Today came very surprising news from Irrational Games and the lead staff of the software developer, it's shutting down completely and the remaining staff will be moving on to smaller projects elsewhere. After the huge release of BioShock Infinite and other software projects rumored to be in works it's a very sad day to know that Freedom Force's parent company is finally no more.
Here is the official announcement: http://irrationalgames.com/ (http://irrationalgames.com/)
- CQ
I'm really sad to hear about this. Though i still can't help but hope that Ken and his new team might be able to come up with something similar to Freedom Force in the future.
Yeah, I just came here to post this.
It's not all bad news, in my opinion. The Australian studio where Freedom Force was assembled ceased to be part of Irrational years ago, and became part of 2K instead. So they're still standing.
Ken Levine, who conceived Freedom Force, and was the vision-holder for the game, will now go on to make smaller narrative driven games, which pretty much describes FF to me.
Obviously, its bad news for the people who were working for the studio, but hopefully, with Bioshock on their CVs they won't have too much of a hard time finding work. And they're in a part of the world where there is plenty of other games work available (unlike Australia.. ). And that is all part of working in the industry, studios fold and are reborn on a fairly regular basis.
Smaller teams producing games that focus on narrative over art asset content sounds good to me. Cheaply told stories can be less commerical, and take more risks. That's why I love comics. I hope Mr. Levine makes some kick-arse games in the near future.
Here's hoping that this is only the beginning of even better, if smaller, things for Ken and the other Irrational veterans.
It's a little sad to hear about IG going away and I know it's an uncertain time for people whose jobs are changing. But, it's been a long time since IG was really on the radar for me in gaming. (Not meant as a slam or anything; I just don't have time for many games and none of the recent ones I have played were IG's.) It's been clear that IG wasn't working on any successors to the Freedom Force franchise. If a core group of IG people are refocusing on a narrower area that (to me) sounds a bit closer to what brought us FF, then that's at least a hopeful sign.
Well....
I'm hoping they put together an ff for mobile.
We know:
- Levine and Irrational have full rights for Freedom Force
- they want to do something small, narrative driven and with high replayability
- they want to focus on digital distribution solely
To me, this spells out a Freedom Force mobile game, a la Shadowrun Returns or X-Com
Well, I hope so anyway!
While at first I was disheartened, when I learned that Levine is looking to continue working on smaller projects I became a bit more excited.
DM, not to hope against you, but I totally hope that isn't the case. :P Ha, sorry, what I actually mean is, I don't play mobile games, so I'll pin my hopes on something a bit more traditional, perhaps a game marketed through Steam.
Quote from: BentonGrey on February 19, 2014, 07:32:31 PM
DM, not to hope against you, but I totally hope that isn't the case. :P Ha, sorry, what I actually mean is, I don't play mobile games, so I'll pin my hopes on something a bit more traditional, perhaps a game marketed through Steam.
Ditto. I don't play mobile games either, but if they were to come out with a successor to Freedom Force on PC, I'd take a long look at it for sure.
Let's face it, anyone here wouldn't just LOOK at it, we'd take it home and install it.
:lol:
Irrational Games has my thanks! BioShock taught me to love old-timey music, faux-vintage advertisements, and the pure joy of Electro-Bolting a crowd of attackers running through floodwater with my bare hands.
To better days!
Quite shocking. Really hard to fathom why they folded IG instead of splitting it in two—surely there were more than fifteen persons worth keeping. Still, a smaller project might indeed results in something amazing, going in directions a larger one couldn't afford.
I'm shocked too. Bioshock Infinite was a big success so this is a surprising move to me.
It really is an end of an era, but here's hoping they'll continue making great games.
Possibly, this has less to do with the success of any given IG project and more to do with what the people starting the new project wanted to be doing and what they conceive to be the best organizational structure or environment for doing it. If 15 or so key IG people were looking to go start a new venture to work on different projects, this may have been the best choice T2 could make: make an offer to keep those key people in house and fold the remaining IG functions into other T2 divisions. Otherwise, T2 would have been left with a leaderless and understaffed IG division floundering around and still lost whatever new projects Ken and his group were looking to develop. This way, Ken's group gets the support of a larger parent company while working on their new projects while T2 gets to market the resulting projects and still gets to merge the best remaining IG people into other T2 divisions.
(Obviously, I am just speculating here.)
Hmm, that makes a lot of sense Stumpy.
I guess as long as Levine still retains the rights to Freedom Force, it's not such a huge bummer.
I still dream of a new Freedom Force game with tactical roleplaying mechanics more in line with XCOM: Enemy Unknown ... I think that would be sell like hotcakes.
Some additional info on IG, its culture and Levine: http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/6/5474722/why-did-irrational-close-bioshock-infinite
BTW, it sounds doubtful that he'll be working on a new FF soon:
QuoteAs for creative forward-thinking, Levine did have one high-level pitch that multiple sources mentioned, but it wasn't enough to warrant an entire team. Levine imagined an AI project that grew with the player, in some ways reminiscent to Elizabeth, the non-playable character and ally in BioShock Infinite that reacted in a lifelike way to the player's movement through the game's environment.
Very interesting article Epimethee. Thanks for sharing.