2K Boston head Ken Levine is truly one of the best game designers around, even before he helped to create the award winning and best selling shooter BioShock. Yet even he seems to be surprised that the game sold as well as it did when it was first released around a year ago.Eurogamer quotes Levine as saying, "I don't even know how we convinced people to pay for BioShock. These games had never made any money - everybody told us when we were pitching BioShock, sounds like a great idea, you'll sell 150,000 units - next!" Levine believes the move to tone down some gameplay aspects helped it to gain a wider audience than, say, games like System Shock 2 and Deus Ex which shared some of BioShock's ideas. Levine states, "How many people had played these kind of games before? 300,000, 400,000 - maybe? Now millions of people, because of this game, have played this type of game."...

Ken Levine is renowned as one of the most creative designers in the game business. Several of his games, such as System Shock 2 and BioShock, are considered incredible masterpieces of the medium. He's also a pretty outspoken guy. Speaking to vg247, he addressed some of the rumors that some of the original BioShock team left 2K Boston because of him. Here's what he had to say:"My wife finds it more upsetting than I do. I think the thing that was the most damaging is that it's not something I can respond to. There's no point in it. Look at the BioShock credit list and see how true that rumour is. My personality? I don't know. Maybe I am an asshole. Honestly, the people I respect? Maybe I'm the nicest guy in the world, maybe I'm the biggest asshole. I couldn't tell you. I think people choose to work with me because I can work with them and make a game called BioShock. Do you like to see people say you're inconsiderate? No. When it comes to hiring, does it really matter? No."In other words, Ken Levine doesn't care what people think. He's out to make good games!...

Every weekend Valve puts up one game on their Steam download service that is sold for 50 percent or more for just a couple of days. This weekend, they have one of the best games in recent years at a bargain price. We are speaking of Bioshock, the innovative and visually terrific first person shooter from developer 2K Boston/Australia and publisher 2K Games.If you haven't experienced exploring the underwater city of Rapture and trying to save or kill Little Sisters, you owe it to yourself to download the PC version of the game via Steam for just $14.99 before Monday. Oh, did you hear there's a sequel and a movie version in the works? Yep, it definately something that all the kids are talking about....

Have you ever played a shooter and thought, "this game would be infinitely more awesome with about 3 million weapons." Good news, Borderlands from Gearbox Software has you covered ... well, kind of. Touting the largest array of weaponry of any first-person shooter before it, Borderlands kind of cheats when deciding what is considered a new weapon. Those different scopes added to a sub-machine gun? Those all count as different weapons. Different ammo capacity? Totally counts as a new weapon. Different colors? Count it. So, while Borderlands doesn't have a million different weapons it does offer some highly customizable weaponry. You'll need it all to survive this one which is a cross between Mad Max and Stargate. Looking for more? Check out the E3 2008 trailer available for download today.Download the Borderlands E3 2008 trailer now!...

2K Games and Gearbox Software's Borderlands (trailer embedded above) aims to be a marriage of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Diablo -- a Mad Max-inspired open world shooter with RPG elements such as character classes, level progression, and system-generated loot.Those features were put on display during a live gameplay demonstration at E3 this week, the video of which we've embedded on the other side of the jump. It's tough to see what's going on in too much detail because of the quality of the video, so the developer commentary is the real meat. The commentator spends rather a lot of time bragging about the random weapon generation, but there's some good stuff in there about the setting and character advancement. And hey; it's first-time live gameplay footage. That's something, at least....

While people still wonder if Take Two Interactive's Rockstar brand will release an MMO version of their Grand Theft Auto franchise, Take Two's other major brand, 2K Games, just claimed its first MMO project. The publisher announced today that it will handle the duties for Champions Online, the highly anticipated super hero themed title from original City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios.2K Games will publish both the PC and Xbox 360 version of the game which is currently due for release in the spring of 2009. We hope to have more info on the game in the very near future and we also expect to see Champions Online at E3 next week....

