Ken Levine on BioShock Infinite's creative process

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"Do these guys have any idea what they're doing?"

Ken Levine makes his games like a sculptor makes sculpture. The creative director of BioShock Infinite and co-founder of Irrational Games told Polygon in a wide-ranging feature that means a lot of chiseling until he manages to find the statue.

Longtime art director Nate Wells left after clashing with Levine about that decision, one of several high-profile departures from the studio which left us rather worried.

"I'm very friendly with a lot of people from work," Levine said, "but at the end of the day you have to accept the fact that you as a person are sometimes going to be ... a person who sometimes disappoints people. If you get really stuck over the fact that they may be upset with you for that, you compromise the game for that, they may like you less as a friend. You have to be very careful about that because you can end up really not fulfilling your responsibilities."

While the game is now in its final stages of polish and other preparations for its March 26 release, significant revisions were being made to the story as recently as this summer. This creative process can be difficult for those unfamiliar with it, Levine said in a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread.

"BioShock games are the hardest kind of games to make that I've ever worked on. I think sometimes people on the team look at the old timers and wonder, 'Do these guys have any idea what they're doing?' Because we know part of the process is not knowing, but discovering. But that's hard for people who haven't been through it before to always understand."

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.