Let's destroy your dreams now: Our friend KennyL did not talk about BioShock 2. Instead, Ken Levine kicked off Penny Arcade Expo by talking about his journey from from sex-intrigued comic nerd to Hollywood scribe and back to geekdom (which may in fact be the future plot of BioShock 2, but that is as of now unconfirmed). Regardless, Levine's keynote was a hysterical, vulgar and self-deprecating tribute to puberty and gaming.

Levine broke up into three acts, each different parts of his life. In part one, Levine described how he discoverd the adult with science fiction, from his dream to sleep with The Scarlet Witch to his dream to sleep with Jessica-5 from Logan's Run (both the comic book character and the film version's actress). "I wanted to smoke cigarettes and listen to Deep Purple," he said. "I didn't want to go to bed [thinking about Battlestar Galactica], but I did."

Act 2 was on the discovery of tribes, and how how his Dungeons & Dragons group moved onto girls. "The truth is, my tribal brothers were simply ahead of me in the game." In Act 3, in which our friend is a failed movie scribe, Levine ends up at Looking Glass Studios (System Shock). The rest, as you know, is history.

In his near-final last words, Levine offers a thanks to Tycho and Gabe, "We are united by a common element. Its not the color of our skin or our ideology or where we come from. No it's that we're a giant bunch of fucking nerds," he said to a roaring applause. Listen to it yourself:

It should come as no surprise that our favorite film around Joystiq HQ is Matthew McConaughey starrer Fool's Gold. We even have an adorable little Fool's Gold drinking game where ... well, we get really drunk and watch Fool's Gold. It's precious. Now, Ken Levine tells videogaming247 that, despite what we all assumed, the BioShock movie will be little to nothing like Fool's Gold!

"You're always going to be worried that in that first meeting they're going to be, like, 'OK, it's Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey on a desert island hunting for pirate treasure,' but it's not going to go that way," he said. Apparently, KennyL thinks director Gore Verbinski and crew "will very much honor the dramatic and thematic elements of the game."

... So you're saying there's not even room for Alexis Dziena as a ditzy heiress who proves to herself that she has something more to offer besides a killer body and a 1,000-watt smile? Why are you even making this movie?

News Flash: BioShock helm Ken "KennyL" Levine is working on a new game that will totally blow your mind. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Levine sidestepped talking about his new project, only to say it is, "something very, very different, so it's a little scary - because we don't know what it is, exactly."

He said the focus would be on "people's relationship with the game over the long term. That's what we're thinking about, but it's about as clear as I can be." Our hope is that he's reused some ideas from the original BioShock plan and is now poised to make a game of Nazis on a tropical island, more affectionately dubbed Wolfenstein Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

Ken Levine may be entering the upper echelon of game designers. According to a source from The New York Post, the BioShock creator is renegotiating his contract with Take-Two to allow more creative control over his projects and – this is the key – royalties (here called "points") "based on how much business the next installment of 'BioShock' and any other games that he develops produce."

Given we don't know exactly to what extent Levine will be working on BioShock sequels, if at all, it's pretty interesting to hear that Levine could be given royalties for a creating a concept, even without working on a project directly. As noted by Variety, we'd only imagine a few notable game icons with this much weight (e.g. Sid Meier, Will Wright).

This is all rumor at the moment, as neither Take Two's people or Levine's people are talking, but we're watching the re-negotiating (as are apparently the tabloids) closely.

[Via The Cut Scene]

We've heard rumors of it for months and now it seems that the most recent one circulated by 1UP's Quartermann is indeed on the money: BioShock is coming to the PS3. The news will apparently drop in the July issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly.

All we know at this point is that the game may get some graphical improvements, it's due in time for the 2008 holiday season and that the port is being headed up by new BioShock creative director Jordan Thomas, a designer on the original. Check out the July issue of EGM for screens and some more info.

With just a handful of months to go before the annual Penny Arcade Expo opens its doors again, you may be wondering who will be taking to the stage to the deliver the August event's keynote address. Organizers have announced that the opening speech will be given by none other than 2K Boston president and creative director Ken Levine.

Says Penny Arcade business mastermind, "Obviously, Ken is pimp supreme...We're super excited to have him open up the show." Given Levine's involvement with one of last year's biggest releases as well as a sequel that already ranks among our most anticipated in 2009, we're sure he'll have plenty to talk about -- and we expect to be left hanging on every word.

MSNBC asked 2K Boston's Ken Levine, creator of BioShock, what his top five games of all time are. Levine gets double bonus points for picking cult favorite Beyond Good and Evil, which he says "managed to combine whimsy and dystopia in one unforgettable package." Levine's other picks are:

• Civilization IV
• World of Warcraft
• Heroes of Might and Magic 2
• Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Beyond Good and Evil

The best part of the bite-sized feature is when Levine admits that World of Warcraft is his "always-reliable secret shame." If Ken Levine can admit it, maybe others will find the strength to do it as well.

