2k australia
Culture
How To Quit Your Game Development Job
5:20AM Mike Fahey | Game developers – they always have to make a game out of everything, including quitting their job as a game developer for 2K Australia. More »
News
Why 2K Boston Aren’t Making BioShock 2
6:30PM Luke Plunkett | 2K Boston, with help from 2K Australia, made BioShock. And what a great game it was. But they’re not making BioShock 2. Somebody else is. Why somebody else and not 2K Boston? Ken Levine (pictured, emerging from the ruins of Rapture clutching the last remaining…Coke Zero!) explains: I think for us, we come out of our BioShock coma – from shipping that game, and how hard that was – and then making a determination. What’s next for us, and how aggressive are we going to be? More »
BioShock PS3 Rated, Syringe Stabbing Still Not Considered Drug Use
12:00PM Logan Booker | Yesterday, BioShock on PS3 appeared in the OFLC’s database. Somehow, the static image of a syringe is much more suggestive than a dude violently jabbing himself with a needle and groaning in ecstasy. Good thing there’s no mention of real world drugs, so we can pretend it’s just a game!
Oh, that’s right, it is a game.
As an aside, Digital Extremes gets an “author” credit in the database entry, thanks to its optimisation work.
BIOSHOCK Game (Playstation 3) [OFLC] More » ‘BioShock Should’ve Failed’
5:00PM Brian Ashcraft | BioShock was a big hit. But, the way lead programmer Chris Kline sees it, the game should’ve been a MISERABLE FAILURE. BioShock was first planned in early 2002 when its developer, the then Irrational Games, decided it needed a big AAA title. The idea was to make a System Shock 2 clone, but development on the game stopped for about two years. “The very first failure”, recalls Kline, “was that we wanted to base this whole thing on System Shock 2. After a couple false starts, it wasn’t until the E3 2006 demo that the team really had to think about things like making the game work and creating a “compelling user experience”. Kline adds: More »
News
Ken Levine And Co. At Work On New X-Com Game?
5:00PM Luke Plunkett | The latest Official Xbox Mag is running a rumour that’s been quietly – oh so quietly – doing the rounds for a few months now. That rumour concerns just what, exactly, 2K Boston (and I presume 2K Australia as well) are up to these days. With 2K Marin confirmed as the team behind BioShock 2, what could Ken Levine and the rest of the guys behind BioShock 1 be working on? Maybe a new X-Com game. Yes, X-Com. 2K quietly bought the rights to the series in 2007, so the rumour’s at least got a solid footing, though we’re still going to recommend you increase your daily intake of salt. If only because the thought of a new, official X-Com game is too awesome to mess around with. [Official Xbox Magazine, June 2008] More »
News
11:30AM Logan Booker | If you once worked at Auran, but no longer do thanks to last year’s unpleasantness, then you might find a new home over at the Canberra-based 2K Australia.
According to Sumea, the studio is welcoming ex-Auran folk to apply for positions at the company – specifically designers, coders and quality assurance people with plenty of experience. 2K Australia’s even happy to help out with relocation costs if you’re particularly pro. From the story:
We offer relocation assistance for mid-senior candidates and we spoil out staff members with movie nights, daily fruit and subsidised health and gym.
Sounds like a sweet deal to me.
Technically, anyone is free to apply for a position at 2K Australia, but I’m sure the ex-Auran guys appreciate the personalised invite.
2K Australia is Hiring [Sumea] More »
2K Australia Opens Doors To Ex-Auran Devs
11:30AM Logan Booker | If you once worked at Auran, but no longer do thanks to last year’s unpleasantness, then you might find a new home over at the Canberra-based 2K Australia.
According to Sumea, the studio is welcoming ex-Auran folk to apply for positions at the company – specifically designers, coders and quality assurance people with plenty of experience. 2K Australia’s even happy to help out with relocation costs if you’re particularly pro. From the story:
We offer relocation assistance for mid-senior candidates and we spoil out staff members with movie nights, daily fruit and subsidised health and gym.
Sounds like a sweet deal to me.
Technically, anyone is free to apply for a position at 2K Australia, but I’m sure the ex-Auran guys appreciate the personalised invite.
2K Australia is Hiring [Sumea] More » 
QA Is Not Taken Seriously, Seen As Career Stepping Stone
11:00AM Logan Booker | Martin Slater’s killer Bioshock post-mortem at the most recent Game Connect didn’t just highlight the less glamorous aspects of DirectX 10 – the 2K Australia lead programmer also discussed the issues facing quality assurance, and how important good QA is:
There’s a nasty trend in the industry right now, QA is not taken seriously enough. It’s not a career for people, it’s a step up for people coming out of AIE [Academy of Interactive Entertainment], coming out of Qantm, coming out of wherever. Their first taste of the games industry is a stint in QA for six months on 15 bucks an hour, [where they] knock out some bugs until they’ve been known and hopefully chat it up with a few of the other people and get a job.
According to Slater, QA needs to be taken seriously, not only as a crucial aspect of development, but a career as well. Currently, it’s perceived as a rung on the ladder to a “better” position – one that has nothing to do with QA.
More from Slater after the jump. More » 
2K Australia’s Martin Slater: “DirectX 10 Offers Your Gameplay Nothing”
9:45AM Logan Booker | I was fortunate enough to sit in on Martin Slater’s BioShock post-mortem down at Game Connect last weekend.
With hands firmly clenching his speaker podium, Slater held his ground against a steady bombardment of questions on BioShock. I found his experiences working with Microsoft’s DirectX 10 the most interesting, so I’ve replicated them here from data carefully extracted from my voice recorder:
[DirectX 10] offers your gameplay nothing … DirectX 10, probably for the next three, four, five years is not important to you. Microsoft are going to tell you everything under the sun differently. Everybody under the sun is going to tell you differently.
I’m not sure it offers your visuals anything either, judging from Crysis and its configuration file silliness.
DirectX 10 isn’t all bad though – hey, Microsoft didn’t go to all that trouble for nothing:
You’ve got the business side and you’ve got the games side. The games side, you want to minimise the technology because you want to maximise the amount of time you spend interacting with game design. DirectX 10, for all your game programmers, is a beautiful place.
I can’t help but agree with Slater. I also think people need to start understanding that DirectX 10 and Direct3D 10 are two different things – one is a collection of APIs, while the other is one of those APIs. More »
2K Australia Gets New Website
11:45AM Logan Booker | It’s just a shame that 2KAustralia.com looks almost identical to 2KBoston.com – but that’s to be expected.
At least they’re separate.
Both sites are light on features, however, the Oz version has gone to the trouble of adding a nice section with bios for some of the guys from the Canberra studio. For example, Jon Chey wrote just five lines of code for Terra Nova. He also has a secret love of “18th century English Rococo chairs”. Certainly news to me.
2K Australia [Official site, via Sumea] More » 