On Tuesday, in our last thrilling episode of Big Download's most anticipated PC games for E3 2008, we listed our picks for 20-16 on our list after revealing our picks for 25-21 on Monday. Which naturally means that today we will have our picks for the 15-11 games we have on our list that we are most interested to see at E3 next week in Los Angeles. Which games will they be? Will they actually be at the show? Will we stop making silly references to Saturday afternoon movie series of the 1930's? Stay tuned to find out the answers to these exciting questions and more. As we mentioned previously, these are just our predictions on what games will be shown at the event; many of these titles have not been officially confirmed to be at E3 as of this writing. Also, there's no Activision or Vivendi Games/Blizzard titles on this list due to the two publishers bypassing E3 but a press conference by Activision on Tuesday during E3 is highly expected to show some upcoming titles from that publisher (and maybe Vivendi/Blizzard as well). With that out of the way let's look at our picks for the next five games on our list....

Last month Variety reported that Take Two Interactive and 2K Boston head Ken Levine were in talks to extend Levine's contract at the publisher. Now the New York Post is reporting through unnamed sources that a deal is close to being made with Levine that would keep him at Take Two Interactive with some extra incentives.While neither the publisher nor Levine's agent would officially comment, the New York Post reports that Levine's new deal, if it is finalized, will allow him to have more creative control over his game projects as well as a way to launch new franchises for Take Two. Levine got a lot more clout after the critical and sales success of 2007's first person shooter BioShock. The article quotes an financial analyst as saying that keeping Levine is critical to Take Two if they are to extract a higher selling price from Electronic Arts which currently is engaged in a hostile takeover of Take Two....

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, 2K Boston technical director Chris Kline stated his belief there is no leeway between triple-A and casual budgets; developers should pick one or the other. Kline said that 2K Boston had to come to this very same decision during the planning phase for BioShock, their critically-acclaimed morality-based FPS from 2007."I think what we realised, which really started that transition back at Irrational, we were doing games that I'd say were mid-budget - maybe USD 3-4 million - that there was no real market left," said Kline during an interview from GDC Paris last month. "You'd have to do something like what EA is doing and go into the casual market, or you've got to go for a really big blockbuster - just because of the economics, especially for the small independent developers, you're really squeezed out of the middle." Kline believes that dividing the once-muddle hybrid of casual and hardcore is a good thing, as developers are able to cater to specific crowds and adjust their planning accordingly."I'm not sure it's the natural evolution of things, that there are two markets that are now just separating, whereas before they were just muddled, and this is a good thing - or if people have been left out in the cold. I definitely think there's a market for a shorter, more casual experience - something that's a little more light-hearted. And we hope there's a market for people who want very cinematic, very emotional experiences that are also intelligent and made for adults."...

Gearbox Software's hotly anticipated Borderlands will be among the games presented by publisher 2K Games at this year's E3 conference. The game, which was first revealed late last year in Game Informer magazine, is an (apparently) open-world first-person-shooter with cooperative multiplayer, randomly generated levels ala Diablo, and some RPG elements. It's set in a Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic wasteland. Gearbox and 2K have high expectations for the game; they hope it will birth a franchise. It's scheduled to release sometime in 2009.2K will also be showing Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization at the show. If you haven't been keeping up, just know that it's a remake of Sid Meier's original Colonization, which was released back in 1994. It uses the same basic technology as Civilization IV, but it's a stand-alone game with decidedly different gameplay. Oh, and it's a PC exclusive, so hurray for that! For more on that one, check out our hands-on impressions.[Via videogaming247]...

Last week we reported on Variety's game blog writer Ben Fritz's claims that the upcoming 2K Games' strategy title Civilization IV: Colonization was "racist" because the actual historical colonization of the New World dealt with whole native civilizations being attacked and nearly wiped out by the European colonists. Fritz received a comment from developer Firaxis Games who state in part that the game " . . . treats the events of that time with respect and care" and added that "players can and should make their own moral judgments."Fritz also posted up his own follow-up post where he defends his position against the game's premise, stating, "If you want to deal with the reality of colonization, that's cool. But it seems to me the bare minimum to achieve that would be including the option to look at events -- or in the case of a game, play -- as the people being colonized. That's not an option here." While you may not be able to play as natives, according to this PC Gamer preview (via GamesRadar), the natives can certainly beat you if you decided to take them on unprepared. Therefore we are still not seeing the real difference between this kind of a game and a regular historical strategy war game where tons of people are killed on each side....

