Irrational games shutting down

With the news of Irrational Games Studio shutting down, and potentially going out of business, are we seeing the end of Bioshock and these kinds of games?
This is bad and ominous news for gamers like myself who LOVED the Bioshock series.

 

Take 2 Interactive still owns the BioShock franchise, they can always have another studio develop a BioShock game, should they want. There was quite a bit a friction between Irrational Games (Ken Levine) and Take 2 Interactive with the development of BioShock Infinite.

Its odd how this played out, and sure the next few days will see what all transpired that caused this collapse. Ken Levine and 15 key members from the IG are starting up a new small development team under T2I to focus on a new project. Guess he wants to go back to the glory days of game development.

 

Sweet. Didn't care for Bioshock 1 or 3. Overrated and blatantly racist and prejudiced games no more from Irrational? Using over the top shock to garner underserved acclaim? Good riddance. One less UE3 studio gone. A million more to go.

Sounds like he didn't learn his lesson the first time. What a moron. With Steamworks and other ways to self-publish, should have gone independent or just sign a publishing contract but remain autonomous and full control over IP and work like Respawn and EA.

 

I don't really see how Bioshock or Bioshock Infinite could be racist/prejudiced on their own. I think they use racism and prejudice to paint a picture of a dystopian society. Nor did I find anything to be shocking for shock's sake, as was the case with No Russian and moreso the London terror attack in MW3.

 

I imagine if the situation was table flip worthy, that team would have moved on to a different publisher or self publishing setup. Sounds like they A.) No longer want the multi-million dollar price tag to create a game (investors pushing launch windows, etc.), B.) Don't want the development team so large it's difficult to manage, and C.) T2I offered them what they wanted to stay, unlike the situation with EA/Activision and Infinity Ward/Respawn Entertainment.

 

Eh whatever. Take 2 isn't likely to be PC friendly for much longer. Since they like to skew their numbers to have consoles being 98% of their profit for 2013 since they include the GTA V sales.

It's too bad PC gamers are not buying as many games since it's really having an impact on quality of PC games from these AAA publishers.

But then maybe it's just that PC gamers have had enough and turned to playing Indie games.

 

Although I have to somewhat agree with Zymphad and consider the Bioshock franchise as overrated and superficial and didn't like any of their games, it's always sad to see another gaming company crumbles, especially as well known and successful (?) as this one.

Man, the economy these days is the worst. Like shark-infested waters, really.

 

It's not the economy, it's mismanagement and greed. If a game doesn't provide execs $10 million bonuses, then it failed. Look at Kingdom of Amalur, it sold 1.6 million copies and it failed. How is nearly 80 million dollars a failure? that's ridiculous.

That's why I think it's incredible studios still choose to sign up with AAA publishers and moron investors and execs who don't even play games and have nothing invested in the games other than their greed.

When you read that a game cost over a 100 million to develop, doesn't that just amaze you when the game sucks? How can that be? Look at BF4... game blows, and still can't get networking right, yet it cost DICE so much to develop. Where is the money going?

Gamers are buying games, no question about that. People rather sacrifice spending their money on expensive night outs, alcohol and sporting events etc and buy a game that will give them hours of fun. So don't blame the economy. In tough economies, people buy games still. Blame mismanagement and waste.

 

You do have a point, of course, but I consider these factors as 'the economy' as well.

Look at movies, they made the transition to big bloated blockbusters and survived (OK, they now begin to decline, but they had a good run still), I can't see why games can't follow suit. Maybe gaming is not as widespread as movies as we would like to believe.

 

How ironic..
The irrational has become rational.
TBH, i didn't like the game at all. Was more linear than thought inducing as you went through each level. I finished it amongst many others and didn't rate it highly at all.

 

Does something being over rated make it bad? This is why I try to avoid reviews, advertising, social media, and instead try to have only a minimal idea of the game. That way I am not disappointed by my own expectations. I do the same for movies.

 

I enjoyed BioShock 1 and BioShock Infinite, but mainly because I loved System Shock 2 (doesn't hold up to today unless you mod it, but back in 1999/2000 it was the most amazing game i had ever played). Maybe it's something you had to grow up on in order to really enjoy?

 

The original SS was a masterpiece that was before it's time, SS2 is a classic. Both legendary games.

 

It's not just reviews, this series was reveled in nearly every gaming forum.

I agree that it's not necessarily bad per se, the problem of this series IMO is that it uses narrative that works better in movies and books, while the gameplay itself is extremely shallow and linear, even though it is somehow considered deep. I really liked the idea of electrocuting water puddles to kill enemies in them, for example, yet it was only allowed in very specific and scripted events, and it went on like that as long as I played these games. I just feel like the whole series suffers from the same pretentiousness as the Fable series (or the whole Peter Molyneux routine, actually), which only offers an illusion of gameplay, but is in fact very narrow minded and repetitive, overall.

Dishonored, even though I didn't like it that much as well for some reason, did a much better job when it comes to telling a story through actual gameplay. Hell, even the Assassin's Creed series did. I believe that companies that understand how the gaming medium works are Bethesda, Rockstar (and their competitors) and the like, which offer mainly gameplay above everything else, or even the Borderlands series, believe it or not.