The controversy over Lair's poorly received motion-sensing controls is well known at this point, but 2K Boston's (formerly Irrational Games) president and creative director, Ken Levine, doesn't think developer Factor 5 deserves all the blame.

In a new podcast, the guys over at Gamers with Jobs had Levine on as a guest for the entire show and the BioShock creator shared his views on a number of gaming topics.

Speaking about Lair and Factor 5 he said, "Let me speak in these guys' defense for a minute as a game developer. I'm sure somebody came to them at some point and said, 'We have this motion control controller, and we have to make a go of it. And we really think you should try to make your game exclusively on that.'

"I think you're seeing a lot of this lately. Aren't there a lot of games where you're just like, 'Dude, can I just use the d-pad or the analog stick?' Ever since the DS came out I feel that there have been a lot of games like that. They've been so impressed by their control mechanic that they just really, really want you to play with that."

When further pressed by the podcast hosts, Levine suggested that most motion control-based games haven't worked that well. "Is there a game, with the exception of Wii Sports, that you've been thrilled that there's no option to go back to a regular d-pad?" he said.

As for Lair, Levine further speculated, "[Sony] had an expensive lawsuit with that rumble company [Immersion] so they sort of seemingly at the last minute threw in this motion control stuff and they have to follow through on that; from a corporate standpoint they need to follow through on that. I think Lair came out of that to some degree." He added, "I think there may be an excellent game in there... but the [motion control] limitation is painful right now."

As for Sony's other recent PS3 game, Heavenly Sword, Levine was impressed � just not by the gameplay. "Everything about it except the core gameplay is absolutely stunning," he said. "... There's some really nice stuff that surprised me and I'm so not used to being surprised by video game stories that I just appreciated [the game] for that, let alone the technical achievement of the character models."

Levine talks about a variety of other interesting topics, including his own BioShock. Check out the two-hour long podcast at the link above for more.