26 November 2011

2k Canberra's XCOM reboot binned? Studio renamed and working on Bioshock

26 November 2011 | johnboy

Gamasutra has a wrap of the travails of Canberra’s computer games studio, recently renamed 2K Australia.

2K Australia was then merged with 2K Marin early in 2010 when the two studios began work on XCOM together, while 2K Boston was renamed back to Irrational Games.

Now according to a report from news website MCV, the studio has once again been separated and renamed 2K Australia, and is working on Bioshock Infinite alongside Irrational Games.

Bioshock Infinite, revealed last year, is due for release sometime in 2012.

In an interview with Gamasutra this year, Irrational Games’ Ken Levine said of the game, “We basically develop our games by failing… We’ll just throw things away all the time.”

For those who were interested (rather than horrified) by the concept of a first person shooter XCOM the wikipedia page still talks about a 2013 release date.

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Myles Peterson12:18 pm 28 Nov 11

@rebcart

It’s a pity. We seem to have gone backwards since the glory days of Freedom Force and even Fallout Tactics (not a great game, but was nice to see it launch at a party in Canberra).

Caught up with a couple of ex-Irrational/Creative Assembly staff doing Iphone apps, but it’s hard to get excited about hands-helds versus the Bioshocks and Total Wars.

rebcart10:42 am 28 Nov 11

For a given definition of “major studio”.

Last I heard, all the important game decisions are made in the US 2k studios (involving a very large percentage of the good Australian staff poached from here), and the vast majority of the important art assets are being made in Asia where it’s much much cheaper. 2k Canberra was left with the dregs and AIE kids, stuck doing boring textures and minor programming work.

Myles Peterson4:24 pm 27 Nov 11

Considering the shocking state of big title game development in Australia, it’s great news we still have a major studio in the ACT.

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