Ex-Bioshock lead Ken Levine says the problem with AAA games is how risk-averse they've become: 'If you don't innovate, especially in games, you start losing people'

Ken Levine, creator of the Bioshock series, has had a bit of a long road to walk in order to release his studio's upcoming game, Judas. It's been in development for at least eight years, after Take-Two shut down Irrational Games in 2017 and booted up Ghost Story Games thereafter. We didn't hear much about it until 2022, where it was slated to be "coming soon". Turns out, "coming soon" meant three years, with Judas slated to release March 2025.

While reflecting on the time he's been given to complete the game, and speaking to Gamesindustry.biz, Levine was also asked whether he figures more conventional development cycles are too much of a pressure cooker for most developers.

For him, it's a little complicated, as he understands that his situation's unique, and that he's "incredibly fortunate to be able to have the faith from the company to take risks and spend the time I need to make this successful." Still, he recognises the woes of those trapped in the present-day meat grinder of fidelity and strict deadlines.

"I think one of the problems we have in this industry right now is that games have gotten bigger and bigger and the graphical capacity has gone up and up. Just creating a door now versus creating a door ten years ago just takes a lot more time, because you have normal maps and [shaders] and higher polygons and physics and all this other stuff to contend with."

"Everything's getting more expensive, especially in the big AAA space because they're spending the most money. And when you're spending all this money, naturally you have people concerned about [commercial viability]."

We've seen the kind of fallout Levine's speaking about a few times this year, even. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League lost Warner Bros. over $200 million, and while we don't know the exact numbers, I am willing to bet that Sony's live service shooter Concord cost the company money in the bucketloads, given it made the decision to shut the thing down a mere two weeks after its launch. I somehow don't think anyone was cashing out.

"The problem with AAA is if you don't innovate," Levine argues, "especially in games, you start losing people because they've seen it before. And so we have potentially an over reliance, in some cases, on franchises … It is hard to do new things. Quite often even if you take those risks, sometimes you're going to fall flat on your face. And the more expensive it gets the trickier it gets.

"But I do think that without that… look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe—you stop taking risks and people just tune it out."

The MCU is a fun comparison to make because while, generally, I agree with Levine there—the movies have been cut from the same cloth for a while now—Marvel Rivals is taking the heck off and doing very well. That's despite the fact that it's more of the same live service shooter soylent we've been getting for years, while also using a well-established IP. And I don't even mean that as an insult, I've been playing quite a lot of it. They flavoured the soylent just-so and I'm gobbling it up, yum yum.

There's also the elephant in the room where... look. I'm sure Judas does all sorts of unique, interesting things when slated up against the original Bioshock and System Shock games.

But from a marketing perspective, we're all in agreement that this thing's a hefty spiritual successor to Bioshock, right? Taking over eight years to develop your new game might be a risk, but the sales pitch for the median consumer definitely feels like it's tapping that same vein of nostalgia. To be clear, I'm all for it, my inner Bioshock freak was chanting 'yes, yes, yes' when I watched the trailer. I just don't think there's been a brave new world on display. Any proof of risk-taking will have to be in the pudding, as it were.

Anyway, even Marvel Rival's developers aren't sure where the secret sauce came from and admitted, earnestly, that a game's success is a bit of a crapshoot. Levine lands at a similar place: "Nothing is blessed by God to be successful. You've gotta give some people something that excites them and that gets harder every year. But you know what? That's the job."