BioShock

A city under the sea

BioShock came out in August 2007 for Windows and Xbox 360, with a PlayStation 3 version in October 2008. It is set in Rapture, a city built at the bottom of the Atlantic in the 1940s by a business magnate named Andrew Ryan, who wanted a society free of outside rules. By the time the player arrives, his dream has fallen apart.

Rapture's art deco towers, neon signs and leaking glass tunnels made it one of the most memorable settings in games. BioShock received universal acclaim and is often named among the greatest video games ever made and as proof that games can be art.

Ken Levine and Irrational

The concept came from Ken Levine, creative lead at Irrational Games, which 2K had bought and renamed 2K Boston. Levine drew on twentieth-century writers who imagined perfect societies, from Ayn Rand to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. The team, about 93 developers at its peak across 2K Boston, 2K Australia and 2K Shanghai, built the game for about 25 million dollars.

When reviews arrived, Take-Two's share price jumped nearly 20 percent in a week. The game had sold about four million copies by March 2010.

What came next

BioShock 2 followed in 2010 and BioShock Infinite, set in a floating city, in 2013. All three were remastered in BioShock: The Collection. Levine now leads Ghost Story Games, whose new game Judas is on Take-Two's list of announced titles.

In December 2019, 2K announced that a new BioShock was in development at Cloud Chamber, a studio with offices in San Francisco and Montreal. Veteran producer Rod Fergusson took charge of the studio and the franchise in 2025. Take-Two's 2026 reports list the next BioShock with no release date yet.

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