Ken Levine decided he wanted to work with a smaller studio, and so he arranged for 75 of Irrational Games’ employees to be laid off. The 15 remaining developers were the founders of Ghost Story Games alongside Levine, to help him make this proverbial smaller game.
Levine had spoken about the psychological and career pressures that he faced making the BioShock games that led him to make this decision. However, as much as we want to be sympathetic about Levine’s mental health, we can’t ignore how his position as one of Take-Two’s proverbial superstar auteur game developer gave him power over other developers’ careers.
Schreier revealed in his book Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry that Levine was difficult to work with. In particular, BioShock Infinite faced numerous delays as Levine would clash with his own staff on how to execute on his vision. Take-Two would bring in Rod Fergusson and Don Roy, and they were successful as intermediaries to get across what Levine wanted. For those who were curious, it took six years to finish BioShock Infinite.
It took five years from Ghost Story Games being founded before they announced Judas. Subsequently, it has already been over a decade since BioShock Infinite. If what Schreier claims is true, one could conclude that Levine’s problematic game development style and process hasn’t changed.
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick stated in 2023 that Judas was slated for release by the end of March 2025. That is the end of next month, and also the end of the current fiscal year. Levine was interviewed as recently as last December, but we still haven’t gotten a tangible update if Judas is still on track for March, or 2025 for that matter. From what we’ve just heard from Schreier, we may be waiting even longer than that.
