Levine said, 'I have my useless liberal arts degree, so I've read stuff from Ayn Rand, George Orwell and all the sort of utopian and dystopian writings of the 20th century, and having developed the System Shock franchise, some of my first games, I felt that the atmosphere was a good one to set for a dystopian environment, one we borrowed heavily from System Shock.' Levine has mentioned an interest in 'stem cell research and the moral issues that go around.

While Irrational worked on other projects, Levine still wanted to create a successor to System Shock 2. Irrational Games produced System Shock 2, a sequel to Looking Glass's System Shock Levine pitched another System Shock sequel to Electronic Arts, but the publisher rejected the idea based on System Shock 2 's poor commercial performance. A film adaptation of the series is in development at Netflix.ĭeveloper Ken Levine founded Irrational Games in 1997 out of former members from Looking Glass Studios. The series had sold more than 41 million copies by November 2022 making the series one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. The game series has received critical and commercial acclaim. The publisher announced that a new BioShock game was in development by Cloud Chamber in December 2019. After Infinite 's release, Irrational Games was downsized and rebranded as Ghost Story Games to work on smaller titles, while 2K Games retained rights to BioShock. BioShock Infinite (2013) is thematically and narratively tied to the first games, and takes place in 1912 aboard the floating city of Columbia. BioShock (2007) and BioShock 2 (2010) take place in the 1960s in the fictional underwater city of Rapture.

Additionally, the series is notable for exploring philosophical and moral concepts with a strong in-game narrative influenced by concepts such as Objectivism, total utilitarianism, and American exceptionalism. The BioShock games combine first-person shooter and role-playing elements, giving the player freedom for how to approach combat and other situations, and are considered part of the immersive sim genre. BioShock is a retrofuturistic video game series created by Ken Levine, published by 2K and developed by several studios, including Irrational Games and 2K Marin.

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