2K Boston and Ken Levine’s new project, which they’re staying shhh about, is packing a greater scope and ambition than the plasmid theme park, aka BioShock.
Previously it’s been suggested this new title is an X-Com game, with Levine refusing to confirm or deny. The studio boss is ”very proud” they’ve never had to trim staff numbers, ever.
”We needed a certain kind of length for the title, because we had a scope and ambition in mind which is more ambitious than anything we’ve ever done,” Levine told Gamasutra in an interview. ”Even more, substantially more ambitious than BioShock. And we knew that was not going to happen overnight.”
2K Boston has ”a very long pre-production process,” because the studio believes in it says Levine. ”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?”
”Games are like snowballs: they accrete people over time; they grow in size slowly over time.”
Whatever Levine and his band of cohorts at 2K Boston have for us let’s hope it’s maturing well. Don’t forget: ”I’m not working on BioShock 2,” he says.
”I make no claim to anything on BioShock 2,and I think it’s important that that’s their product, and their culture. Because you can’t just clone a studio,” referring to 2K Marin.
The interview between Ken Levine, Ryan Oddey and Gamasutra centers around 2K Boston’s recruiting strategy, and why it’s important to ”have a plan” for what you do after a project. ”…teams get cut in half or shut down after the product ships, because there’s no plan to move on for the future.”
