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Irrational's Ken Levine and Gearbox's Randy Pitchford Talk Game Development
The Irrational Interviews podcast is one of the best on the web, and the newest episode features some of the show's most interesting discussion yet. Ever wish you could hear two of in the industry's leading designers talk shop? Well, you're in luck, as BioShock creator Ken Levine brings Gearbox's Randy Pitchford for a freewheeling conversation.
Here's a few choice quotes from the episode, which you can listen to in its entirety here.
On the future of gaming:
Randy Pitchford: "I would expect that within four years from now, we will be in a new cycle of some kind, and there's more certainty than there was two or three years ago about what that next cycle should look like."
Ken Levine: "At this point I have no desire as a developer and zero desire as a gamer to see the next generation come out where I'm sitting right now."
Ken Levine: "Connectivity exists today on the platforms, and that's definitely the thing I like in a platform like Steam or something. I don't have to worry about that ***--wherever I am, my games are with me, and if I don't have my game with me, I can have it in a few minutes."
Randy Pitchford: "Yes, that's what we want. We are there; not all of our customers are there. ...When a new platform comes to be, it could be predicated on this new way of thinking."
Pitchford on revealing Duke Nukem Forever:
Randy Pitchford: "Duke Nukem Forever was a game we couldn't make any promises about, which meant we couldn't just tell people things. We realized we had to let people see it; we had to let people play it. So we opened with playable, and we picked a spot to do that where it made a lot of sense, at PAX."
On making games with passion, and whether or not gamers can tell the difference:
Randy Pitchford: "It's kind of like when you meet a girl -- 'Would I do her or not?' You can make that decision in five seconds, and the customer's going to do the same thing. 'Are they just trying to monetize me, or are they offering me real value?'"
Ken Levine: "The developers who do the cash-in thing, they don't last very long. People get wise to it very quickly, and it's not actually a good thing. From a raw business model, it's not a good path to be on, for a publisher or a developer."
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