In a new interview with MTV News, Irrational Games president Ken Levine, whose upcoming shooter for Xbox 360 BioShock was one of the highlights of last year's E3 and is certainly one of the more anticipated games of 2007, weighed in on how he compares himself to other game creators and where they draw inspiration from.

Interestingly, Levine believes that most game designers are sorely lacking inspiration because, "Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is Lord of the Rings and Aliens or variations of that." He added, "There's great things in that, but you need some variety."

It's no secret that game makers often borrow elements from their peers and outside sources. Levine even admitted, "Look, I just steal from other sources." The man who describes himself as "half total freaking computer video game nerd and half pretentious, boring, Vassar-educated twit" went on to say: "You could take a bunch of liberal-arts courses and find The Matrix all throughout it. What they did is they basically said, 'Let's take a tiny bit of this and sprinkle it on top of our action movie. Because it makes our action movie seem cooler.' That's what BioShock is. The architecture ... [and] the Ayn Rand philosophy and the economic theory sprinkled on top. My challenge as a writer is to make this a nice flavor, but never forget this is a first-person shooter. Never."

While Levine is hopeful that BioShock will be a big hit, he doesn't see himself as having the kind of personality that Gears of War designer CliffyB has, which no doubt helped stir hype for the blockbuster shooter from Epic.

"Cliffy has got a sensibility and understanding -- and I mean this in the best possible way, because Gears of War is a 3 million [unit] selling game -- he has an ability to punch the audience in the nose and say, 'This is what you want, damn it, and it's awesome.' That is something I could never do. I just make what I think is cool," Levine said.

Check out more of the interview over at MTV.