Ken Levine says reverting back to Irrational was for the community

Ken Levine has explained why going back to the Irrational name was so important for its community, and reveals that Take-Two was supportive of the developer's decision.

"We've had a big community, back in the day when we did Freedom Force. We had a huge website that supported them. It kinda broke our heart a little bit when that went away and we converted to 2K Boston," Levine told Joystiq,.

"When we took the name back, Take-Two was kind enough to agree and allow us to build our community. I really wanted a website that was about interacting with fans. I don't really care about the marketing stuff, that's handled elsewhere.

"This is not a site where you get five flash videos selling you a product. This is a site about the audience and about the audience getting a better understanding of what it's like to work here, be here and getting us a better understanding of what they like and don't like about our games.

"I think the name change is about community. I think the change in name, I think a lot of people here wanted to go back to the original name. I think the press, I'm not trying to be presumptuous here, but a lot of people would write about us as Irrational Games or "formerly known as Irrational Games," and we definitely got that from the fans as well. So, we kinda looked at ourselves and said, "Maybe we should go back to the old name?"

"To Take-Two's credit, they said "OK." So we wanted to make sure we had a forum to connect with everybody and given this is the year we're going to start talking about our next product. It's very important we have that connection."

Four years ago, Take-Two acquired Irrational, and changed its name to 2K before the release of BioShock.

The official website opened this week, and Irrational also revealed its canned zombie shooter, Division 9.