BioShock's Ken Levine Chose Zelda over Girlfriend

Hardcore gamers usually make a lot of strange decisions, especially concerning their priorities when it comes to their favorite video games. These days, there are a lot of men and women working in the gaming industry, but back when they were younger, most of them dedicated a lot of their time to experiencing the first video games made for emerging platforms.

One such person is the creator of BioShock, Ken Levine, who has talked with Rock, Paper, Shotgun about video games and how they had a great impact on his life. A particular story really shows just how dedicated he was to a game that shaped the way people interacted with virtual experiences: The Legend of Zelda.

“After I graduated from college, I moved to an apartment [in] San Francisco with first super-serious girlfriend,” revealed Levine. “She was a couple of years younger than me, so at the end of the summer, she was set to go back to school. On our last day together in San Francisco, I for some reason picked up The Legend of Zelda. As she stood by waiting for some romantic gesture to happen on our last day living together, she was instead treated to watching me obsessively plow through Hyrule for around 15 hours. By the time the cab showed up to take her to the airport, I realized if I had any hope of keeping her as my girlfriend, it was time to shut off the NES.”

Don't think that this story had a happy ending, as Levine concludes that: “Needless to say, we didn’t spend the next summer together.” So it seems that, at least for the creator of BioShock, Link's quest through Hyrule in the search of the famous princess was more attractive than a real girl.

All in all, it's very interesting to hear that even famous game designers had some hardcore habits when they first got into gaming and a lot of people will certainly find comfort in Levine's words, especially considering the huge popularity that The Legend of Zelda enjoyed.