Ken Levine Interview

Gamasutra offers a massive seven-page interview with 2K Games’ Ken Levine, highlighting his views on narrative.

Mathew Kumar: I was kind of interested in BioShock, especially because you explore the illusion of choice within games, as the metastory. It’s over and above that. One of the things that interests me is that there’s a point where you realize that’s what’s happened, but after that, you’re not actually given any choice! Could you talk about that part?

KL: This is one of the things that was really interesting. The reaction totally surprised me after the game shipped. Both to have successfully worked with that scene with Ryan, that people got it. I was worried people would be baffled by it, be like… “What? I can’t fight Ryan and jump on his head three times to kill him?” A boss battle.

But also the reaction afterwards… that A, we didn’t have that part, and we had a mystery, and B, some people had an expectation that now that we’ve rubbed your lack of freedom in your face — not just in BioShock, but in all games — sort of postmodern, rubbing in the face, that we didn’t open it up to give people more freedom. That would’ve required a vast implementation in the game design and things like that.

It never occurred to me that this would be an issue with people, that by having this thing which happens in the narrative space, you’d expect this giant change in the gameplay space. I think that looking back on it, that’s something that I’d want to give a huge amount of thought to, but it was more like, “I think this would be a great commentary on games, and the world of BioShock as well.” I didn’t realize that it would change expectations.