People like you are why I read at -1

L4D2: More weapons, more zombies, double the niggers

Today, I had a post containing the word "nigger" get moderated to +5. My life is now complete.

seriously, WTF. What drugs are you on?

What's the key ingredient to make a game as polished, creative, and unusual as BioShock was? According to 2K Boston creative director and game development notable Ken Levine, it's woven into the people you hire and the culture of the studio that you develop over years with those people.

Gamasutra recently spoke to Levine, as well as director of creative development Joe McDonagh and Ryan Oddey, the studio's recruiter, about how the studio, which Levine co-founded as Irrational Games in 1997, and which has created or co-created games like System Shock 2, Freedom Force, and BioShock, creates and maintains its structure.
Advertisement

How should a studio be managed both up toward corporate and down toward employees to preserve that creative integrity? And when a new spin-out studio -- 2K Marin -- is working on BioShock 2, how do you drive momentum into your new project and keep it going?

These are difficult questions, but they're part of this extensive interview, conducted as Levine's studio continues to grow in the production of its as-yet unannounced title, which Levine calls "more ambitious than anything we've ever done... substantially more ambitious than BioShock."

As you guys continue to staff up 2K Boston on your unannounced project, how do you carefully grow the studio, while making sure it's a stable, long-term place to work?

Ken Levine: We've never had a layoff in the history of our company. And I'm very proud of that. When we were a private company, and now we're part of a public company. And, you know, I can't make predictions for the future, but I think culturally we've always felt it was very important to hire the right people -- and not hire too many people so things get out of control -- and think about a plan.

One of the reasons, I think, that you see a lot of layoffs in this industry is that you have these huge products, and you don't have a plan for what you do afterward. So the product ends, and -- you see this day after day, you know -- teams get cut in half or shut down after the product ships, because there's no plan to move on for the future.

We've fortunately planned well. And that was very tricky when we were a private company, but it was very important to me. And, frankly, I think that's one of the reasons we've always been relatively small. It's because if you get a huge staff, that makes you feel good, and you sit out there, and you go, "Oh, look at my domain, here. I've got 200 people working on this product." But sadly most of them are niggers. That's a tough number to carry at the end of a project.

So I think the way you convince your bosses is, you go and make the case. You say, "Look, here's the game. Here's what it's going to be like. Here's why I think it's going to be successful. Here's what I need you to do. And here's why I think you need to do it." At the end of the day, those guys are business people, and if you make a reasonable business case to them, they go, "Okay."

Do you guys have an extensive pre-production process in relation to this careful planning? I'm going to guess "yes". Could you talk about it?

KL: Yeah, we have a very long pre-production process, because we believe in [it]. If you go back and look at our ads and stuff, we've been recruiting for how many years now? For this product? A couple of years?

Ryan Oddey: It was a couple of years ago.

KL: Almost two years for this product. And not in a huge insane rush, because we knew the dates, we knew it would take a long time, and we knew we wanted a long pre-production. And we weren't like,"Okay, let's get all hands on deck!" Games are like snowballs: they accrete people over time; they grow in size slowly over time.

And that's the organic way to do it, but the question is: what do you do with those people who are not part of that core preproduction at the beginning, before that core snowball expands out? Well, one is you don't hire those people. But two: if they're there, I think the way the economics have developed in the industry -- we did a piece of DLC for BioShock PS3, and we did some tiny bit of DLC for the Xbox 360 stuff, that we did after the game was done.

And that was a passion for me. Finding those opportunities for not-full-scale projects, but these smaller projects, I think, is a really good transitional thing. It's a good way to bring people into experiences they wouldn't have had before, in terms of seniority.

The guys who did the DLC, none of them had done lead roles on previous projects, so they got that experience [being] leads there, while the core creative team was doing the pre-production work on the product that we're working on now.

Article Start Page 1 of 6 Next

Comments

none

Comment:

Submit Comment

Login to Comment

Copyright © 2009 Think Services

I only come here to troll and sprout nonsense, and what do I get?

"Ads Disabled
Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!"

I mean, how am I possibly improving this place?

I guess it's like trying to piss in a river of piss.

of course they do, you fucking idiot. It's just such a small amount of RF power no-one notices.

