Early life Levine was born in
Flushing, New York, to a Jewish family. Raised in
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Levine graduated from
Northern Highlands Regional High School. He studied drama at
Vassar College, graduating with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in drama in 1988 in
Poughkeepsie, New York before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a film career, writing two screenplays. Before he got into gaming, Levine worked as a computer consultant on
Wall Street but admitted he was not very good at it, describing his attitude towards the job as a "slacker".
Looking Glass In 1995, Levine was hired as a game designer by
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based
Looking Glass Studios after replying to a job ad in
Next Generation magazine. to establish the initial fiction and design of
Thief: The Dark Project.
Irrational Games In 1997, following his work on
Thief, Levine left Looking Glass along with two coworkers, Jonathan Chey and Robert Fermier, to found Irrational Games. The studio's first game was
System Shock 2, an early hybrid of a
role-playing game and
first-person shooter. It is the sequel to Looking Glass'
System Shock (1994). Levine served as lead writer and designer, and the game shipped in 1999 to critical acclaim. Irrational Games developed
Freedom Force and its sequel
Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich, real-time tactical role-playing games that drew heavily on the love Levine and Irrational Games's artist Robb Waters had for the
Silver Age of Comic Books. After the first
Freedom Force game, Irrational developed the first-person shooters
Tribes: Vengeance and
SWAT 4, on which Levine served as writer and executive producer respectively. Although
Tribes: Vengeance,
SWAT 4, and
Third Reich all shipped within a year of one another in 2004 and 2005, Irrational Games had been working in preproduction on the first-person shooter
BioShock, the studio's most ambitious game at that point, since 2002. The game went through numerous revisions to its premise and gameplay, and was released in August 2007. In 2005, Levine, Chey, and Fermier sold Irrational Games to publisher
Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two Interactive changed their name to
2K, just as
BioShock was released.
BioShock was a critical and commercial success, and is considered
one of the best video games of all time. The
BioShock franchise has sold over 25 million units to date. In 2008, Levine delivered the keynote address at the
Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, discussing his youth as a nerd in the 1970s and how it impacted the path of his career. In February 2014, Levine announced that Irrational Games would be closing down, with fifteen members of the staff to follow Levine to focus on digital only, narrative-driven games for Take-Two. He stated in a 2016 interview that the stress of managing
Infinites development had affected his health and personal relationships, and rather than stay on to lead an even larger
BioShock game, opted to depart from it.
Ghost Story Games On February 23, 2017, Irrational Games was rebranded as
Ghost Story Games, founded by 12 of the former Irrational members with Levine remaining as president and creative director. In January 2022, the studio's game was reported to be in
development hell, with employees blaming Levine for a lack of leadership in producing a vaguely pitched game that Levine described as a "narrative
LEGO" in which every player would have a unique experience. On December 8, 2022, they revealed their game, the first-person shooter
Judas. == Work as an author and screenwriter ==