And here I thought the best of what I was going to get from PAX had passed. Ken Levine, the man largely credited for the success of last year’s BioShock hosted a panel about adolescent nerdery, Hollywood screenwriting exploits, and finding himself as a game designer.

Definitely my favorite panel of them all, and it’s not entirely because of my irrational love for the mind of Ken Levine. Having been born in an entirely different generation than Ken, I can still relate to many of his stories. Specifically the whole piece about growing up a total nerd and striving to find a tribe of like-minded individuals.

Source: GameVideos

Ken Levine is a man of many words, so when he gets tight-lipped in an interview at GamesIndustry.biz, suspicion naturally follows.

Levine, the genius behind the genre defining Bioshock, is currently working on a project for 2K that he describes as “something very different.”

What that something is remains a mystery.

“I actually can’t talk about it, without talking about the game itself,” Levine said to Industry.biz editor Phil Elliott. “There are things related to story, gameplay and… I don’t know how to describe it… people’s relationship with the game over the long term. That’s what we’re thinking about, but it’s about as clear as I can be.”

Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/

Just to be clear, there is never enough BioShock related news. And with that we offer you more. At the Develop Conference & Expo, being held this week in the UK, Ken Levine gave a talk entitled “BioShock and Awe: Immersing the Gamer in an Alternate World Without Drowning Out the Gameplay” in which he aired some very interesting thoughts. Not least “I’m kind of a pretentious twat.”

During his talk, Ken talked about a lot of aspects in the designing of Rapture and its inhabitants. So much detail was added to the game that even every corpse has a back story and a reason for being wherever they ended up.

He also gave a small insight into himself and his methods for designing a game, explaining that “there was no shortage of pretentious crap I could come up with at any point” and that although he may be hard to work with, he can still make damn good games, adding that BioShock will “be one of those games that change gamers’ lives.”

Ken, you may be a pretentious twat, but I don’t half have a secret man-crush on agree with you.

Via: VideoGamer, RPS, VG247

A deal has been signed between Universal and Take Two to turn arguably one of last year’s greatest games, into a film. The movie is to be directed by Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski, whose previous work includes The Ring and The Weather Man.

As any gamer knows, most good games become terrible films, with the last major game set for movie stardom, Halo, failing to leave the design board. Is there any hope that BioShock: The Movie won’t suck? Thankfully, yes. In an interview with The Cut Scene, Verbinski had these comforting words for us: “We want to take all the strengths from the property. Of all the games I’ve played, this is the one that I felt has a really strong narrative.”

He also spoke about how the game’s more adult themes would not be compromised for the sake of the film, “We’re prepared to make it an R-rated movie. I don’t intuitively see it as PG-13. The content and the graphic nature of the story itself is smarter than that. It’s not for young kids,” adding that “I think we’ll go right up to the edge with the Little Sisters. I don’t want to soften it to the point where the core audience feels betrayed.”

He also mentions during the interview that he and BioShock’s creative director, Ken Levine, have talked on the phone, discussing what will and won’t work within the confines of a film. Since most of the game’s strength and success hinged on Levine’s vision, this can only be a good thing.

Source: Variety

When Gamecock stormed the stage at the Video Game Awards earlier this month, they prevented Ken Levine, lead designer of BioShock, from giving his acceptance speech after winning the award for Game of the Year. For the first time since the event, Levine has given a short interview on the matter.

When asked about what was going through his head during the incident Levine responded:

All I really gave a crap about was that the judges (who were all top journalists) chose us from the field. The rest is kind of gravy.

When asked what he was hoping to have a chance to say, before he was so rudely interrupted, Levine said:

I had a tireless, amazing team who was on a mission to make BioShock great. We didn’t have 300 people or five years. We had an insane amount of passion. I’d like to thank the people who made it with me, the families that patiently waited while we did our thing, the publisher with the guts not to make us change it, and the fans who showed that gamers have a much broader range of interest and intellect than anybody in certain parts of the media or the political space is comfortable giving them credit for.

Read the full interview by 1UP here.

With mega-company Take 2 taking home top honors at the Spike Video Game Awards, indie publisher Gamecock was desperately vying for attention. But what’s sadder than “Game of the Year” body art? How about crashing Ken Levine’s acceptance speech in red capes and masks?

Check out the video– the surprised and subdued crowd reaction says it all. Gamecock has since apologized for the stunt, saying that they’d rather have crashed the Fueled By Mountain Dew category instead.

We know these guys want to stand out from the crowd, but upstaging one of gaming’s greatest designers was maybe not the smartest move. Gamecock will rise someday, perhaps, but it might take a bit longer thanks to this stunt.

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Via: Joystiq