BioShock creator Ken Levine praises Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur, says gamers will “reward” games that avoid “the kind of monetisation” found in most AAA releases

BioShock creator Ken Levine is still toiling away on his upcoming first-person roguelite game Judas, his first game since BioShock Infinite. As a purely single-player adventure, Levine explains that his new project is a “very old-school game”, and admits that not every developer is able to work on a title like this in the current era.

Speaking to Nightdive Studios in a video celebrating the anniversary of System Shock 2, Levine took the time to praise Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 and Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for braving the storm and releasing single-player games without live-service gubbins or heavy monetisation.

“I grew up playing single-player games,” Levine explained. “I grew up before certain types of monetisation existed. And I’m not here at all to say ‘this is bad’ or ‘this is good’, right, that’s not really my thing.”

Levine explained that a lot of modern games now do have to have “ulterior motives” to simply get made. While Judas is built on players being able to “buy the game and… get the whole thing”, the BioShock creator knows that many creators simply can’t do that any more.

“There’s no live service, because everything we do is in service of telling the story and transporting the player,” the iconic developer said. “This is no diss on any developers who have done that because, look, games are expensive to make, and we’re very fortunate to work with a company where they believe in us enough that they say: ‘OK, you’ve been working on this thing for a long time, it’s gonna cost a reasonable amount of money, and we’re not gonna push any of that stuff on you.'”

While the BioShock creator explained that he “doesn’t blame anyone” for making use of monetisation features such as battle passes and the like, Levine also praised modern titles such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for providing players with a clear-cut single-player experience for a decent price.

“These are games that are really traditional single-player games, and they don’t have that kind of monetization in them,” Levine explained. “And I think the audiences reward those games, especially in the AAA space because they can get so expensive that people want other methods of monetization.”

As for his own project, Levine explained that Judas’ development as a single-player game without live-service shenanigans isn’t easy in the modern games industry. However, he’s happy that he can continue to deliver the types of games he likes to make.

“I’m just grateful that we’re allowed to not do that because that just frees us to purely design the game for the player’s experience,” the BioShock creator said.

Judas’ release date is currently marked as “TBA” after an earlier plan to release in March 2025. After a stint in development hell, Levine’s game is still in active development, and the creator seems quite happy with the way things are going. Hopefully, we’ll get to see more of the upcoming roguelite sometime soon.