Bloomberg reports that Ghost Story Games, the studio of famed game producer Ken Levine, is not a happy place to be. Half of the company's founders and many employees have left, and there is still no sign of a new work being published eight years later. The game allegedly went into "development hell" and rebooted and changed direction several times.
Ken Levine's most famous title is probably 2007's Bioshock, a first-person action shooter that is undoubtedly a landmark in the industry.
Prior to that, he was a key figure in the development of great titles in the history of games, such as Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2, and Freedom Force.
In 2014, Ken Levine announced that his studio, Irrational, would close and create a new studio, Ghost Story Games. It will then focus on its capitalist Take-Two's narrative-led game project, but until 2022, the project remains unpublished. Bloomberg reported that this could be the result of Ken Levine's leadership style and lack of management skills.
Game journalist Jason Schreier reports: "Ken Levine's management style leads to burnout. And the former employee said that it caused a lot of pain. ”
In the 2014 announcement, despite the immense success of Irrational Studios' BioShock: Infinity, Ken Levine's insistence on layoffs surprised most Irrational employees. It was only because Ken Levine wanted to work in a smaller studio, because it was much less stressful and more conducive to flattening communication, that he fired a large number of people to achieve this goal.
At the time, Ken Levine's creative proposal for "narrative Lego" received a lot of attention, a model in which the game offered a story that was completely unique to each player, or would be completely different every time they played.
The Ghost Story studio, owned by Take-Two, was well funded and gave Ken Levine creative freedom, a dream that few in the game industry has been able to achieve. But the studio has only 12 employees, and none of the works have been released so far, which seems to be not working.
According to Bloomberg, one Ghost Story founder, Mike Snight, quit the studio on the grounds that Ken Levine was "creating the process." Sneith said: "When it's constantly looping and you're no longer consistent, you're a little tired of being a part of it. "I'm not really happy anymore."
He left with half the other founders. Six of them told reporters that the size of the studio had not affected Ken Levine's willingness to create a AAA game. Ken Levine envisions a new game that will take place on a space station, where player actions will affect the relationships and attitudes of the three factions, with the original goal of being released in 2017.
By 2016, Ghost Story seemed to have expanded to about 30 people (the studio's website now reports 32 employees), but as Bloomberg reported, the ambitions were far beyond what such a small team could achieve.
Two early employees of the studio recall a version around 2016 with elaborate levels and rich 3D graphics. They were curious how to get it done with less than 30 people on the team. Others remember a complex dialogue system that would vary depending on the player's choices and require a lot of scripting that wouldn't be completed in a year.
Although projects like Cyber Raiders 2 and BioShock were done by hundreds of people, Ken Levine stuck to his "small team" approach. Many of these factors caused the game to be unprepared in the fall of 2017.
While this may have frustrated many people inside and outside the company, Ghost Story has enormous creative freedom, so the project was allowed to exist five years after the original plan was released. Ken Levine told employees that for Take-Two, ghost story maintenance costs are basically "rounded up."
Employees say Ken Levine often evaluates aspects of the game before it's finished, decides they're not good enough and orders the team to redo or throw them away. "The type of game being explored doesn't match the process of creation," said Andres Gonzalez, a founding member like Mike Snette.
It sounds like Ken Levine is difficult to work with, with reports euphemistically describing him as having "fickle behavior" and Ken Levine "can be very charming and charismatic" but "can also become moody, lashing out, single out a person, and at the same time scolding them in front of colleagues." At the same time, he said some of the people who "quarreled" with Ken Levine subsequently "mysteriously stopped appearing in the office."
According to Bloomberg, current employees say they don't think anything will be released for at least the next few years. While fans await Ghost Story's first game, 2K also announced that its in-house studio Cloud Chamber is working on a new BioShock game.