Levine shouldn't be afraid to voice his opinion against EA.
We all know when EA grows and absorbs developers, like dead rapper Biggie once notoroiusly quoted, 'Mo money, mo problems.

A good thing he's moved to somewhere he feels Bioshock will benefit from. Good luck to him.

further sentiment that EA is a wing of the devil's own soul crushing army.

man i hate ea

go that man! cant wait for bioshock

I wish we could get away from brands.
Wouldn't it be great if games were more like music in the way that bands have a following.
Wouldn't it be better if the games creators had the following rather than the publisher or the brand.

But (hardcore) fans of bands are blind sheep generally. To the point that they buy s**t albums because they like the band. They become blinkered to opposing views.

I can't say I know anyone who buys an EA game because its from EA, or indeed any other publisher. That would be like buying only Sony published music. There's a lot of it out there, but all of varying quality. Again rabidly buying development team X's new game because they made it will ultimately lead to a few disapointments (having said that I am generally anamoured with anything that Rockstar makes)

I don't think that its possible to make development teams a selling point of games, because I don't enough people care or even know who makes the game until they're hammering on the X button to skip that first bloody cutscene everytime it loads up. And unless its explicitly pointed out (e.g. Freedom Fighters had "from the makers of Hitman 2 on the front) then casual shoppers will buy it because of the screenshots and the blurb on the back.

Brands sell because people can expect (or at least think they can) a similar and familiar quality of experience to the previous iteration.