2K's Levine not worried about acquisitions

2K Boston's creative director Ken Levine isn't concerned about acquisitions, as he believes it is all about development talent.

"If the people with the money don't realise that the people with the talent are critical to what they do, then the people with the talent will go elsewhere," he told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview during last week's GDC.

Since then, of course, EA announced that it has offered to acquire Take-Two, 2K Games' parent company.

While analysts have generally focused on the possible affect on Rockstar and the GTA series, EA's proposed acquisition would undoubtedly impact 2K as well.

Last week, however, Levine didn't seem worried.

"Look at the Call of Duty guys who came over from the Medal of Honor franchise. It's the talent," he explained.

"You can do a game, but if you don't have the talent - maybe you'll sell a lot of a sequel or something, but you need the talent to keep it going.

"The question is, are you building up the brand or are you damaging the brand? You have to be very careful with brands."

When asked about BioShock's benefit to the parent company during the time that GTA IV was delayed, Levine had only good things to say about Rockstar.

"I have nothing but respect and love for those guys and what they've done for me personally, in terms of being allowed to make BioShock, and for the industry in terms of redefining the audience for gaming and the kind of stuff you can deal with in gaming and the level of sophistication."

The complete interview with 2K's Ken Levine will appear on Thursday.