Dallas based Gearbox Software got its start by making expansions of Half-Life for Valve but the developer has expanded its reach in recent years doing games for a wide variety of publishers, from a James Bond shooter to the PC port of the first Halo game. It really hit its stride with the creation of Brothers in Arms, a WWII shooter series for publisher Ubisoft that was more historically accurate than other games in the genre and had an emphasis on tactics and strategy rather than run-and-gun shooting.Gearbox's successes with the Brothers in Arms have lead to other things like a comic-book mini-series, a non-fiction TV series, an upcoming novel and even a proposal for a Brothers in Arms feature film. But Gearbox isn't resting on its laurels. In addition to the latest game in the series Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (due out in late August) It has three other announced games in development and two of them will see PC versions released (the sci-fi action game Borderlands for 2K Games and the FPS Aliens: Colonial Marines for Sega). And there are rumors of even more games in the works. Big Download got the always friendly Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford to chat with us about Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, and he also gave us hints about their other games. He also talks about their views on PC gaming in general and the fate of a game that was announced but so far has yet to come to pass....

There was lots of excitement from Civilization fans when it was announced a couple of days ago that Firaxis Games would release Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization for the PC this fall. Not only would players get a new stand alone Civ game for the PC they would also get a a (kind of) revamp of Meier's 1994 title Colonization. But is that actually a bad thing? Ben Fritz, the writer for Variety's recently launched gaming blog site, seems to think it's a horrible thing. In his view, a game based on the historical premise of Europeans colonizing the New World is racist.According to Fritz, "A game about colonization that's entirely about controlling the settlers can either force the player to do horrific things or let him avoid doing it and whitewash some of the worst events of human history. Either option is offensive." He adds that while he knows publisher 2K Games has every right to publish the game, "I think personally think they shouldn't release it, if it's at all what it appears to be based on the early marketing. And I'm hoping a lot of people agree with me and will say so publicly."So what do you think? Does Fritz have a point? Or is he overreacting?...

Your daily wrap-up of the hottest stories in PC gaming in the last 24 hours. Big Download Interview: Alone In The DarkIt's taken a long time but today is finally the day for the reimagining of the Alone in the Dark franchise to finally head to store shelves for the PC and other platforms. Developer Eden Studios and publisher Atari/Infogrames have a lot riding on the success of this huge survival horror title. Indeed the publisher is hoping to sell between two to three million copies of the game this year. Spore Galactic Edition evolves into online retailA special edition of Spore has appeared at online retailers for pre-ordering. It's called the "Galactic Edition," and it comes with a making-of DVD, a DVD by National Geographic called "The Human Toolkit," a hardback book of concept art, a fold-out poster, and a "premium 100-page Galactic Handbook." We're not sure what the handbook will entail, but the rest sounds pretty cool. Should BioShock have failed?It was one of the most anticipated games of 2007 and the final release of 2K Games' first person shooter BioShock was one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year. But should the game have failed? That was the premise of the chat made by 2K Boston lead programmer Chris Kline at this week's Paris GDC event. Gamasutra has a report on the speech where Kline admitted, " . . . it did fail a lot, over the course of time. A series of big mistakes and corrections and slipped ship dates, but all of these helped make it a good game." Guide to TF2 Pyro Achievements, Part 2Glorious fire! You just love to burn things! We can't blame you, though. Nobody knows who you are, where you come from, or what your real gender even is, pyro, but we know that you sure love to set things on fire. Don't worry, though. We want to help you. We love your work. That's why we have crafted for you this very guide to ease your attempts to fulfill the strange objectives given to you. You have read the first part, so here is the second. Soon you'll be back on the road, setting fire to all the wildlife as you pass by. ...

It was one of the most anticipated games of 2007 and the final release of 2K Games' first person shooter BioShock was one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year. But should the game have failed? That was the premise of the chat made by 2K Boston lead programmer Chris Kline at this week's Paris GDC event. Gamasutra has a report on the speech where Kline admitted, " . . . it did fail a lot, over the course of time. A series of big mistakes and corrections and slipped ship dates, but all of these helped make it a good game."So what happened to make the game a success? Kline talked about a number of the changed they made to BioShock over the course of its development. One was made after the game was shown to the media at E3 2006 where the team decided to market the game as more of a pure shooter than a mix of shooter and RPG. Kline stated, " . . . .when we presented it as a shooter people started getting more excited about it. Even the team."...