BioShock Creator Ken Levine's Next Game is Reportedly in Development Hell - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 January 2022 / 1,748 Views
BioShock developer Irrational Games was shutdown in 2014 and afterwards series creator Ken Levine opened up a smaller studio under Take-Two called Ghost Story Games.
After seven years, the developer is still working on its first title, which is reportedly in development hell, according to current and former Ghost Story Games employees who spoke with Bloomberg under anonymity due to the fear of repercussions.
The developer was originally going to start small and release the first game by fall 2017 that was reportedly going to be a sci-fi game similar to BioShock. It was going to be set on a mysterious space station inhabited by three factions. Each could act as an ally, an enemy or something in between, depending on what the player did." It had a premise that levine called "narrative Lego."
Levine wanted to create a game that was as ambitious as BioShock despite having a studio with far fewer staff, according to a half dozen former employees.
Two staff said that around in 2016 Levine wanted elaborate levels with rich 3D graphics. They had wondered how they would ever finish the game with fewer than 30 people. Other staff said the game would have a dialogue system that would change based on player choices, which would require a lot of writing that would have taken years to complete.
"The ideas and ambitions were great," said Giovanni Pasteris, an early employee in an email. "But the scope just grew and grew without concern for the team’s ability to get it done by our fall 2017 deadline. Ken wanted to make a triple-A game with a ‘budget’ team size. It was never going to happen."
Interestingly, a job listing from 2020 said the game was in the "later stages of production" and that it was a "new immersive project based sci-fi game with RPG elements."
The debut title from Ghost Story Games has already been in development longer than BioShock and BioShock Infinite, which took five years. It has even taken longer than the seven years it took Rockstar to develop Red Dead Redemption 2.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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