Formation and initial games (1997-2005) Irrational Games was formed in 1997 by
Ken Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier, former
Looking Glass Studios employees that left on good terms to start their own game development firm. They initially ran on a shoestring budget, running out of Levine's apartment. At that time, as a small studio, they were dependent on publisher support; their first project was to develop a single-player campaign for the game
FireTeam, being published by Multitude, Inc., but within three weeks, Multitude decided to drop the single-player campaign, leaving the three without any job. They returned to Looking Glass looking for any opportunities. Looking Glass founder
Paul Neurath agreed to give them a small budget, an office within their studio, and gave them the opportunity to work on a sequel to
System Shock.
System Shock 2 was released in 1999, and while a critical success, it did not reach sales expectations. Irrational returned to seeking other projects from other publishers to be more independent from Looking Glass. They landed work with
Crave Entertainment, from which they started work on
The Lost, a third-person action game inspired by
Dante's Inferno, that was targeting the
PlayStation 2. Levine described multiple difficulties with developing
The Lost. One issue was handling technical issues with the
game engine, as inititially they had planned to use the
LithTech engine, but later switched to the
Unreal Engine due to difficulties with making the game work on the PlayStation 2. A second problem arose as Crave started to have their own financial problems, and pushed on Irrational to continue development with a reduced budget. While Irrational finished most of the game,
The Lost was eventually cancelled by 2002, with Irrational taking the loss on its development time. where most of the work on
Freedom Force was completed. Crave's monetary issues led the game to be published in 2002 by the EA Partners label of
Electronic Arts. The game performed moderately well, but failed to give Irrational any significant royalties. Irrational had difficulties selling this concept to publishers, as the concept of
immersive sims like
System Shock 2 was not considered profitable, but the company persisted and refined their ideas as word of a new immersive sim from Irrational began to spread in video game news coverage. Just prior to the release of
BioShock in 2007, Irrational Games' Boston and Australian offices were rebranded as
2K Boston and
2K Australia.
BioShock released August 21 to wide critical acclaim and strong sales.
BioShock was released in August 2007, and was a critical and financial success. The game won several awards, and by 2013 had sold more than 4 million units. Shortly after
BioShock was released, rumors arose that many of the staff who had worked on the game were leaving 2K Boston/Australia. In 2007, five members of the 2K Boston team moved to a new 2K studio in
Novato, California. Soon after, 2K announced the formation of
2K Marin in Novato. Take-Two had pushed on Irrational to develop a
BioShock sequel, but Levine was not interested, and instead initially sought to develop a new
XCOM game. Take-Two assigned 2K Marin to develop
BioShock 2. By 2008, when Irrational's contract with Take-Two was under review, Levine had lost interest in the
XCOM project, and instead negotiated to develop a new
BioShock game. The
XCOM project work continued at 2K Marin, released in 2013 as
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.
Development on BioShock Infinite, what would be Irrational's last game, started in 2008, about half a year after completion of the original
BioShock. Following the game's public announcement in 2010, the company was pressured by 2K Games and the gaming consumers to make sure the title lived up to the expectations that the promotional material had set for it. Irrational hired more staff and allocated work to additional studios to help with the game, but this only served to complicate matters; from post-mortem interviews with Irrational staff, Levine was continually changing some of the core story beats for the game, which would dramatically change game assets that had already developed. Levine also admitted to difficulties in managing the larger staff. Conflicts over development leadership led to the departure of some high-level individuals in 2012. To bring the game back onto schedule for release, 2K hired industry professionals to assist Levine in managing the large team and focusing the game's content including eliminating planned multiplayer modes.
BioShock Infinite was released by March 2013.
Closure and transition to Ghost Story Games (2014-2017) On February 18, 2014, Levine announced that the vast majority of the Irrational Games studio staff would be laid off, with all but fifteen members of the staff losing their positions. Levine said that he wanted to start "a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two," speaking to how much stress completing a large game like
BioShock: Infinite had caused him. Take-Two considered this studio separate from Irrational Games, preventing Levine from using the name, and shutting down Irrational Games shortly after Levine had made his decision in 2014. Around 15 developers continued with Levine at this new studio; According to Levine, in the years after the layoffs, several of the former Irrational staff had rejoined Take-Two and 2K under the studios that were working on a new
BioShock title, though Levine himself was not involved. == Games developed ==