Irrational's Big Daddy - Ken Levine

1 Comments

Coming from a screenwriting background, Ken Levine moved into videogames with the illustrious Looking Glass to work on the original Thief: The Dark Project. Since leaving to co-found Irrational (it's two studios are now known as 2K Boston and 2K Australia) he hasn't looked back, his company producing a string of classics including System Shock 2, Freedom Force and SWAT 4.

He's a contradictory figure - he creates games with some of the most satisfying narrative meat in the medium, but argues that this is entirely secondary to games' key appeal. We speak to the man himself about his studio's greatest triumph: BioShock.

What sort of emotions are you trying to provoke with BioShock?

Ken Levine: I wanted to put the players in a place between these major ideologies and powerful figures... but they're not black and white. You can see what happened to Andrew Ryan's city, but he's got some really powerful things to say. One of the first things you hear from him is... "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?" And yes, that's a powerful question!

You kind of buy into Ryan, for a little bit. And then you encounter the other powers in the city... who all have their own ideologies. And you're sort of stuck in the middle of these guys. I think people can relate to that. We're living in a very grey age right now. When I play an ultra-patriotic game, given the current political situation, I'm not quite sure if I'm comfortable in the role of just accepting what authority says.

That's why I like making games where the player isn't just the victim of major forces in the world but the guy who runs in the middle and has to work out his own path.

It's interesting to see developers responding to that. Not actually going out and making an explicitly political statement - at least most don't - but actually responding to the emotional climate...

Levine: If you look at the '60s, you'll see Vietnam movies like John Wayne's Green Beret being made. And you go to the '70s, you have Apocalypse Now. From this ultra-patriotic unquestioning thing, we're moving to a stage where games are getting mature enough to reflect the zeitgeist a little. BioShock is reflecting the confusion I have.

It's a game which doesn't try to answer a lot of questions. One of my favourite things about making the game was seeing the arguments on the internet, where someone will see the game and view it as intense republican propaganda. And then other people will view it as a communist screed, attacking those principles.

I'm very comfortable in that space where I have people hating me for different reasons and the 'message' of the game not being entirely clear to people.

One of the more interesting things I saw was people arguing BioShock is anti-stem-cell research, which I hadn't even considered. Do you think people's minds will change after they actually play it?

Levine: When you have someone with strong ideological feelings I don't think any number of encounters with reality will necessarily change those feelings. But I think that people who open-mindedly go into the game, they'll find there's no 1:1 current-events message in it. It's much more general in thinking about power and what people say and what it actually means... and the lengths people will go to to believe in something and not question themselves.

It's a game about doubt more than anything. The value of doubt. I think people will find their own messages in that, as it's not a clear ideological message. I'm not a real strong believer in clear, ideological messages, as they can be pretty dangerous.

Are you worried about basing the game around a quasi-Randian position? I've seen objectivists [followers of Ayn Rand's hyper-capitalist philosophy - Ed] say things online, and you seem to be tentative around the topic.

Levine: With those guys, they're pretty intense, as you can tell. They're one of the groups who look at it, and think it's a specific attack on their belief system. It's not true at all. I have a lot of admiration for Rand. But I'm not remotely what you'd call a true believer, and this is what these guys are.

[Rand] rejects true-believerism. She rejects homages to the past. It's interesting to see these people who are so wrapped up in the specific message of Rand, what she said 1:1. To me, to use her terminology, that's second-handerism. I'm way more interested in thinking for myself, and trying to do something new, rather than trying to live in someone else's belief system from 50 years ago.

You say games are primarily games, but we've spent the last ten minutes talking primarily about the story aspects. But the way BioShock tells its story is completely separate from the normal cutscene method. The primary storytelling mechanism is the player moving through the environment...

Levine: We have an opportunity to engage the player, and make them essentially the storyteller in terms of where they look and how they interact. To me, once you've gone to a non-interactive sequence... (a) you're in the wrong medium, and (b) you're telling the player to sit back, don't worry, it's not your problem right now. I always want it to be the player's problem. How far have you played?

Up to the third level.

Levine: So you played the sequence where you first see [spoiler removed - Ed]? Why I love watching that sequence is that... the reaction you get when people aren't sure whether they're in danger or not is much more powerful.

And being able to tell the story of Rapture by building into the world, into the art, into the layout, into tiny things on the floor, in bodies, in the doctor's writing on the wall... we know people are going to see those, and take a piece of that, instead of forcing them to watch. We don't want to have a captive audience. We want to have a captivated audience.

I heard that originally the Little Sisters were insects. How did that change? It's an enormous conceptual leap.

Levine: Imagine the Big Daddies almost like they are now, with... bugs. It didn't work at all. It didn't work remotely. The moral choice aspect wasn't there at all. It was an art and aesthetic change - rather than a game design change - which brought so many things to the fore.

When we had the little sister in place, we could build a relationship out of that protector/protected gameplay role where you could see them interacting, see that protective relationship in a much clearer way as it harks towards a real-world relationship in a way which you can't with a giant guy in a suit and little bug.

One of the things people have been wrestling with about these more complicated first-person games, since Underworld 1, really... is how can we can keep all these mechanisms and sell enough to be viable?

Levine: The big mistake people have made before - myself included - is that if it's a first-person game, I don't think they ever decided it has to be a great first-person shooter to start with. Whether it's System Shock or Deus Ex, they're not amazing first-person shooters. They're amazing, awesome games... but they don't scratch that itch.

We really wanted to hit that, and that's what having time and resources allows you to do: to have your cake and eat it. In the same way that Gran Turismo introduced tuning your car... it was still a great racer. They didn't have a crappy racer and include tuning your car.

I think a lot of the problems in terms of people who want to change things and increase players' expectations of what they want out of a game is that they forget to deliver on the bread and butter.

People tend to refer to BioShock as the 'spiritual sequel' to System Shock 2. Do you ever feel trapped by that?

Levine: [Laughs] Ah, that's a rich man's problem. I was very fortunate that the first game I was lead designer on was remembered so fondly by a number of people. It's something which really enriches and adds value to your life, because people when they meet you and don't know you have some degree of fondness for you, as you've given them something they've enjoyed. That's great.

We never made any money off it, but it's enhanced my life in ways I can't describe. We're sort of trapped by that... but we didn't let ourselves stop there. It's a great game, but it's six to eight years later.

Despite similarities to previous games, what strikes me is BioShock's original setting. Not just an original setting for a game: original full stop.

Levine: BioShock has an architectural style people are familiar with... but it's fresh for videogames. The notion of the failed utopia is something people are familiar with, but perhaps not as much in videogames. My career is an illustration of finding things which are fresh to videogames, then bringing them in.

The story of Thief was a Sam Spade story - a Raymond Chandler story. A mercenary guy working for himself. A beautiful woman comes into the office and hires him to work on something.

It's a much more complicated situation than she lets on, and he's caught up in the middle of it, and forced to think about his mercenary path and whether he wants to deviate from it. We tend to borrow things from different places and put it in fresh perspectives.

Kieron Gillen