On the Hot Seat: BioShock's Ken Levine

Can't stand the heat, Levine? Get out of the Crispy kitchen.
3/21/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Make no mistake, it takes a village to make a videogame. But someone in said village has to order the pizzas on Fridays, and decide who's going to hold the Almighty Talking Stick during staff meetings, and also be willing to lock himself in the village smokehouse on weeknights until he has visions of lumbering Big Daddies dancing in his head.

And that guy is 2K Boston's Ken Levine.

After collecting yet another armload of trophies at the Game Developer Choice Awards this past February for Best Audio, Best Writing and Best Visual Arts -- his trophy shelf must be about to buckle under the burden of all the awards the game has won -- you'd think Levine would be holed up in the Ritz penthouse, taking baths in Dom Perignon, eating candy and watching all the PPV movies he wants to watch.

But the one thing more daunting than making a great game is making a follow-up to a great game, and BioShock, in all of its eerie underwater glory, is going to be one hell of a tough act to follow.

Crispy Gamer recently caught up with Levine and sat him down on the Crispy G. Hot Seat. Here's what Levine had to say.

Crispy Gamer: Rumors are floating around -- and yes, that awesome pun was very much intended -- that BioShock 2 will be a prequel to the original. Does that mean we'll finally get a glimpse of Rapture in all its glory, as opposed to the post-apocalyptic state in which we last saw it?

Ken Levine: [Turns away for a moment]

PR Henchment Markus Wilding appears and delivers the official response of 2K Games: At this point we don't have anything to say at the story and/or setting of BioShock 2. [Editor's note: Translation: Don't ask anymore boneheaded BioShock 2 questions. It's still too f***ing early. Bonehead.]

Crispy Gamer: Moving right along, then. Super Mario 64 was one of those oh-shit games that reportedly sent a great many developers and publishers into tailspins because it basically redefined not only what the Nintendo 64 could do, but also what a videogame could be. BioShock has had a similar effect, I'd wager. Have any developers come up to you and say, "Screw you, Levine! You ruined our game!"

Levine: [laughs] Well, we did put a lot of effort and thought into BioShock. We felt like gamers were saying, "Can you give us more?" We sensed that gamers were ready for more. While working on the game, we had several moments where we'd go, as a team, Well, that's how to do it. And then we thought, Wait a minute. Do we really have to do it that way? We took a lot of risks with this project.

Our goal was to make Rapture a real place. It was never going to be a sprawling Oblivion-like world. I love those guys at Bethesda; their goal was to open things up, to create this huge game world, and they succeeded.

In contrast, our goal was to include a very high level of detail. We wanted people to play the game, to be walking through Rapture, and say, "Hey, you know, people must have really lived here."

Crispy Gamer: According to your resume, you've done some dabbling in the film world.

Levine: Hollywood.