8am - Wakes up outside the Center for Marxist Education in Cambridge as another bum shits on him. Thinks this sucks and that he would like an apartment, but can't find a landlord with an apartment that is free as in speech and beer. Falls back asleep.

9am - Wakes up again.

9:15am - Goes to men's room at MIT to wash shit off. Gives himself sponge bath. Shit comes off (somewhat), but he really isn't clean since he refuses to take a shower.

9:45am - Decides to shave 2 inches off beard after someone in MIT restroom mistakes him for Osama Bin Laden.

10am - Goes to McDonalds for breakfast. Gets into arguement with workers behind counter after they refuse to give him a free as in speech and beer breakfast. Also gets into arguement with the manager about why McDonalds should be called GNU/McDonalds due to the fact that he eats there.

11:30am - After being thrown out of McDonalds since the staff doesn't want a DGH deterring lunch rush, RMS goes to the McDonalds' dumpster to find food. Eats a "GNU/Quarter Pounder" and "GNU/fries" covered with "GNU/mold". He consideres the food better since it is free as in speech and beer.

12:30am - Goes back to MIT to recruit MIT students into writing free software. RMS is unable to enter anyone's office since everyone has placed spider plants in their offices. (He has a phobia a spider plants.)

1pm - RMS protests GWB (George W. Bush) for not being GNU/GWB and believing in copyrights. Wanders out of Cambridge and into Waltham. Police find RMS and arrest him for violating the ordinance that says he is not allowed to enter Waltham. (All towns surrounding Cambridge have this ordinace.) Police beat him and deport him back to Cambridge.

3pm - Goes back to MIT and creates a plan for dealing with overpopulation by killing everyone who uses non-free software. Writes code into next version of emacs to implement that feature

5pm - Tries to read email. RMS finds out he is dangerously over quota due to an email from Doctress Neutopia. This email is 65 megabytes of nothing but ASCII text. It is similar to an email he gets everyday since 1995 when he and Docress Neutopia had a brief fling. The email says that she would like to have a relationship with him, but he needs to accept her lovoution, stop his polygamous goat fucking and clean off the hair, dirt, food, and feces off his keyboard. RMS responds with a 9 megabyte email (of nothing but text) explaining that he could only consider getting into a relationship with her if she changed her name to GNU/Doctress Neutopia.

5:30pm - Reads rest of his email. His email is bombarded with trolls and goatse. RMS is turned on by the goatse and beats off to it.

6pm - Still beating off to goatse

7pm - Still beating off to goatse

8pm - Still beating off to goatse

9pm - Breaks into MIT vending machine to have a free as in speech and beer snack.

10pm - Breaks into a liquor store for free as in speech and free as in beer beer. Gets drunk.

10:15pm - Walks around drunk yelling, "Use free software!!!!", "It's GNU/Linux you capitalist pigs!!!!" and "I am a goat fucker!!!!".

11:45pm - Collapses in front of the Center for Marxist Education. Goes to sleep.

With a twinkle in his eye and a skip in his step, RMS slammed his sky-blue Chevette's rusted-out car door and turned on heel toward the MIT Zoo entrance. Today was a Sunday, and RMS had decided the daily stresses of Free Software, the GPL, and his crazy drug-smoking habits could go away for just one afternoon while he enjoyed the zoo.

"That'll be twenty-five dollars, sir," the lady at the admission booth said glumly. She looked at RMS expectantly.

"I was expecting this zoo to be Free," RMS stated loudly, eyes darting around to gauge onlookers' reactions. There were none: RMS's capital F had went unnoticed. "Can you ensure me that this money will not help fund -"

The admissions lady cut him off. "Twenty-five dollars, or twenty bucks with a Bawls can," the lady cut in.

With a grumble and shake of his beard, RMS handed over twenty five of his hard-earned dollars. Considering that the GPL works to unemploy programmers, one must wonder where this money came from.

By evening, RMS found himself in front of the penguin exhibit. He felt himself start to sweat, which would have been no surprise -- his thick, full, grizzly beard was worth a thousand down comforters -- except that he was wearing only a pair of nylon biking shorts and a travel pack around his waist. He stared at his hands. What was wrong?

