| Ken Levine | |
|---|---|
Ken Levine at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2011 Sony Press Conference |
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| Born | September 1, 1966 |
| Occupation | Video game designer |
Ken Levine is the creative director and co-founder of Irrational Games. He led the creation of the multi-million selling, multiple "game-of-the-year" award-winning video game BioShock, and is known for his work on Thief: The Dark Project and System Shock 2.[1][2][3][4] He was named one of the "Storytellers of the Decade" by Game Informer[5] and was the 1UP Network's 2007 person of the year.[6]
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Levine studied drama at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a film career, writing two screenplays.[7] In 1995, he was hired as a game designer by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Looking Glass Studios after replying to a job ad in Next Generation Magazine.[7] At Looking Glass, Levine worked with pioneering designer Doug Church[8] to establish the initial fiction and design of Thief: The Dark Project.[9]
In 1997, following his work on Thief, Levine left Looking Glass along with two coworkers, Jonathan Chey and Robert Fermier, to found Irrational Games.[10] The studio's first game was the science fiction RPG/shooter System Shock 2, a direct sequel to Looking Glass' original 1993 System Shock. Levine served as lead writer and designer,[11] and the game shipped in 1999 to critical acclaim.[12]
Irrational's next project was Freedom Force, a real-time tactical RPG that drew heavily on the love Levine and Irrational artist Robb Waters had for the Silver Age of Comic Books. After the first Freedom Force game, Irrational developed Tribes: Vengeance and SWAT 4, on which Levine served as writer and executive producer respectively.
Although Tribes: Vengeance, SWAT 4, and Third Reich all shipped within a year of one another in 2004 and 2005, Irrational had been working in preproduction on the first-person shooter BioShock, the studio's most ambitious game at that point, since 2002.[13] The game went through numerous revisions to its premise and gameplay, and was released in August 2007, soon after Levine, Chey, and Fermier sold Irrational Games to publisher Take-Two Interactive.
BioShock was an immediate critical and commercial success, and remains one of the best-reviewed games of all time. [14] The BioShock franchise has sold over 8 million units to date.[4]
In 2008, Levine delivered the keynote address at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, discussing his youth as a nerd in the 1970s and how it impacted the path of his career.[7]
Since the release of BioShock, Levine has been serving as creative director on BioShock Infinite, set in 1912 in the fictional floating city of Columbia.