We got this information from yesterday's Take Two earnings call, but we wanted to break it out just to make sure you BioShock fans out there could get some sleep tonight. Chairman Strauss Zelnick stated during the call that series creator Ken Levine "will be working on BioShock 2."

Now, it remains to be seen whether he'll be working on the game or just sending encouraging email forwards about angels and pictures of cats hanging on branches to the 2K Marin team doing the bulk of the work. As gigantic, total, militant fans of BioShock, we certainly hope it's the former.

After sales of brainy first-person shooter BioShock were so strong, a sequel seemed like all but a foregone conclusion. 2K Games put any remaining doubt to bed today, revealing that BioShock 2 is due to hit shelves in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2009, which would put it between August and October of 2009. The game is being developed not by Ken Levine's 2K Boston, but rather 2K Marin, which reportedly has some BioShock staffers on board. At this point, we don't know what (if any) involvement Levine will have, nor do we know what systems it will be on.

The info came in an investor relations report released by the company today. Even though we figured the game was in the works, we have to admit we're a little surprised by the window, just two years after its predecessor. But you're not going to hear us complaining. If it means more Big Daddies and Little Sisters, we don't really care where we get it.

Throughout his discussion of BioShock's story on Wednesday, Ken Levine referenced the folks at Valve and the top notch work they had done on games like Half-Life 2. Before the talk started we overheard him talking about the Steamworks announcement, and when we joined a large discussion of attendees after the event ended we asked the man himself what he thought.

What do you think of the Steamworks announcement?

"I think the great thing about Valve is they understand you don't have to make every penny off of everybody every second to make the big dollar. Google has a similar approach. You don't feel like you're being constantly fleeced - Valve has a very sophisticated model, they're very smart guys, and I think it's really exciting. It's great for developers. It's great for Valve, it's great for everybody else, and it's great for people making games.

How much do you think Steam helped BioShock?

"I think one of the great things about Valve is that they are developers. I've worked with some big companies, and as developers they're professional, they're on the ball, I can't think of a single mistake that they made. They're taking it very seriously."

Yesterday morning we had the chance to listen to Ken Levine speak on the storytelling process behind his hit title, BioShock. The quick Zero Punctuation video got big laughs, but there was another video during the presentation that more accurately represented what Ken was talking about. Above is a picture of a stage in the development of the Little Sisters, a hint at other (stranger?) versions of Rapture and its denizens. You can catch other stages in the Sisters development in our gallery of photos from the talk.

Like the Little Sisters concept, the video itself shows an early version of Rapture. The beautiful art-deco world we know and love is an ugly, boxy, warehouse of a place. Check it out below the cut for raging Big Daddies, worm-like Little sSsters, and one of the quickest "time to crate" experiences in gaming.

Ken Levine may be the guy who gets interrupted at the Spike VGAs, but when he's at the Game Developer's Conference he is a god among nerds, whose every step echoes through the halls of the Moscone Center like Thor ... if Thor made good games.

Want proof? Check out the crowd that swarmed Levine to touch the hem of his garment after his lecture at the conference Wednesday morning. That's how Ken rolls. ... Wait. Do you think he's reading this right now? [swoon]

Ken Levine gave an amazing talk this morning on the process of crafting BioShock's story. There were two video presentations during the course of the talk and one of them was a hilarious mile-a-minute clip from Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - the twisted mind behind the Escapist's Zero Punctuation. We have a video of the clip, which was introduced by Levine as "their original idea for how to start BioShock", below the cut.

"Details seem like the hard work, they seem like they important part, but they're not your friend. They really just drag you down."

It's a surprising message from BioShock developer Ken Levine, who spoke this morning at the GDC. But despite how intricate his game was, he said that plotting details are (with a few exceptions) best left out. He says that the best storyteller is the one that might seem the most benign: The world.

"What is he engaged in all of the time? What's right there in his face? He's engaged in the world," he said.

MTV Multiplayer has been on a quest recently to find the very best video game animal, and they've begun with man's best ... non-mechanical mode of transportation, the horse. Now a panel of experts, that included 2K Boston's Ken Levine and Penny Arcade's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik, are back with their decision: Epona, Link's trusty steed in several Legend of Zelda games.

But controversy is a-brewin' dear reader. For while the esteemed panel chose Epona, the readers have selected Agro of Shadow of the Colossus fame. Which one will go on to do battle with the other members of the animal kingdom? We're sure the competitors wait with baited, oat-scented breath to learn.