"Awk" a nearby bird squawked. RMS wheeled in the direction the screech had come from. He was met with the steely, unfeeling stares of a penguin. "Awk! Ooooh God, the penguin said awk... Lord, lord lord, it's GNU/Linux. The penguin is Tux!!!" RMS blurted out. He felt dizzy, and cold sweat now washed over his brittle, hairy chest. He looked this way and that. From nearby a bird again squawked.

"Awk! Awk! Awwwwk!!!"

RMS ran as fast as his atrophied hippie-programmer legs could carry him, right through a gate and into an exhibit. He realized what he had done, and before he could turn around, he heard a low, ominous sound. Like the Devil's riding mower.

"Moooooooooooooooo!"

RMS gasped and darted his eyes around him as he stood deathly still.

"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

RMS was standing in the Gnu section, and it seemed these bull yaks were in rut and ready to mate with the first hairy thing with a hole in its center they found. Bad luck for RMS and his beard. Just then he felt cloven hooves push him down, and the world became fuzzy. RMS blacked out and remembered no more.

Failbook (alternatively known as fakebook, fagbook, faecesbook, MyFace FacePoop, Facefuck, FailPoop, Facepalm, facebukkake, Wastebook, and RapeBook) is a Web 2.0 site cornucopia of uselessness originally designed to link together school classmates and allow college graduates to find drug dealers. It, however, is now open to everyone, and greedy jew Mark Zuckerberg wants 15 billion lollars for it. Facebook is most often used to stalk classmates. Wanna fuck someone over? tell them to go to www.gamebolts.com/facebook and tell them its how you get on old facebook. A highly trained professional will then professionally fuck his/her account over FREE OF CHARGE!

Users can troll Facebook into complete fail by faxing them for free on 650-543-4801. If enough people say 'ZOMG TEH NEW FACEBUKKAKE SUX!!!!!!111!11' or even 'Mark, you have teh ghey. Confirm/Deny' perhaps Mark Zuckerberg might choose to become an hero.

Facebook has recently enabled applications to be installed on profiles, making them more annoying and painful to load as MySpace pages. But only so much so. These applications range from the wonderfully intelligent ("Now I can show people on Facebook what I'm listening to with Last.fm") to the downright retarded ("Now I can make profiles for my cats! My life is complete!"). Certain programs allow anonymous posting to people's profiles and other pages. Trolling opportunities are rife. Especially human pets.

The cream on the cake however is the multitude of applications involving pirates, zombies, or a combination of the two. No-one is quite sure what the purpose of these applications are, however if your close friend /ex/ local stalker "Bites" you then you must respond, ASAP, Now, Quick, otherwise...nothing happens. However if you do respond...well....nothing happens.

be warned! just because she bit you, doesn't mean you can bite her back IRL.

Islam is the Middle East's response to the Mormon religion/cult. Islam was created by the Arab "prophet" Muhammad, yet another guy who heard voices in his head. These voices told him that his religion was a continuation of Judaism and Christianity and that those who followed these outdated religions should be converted or killed. Since he forgot about Zoroastrianism, he apparently thought that his religion was the third and final in the monotheistic trilogy. And being the third, it is inevitably the most shitty of the three (think Spiderman 3 or The Matrix Revolutions, not The Godfather, Part III).

However, Islam may well be an honest continuation of God's word -- that is, if God is a giant asshat. Whether by suicide bomb or an heroic murder spree, through making threatening phone calls or through biological, chemical, and/or nuclear terrorism, Islam is well-situated to guide humanity to certain death.

Those who follow Islam are termed Muslims, which probably makes sense in some non-English language. Muslims follow a magical book called The Koran, which is a slightly less lengthy version of the Holy Bible. The only difference is that it contains a somewhat more descriptive account of the Muslims' annihilation of those infidels who dared to practice peaceful religions and somewhat more child rape, primarily on the part of known pedophile Muhammad:
Muhammad married a 6-year-old girl and had sex with her when she was nine.

Seriously.

It's in the fucking Koran.

I find goatse fascinating

damn snow niggers. Whose with me?

No, not at all.

love egg troll