Irrational Games is making a comeback
BioShock creator Ken Levine is one of my favorite game designers of all time, but he broke my heart earlier this year. In February, Irrational Games shut down and laid off the majority of its staff, with only Levine and a select few staying. Ever since then the future of Irrational has been a mystery, but now they could finally be gearing up for their next project.
Irrational Games has resurfaced and started hiring again, according to the studio’s official website. There are currently two job listings available, with one of them making mentions of working in Unreal Engine 4 and recommending multiplayer experience. That doesn’t tell us as much as it used to, but it is an indication that Irrational has some direction again.
The Senior Programmer listing doesn’t reveal much else, aside from the expected AI and animation systems that you’d expect in any game really. It’s just great to see Irrational’s name in the news again, especially after the controversial events earlier this year. Instead of leaving the studio, Ken Levine laid off most BioShock staff and stuck with publisher Take-Two, teasing smaller, indie-like projects in the future.
This is probably the beginning of the new Irrational Games, which I suspect is going to be very different from the BioShock and System Shock games we remember them by. Ken Levine teased that the studio’s future projects would still be narrative-driven, but have a much smaller scope. It’s going to be a while until anything solid really surfaces, but at the very least Irrational Games is back.
