Eight years have passed since the development of BioShock’s creator Ken Levine’s new game began but, unfortunately, it appears like fans will not be seeing any results any time soon. This years-long delay for a game that had its original expected release date for Autumn 2017 is, according to several Ghost Story Games employees, to be blamed on the studio’s creative director and co-founder, Levine.
The news, based upon the employees’ testimonies, most of whom requested to remain anonymous for fear of backlash, was explored in detail by Bloomberg. The employees of the small studio, previously branded as Irrational Games, depict Levine as a poor leader who fails to appropriately convey his ideas. Not only that but it seems that Levine was so complicated to communicate with that his coworkers even started referring to the process as "Kenception", a joke that originates from Christopher Nolan’s 2010 notoriously complex film.
The videogame company Take-Two interactive previously gave Levine full creative reign over the project thanks to his success in the past with games like BioShock and its 2013 successor BioShock Infinite. Their previously highly productive partnership went back more than a decade so it was no surprise when Levine was given full autonomy for his new project. Apparently, Levine took this opportunity to decide he wanted a game as ambitious as BioShock and he even briefly described the premise as being something like “narrative LEGO”, a game in which each player has a completely unique experience. However, some of those who worked personally with the game developer made it clear that his ambitions are not compatible with his “lack of oversight”. Mind you that one of Levine’s games that took the longest to complete was BioShock and even the steampunk first-person action-adventure videogame took only 5 years to be finished.
In spite of 8 years having gone by, 4 more than was originally planned for the game’s release, Take-Two still has not been vocal about the issue or even denounced that there is an issue to begin with. Arguably, the worst part about this is not the project’s stalled deadline but the fact that Levine’s leadership style has “caused a lot of pain” for those who have worked under him and that, even after all the hurt and burnout, they still have nothing to show for after all this time. Mike Snight, a former producer for Irrational Games who worked with the creative director in 2014 and eventually quit along with many others, described Levine as “a very hard person to work for”. An unnamed Ghost Story employee has also told Bloomberg that they believe the project is finally going in the right direction but it could still be two years before the untitled videogame sees the light of day.
Both Levine and Take-Two have yet to come forward with a comment on the situation.