Irrational Games: A Long Way to Bioshock

Irrational Games: A Statue of Atlas

The Humble Beginnings of Irrational Games

Ken Levine, founder of Irrational Games, stood beside the Rockefeller Center in New York City. The Center, a 22-acre complex of Art Deco buildings in the heart of the city, still stands today. Ideas for the site began before the Great Depression. However, the event forced then-owner of the site, Columbia University, to lease the land to oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

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Rockefeller, like his contemporaries J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, represented the rapid, unregulated expansion of American capitalism throughout the late 1800s. Each man fulfilled his own version of the American dream, creating multi-billion-dollar empires and sparking excessive controversies. At the center of Rockefeller Plaza lays a statue of Atlas, the Greek titan the Gods forced to carry the entire world upon his shoulders.

“I am Andrew Ryan, and I am here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?”

Bioshock

The Meaning of Rapture

People remember men like Rockefeller for their vast amount of wealth. But history also describes a darker side to these men’s power and the time period they embodied.

Rockefeller was one of the richest men in history, with an estimated net worth of $400 billion dollars in current dollars. Even so, he couldn’t have amassed that amount of wealth without the business-friendly policies of the time and all the other Americans who worked for him.

It was from Levine’s experience at Rockefeller Center, and seeing the Atlas statue within it, that led him to first conceive the ideas for Bioshock.

The Story of Ken Levine

Levine was born in Flushing, New York in 1966. He hadn’t originally planned on being in the video game industry. Like former Naughty Dog employee Amy Hennig, Levine originally sought a job in film.

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He graduated from Vassar College in 1988 with a BA in drama. Soon after, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his passion for film. In 1995, Levine applied to a job at Looking Glass Studios after having written two film screenplays. The studio hired him as a game designer. At Looking Glass, Levine worked on stealth game Thief: The Dark Project.

Leaving Looking Glass

In 1997, Levine left Looking Glass Studios with coworkers Jonathan Chey and Robert Fermier to found Irrational Games. In 2006, American publisher Take-Two Interactive acquired the studio.

Between 2007 and 2009, the studio was rebranded as 2K Boston, and in February 2017, the studio changed its name to Ghost Story Games. At that time, the studio announced that it had shed the majority of its workers but was still operating under Take-Two Interactive.

Nevertheless, Levine has worked at the studio since its founding, creating narrative-heavy games that have changed the ways video games tell their stories.

Irrational Games Finds Its Calling

Irrational Games’ first big project was System Shock 2. The game released to critical acclaim for its innovation in the survival horror genre and interesting take on narrative.

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While the project began as a standalone series, it eventually morphed into the sequel to 1994’s System Shock. It was Levine’s former employer, Looking Glass Studios, that developed the first game in the series.

System Shock takes place in the year 2072, where the player must stop the plans of a rogue A.I. called SHODAN. Like its sequel, System Shock became known for its unique atmosphere and plot.

The game sold 170,000 copies, which is certainly low by today’s standards. Still, at the time, the game was not considered a complete flop sales-wise. Even so, Looking Glass Studios lost money on the game.

System Shock 2 was a joint project between Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. Published by Electronic Arts, the 1999 game received stellar reviews. Unfortunately, it failed to meet sales expectations like its predecessor.

The year after, in 2000, Looking Glass Studios closed down for financial issues. Most of their games, while consistently praised by critics, did not sell too well.

System Shock to Bioshock

The spirit of System Shock lived on in Irrational Games’ future games, including Bioshock. It is for this reason that Bioshock is often considered the spiritual successor to System Shock 2. While the games are not related plot-wise, they share a lot of the same innovation and horror elements in regard to the narrative structure and gameplay.

Before Bioshock, however, the studio faced some turmoil. Between 1999 and 2000, the studio briefly worked on a PC game called Deep Cover, but it was quickly scrapped.

It then set to work on a game called The Lost, which the studio was supposed to release in 2002 on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Based on Dante’s Inferno, the game was caught in development hell as critics who previewed the game were concerned about its present state. A 2002 article from IGN described how the game’s framerate was unsteady and parts of the game were “unstable.”

The same year, Irrational Games got into legal trouble with publisher Crave Entertainment. As such, the studio canceled the game. It was not just legal trouble that led to the game’s termination, however. Levine later described the game’s problems, saying, “I’m not going to kid you, the game is not good…I realized that we just weren’t going to make fans happy. It just didn’t work…as a company, confidence-wise, it really almost sunk us.”

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Between 2002 and 2006, the studio developed several new games that cemented its esteem in the eyes of gamers. In 2004, Irrational Games released sci-fi FPS Tribes: Vengeance, receiving a Metacritic score of 83/100. At the 2004 Australian Game Developer Awards, Tribes: Vengeance received both the “Best Game of 2004” award and the “Best PC Game” award.

Beginning Development on Bioshock

The studio released three more small PC exclusive games before 2K purchased it. 2K is one of the publishing arms of American video game giant Take-Two Interactive.

Upon the purchase, Levine said, “Fans will be blown away when they see the next-generation titles we are working on.” Bioshock’s 2007 release date was announced in a contemporaneous press release. So was the fact that Irrational Games was not just working on Bioshock, but other next-generation titles as well.

Bioshock’s development originated in 2002, the same year the studio stopped development of The Lost. Like many big games, it had to undergo significant changes before Irrational released it on Windows and the Xbox 360 in 2007.

The studio didn’t release the game on the PS3 until 2008, representing a development time of roughly 5-6 years.

Irrational Games Starts With the Combat

Before considering the specific theme of the game, the developers at Irrational first created the core gameplay concept. They imagined the game involving three groups of characters: drones, protectors, and harvesters. The drones would have possession of some valuable resource and be protected by the aptly-named protectors. Finally, the harvesters would seek to steal the resources.

These characters would eventually become the iconic Little Sisters, Big Daddies, and Splicers. At the time, they were merely concepts thrown about in pre-development.

In the beginning, the game faced the same treatment that occurred in many of Irrational Games’ canceled projects. Indeed, the studio nearly canceled Bioshock. But Irrational revitalized it in a new direction. The lack of enthusiasm for the early version of the game centered around the original idea for the game’s plot and setting.

Crafting the Story

Once the notion of the drones, protectors, and harvesters came about, the developers created a highly political setting to encompass the interactions between these characters. System Shock 2 clearly inspired the game’s setting.

In this original version, the player took on the role of cult deprogrammer Carlos Cuello aboard a space station overrun with monsters.

A deprogrammer’s job is to revert someone with controversial beliefs or orientations into someone “normal.” Often hired by the government, a deprogrammer is inherently political, making the original version of Bioshock possibly even more political than the end result.

The team wasn’t too fond of the game’s premise due to its highly political nature. That is why Irrational considered canceling the project.

However, by this time, gaming websites and magazines were beginning to report that Irrational Games was developing a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. The excitement in the press and among gamers revived the morale of the team, and the studio decided to revamp Bioshock.

In 2004, 2K acquired Irrational Games, and the company decided to publish the game. 2K put its faith in Bioshock based solely on the concept of the drones, protectors, and harvesters. This provided the team with the necessary freedom to rethink the game’s premise and setting.

Even then, the game was still significantly different from what Irrational later released. Bioshock took place in an abandoned Nazi laboratory from World War II where the Nazis had developed experiments leading to the formation of the drones, protectors, and harvesters.

From Concept to Playable

At this point, the game was more than just a concept. Gaming websites and magazines were able to preview the game and discuss it in detail. If you read a Bioshock preview from 2004, the writer most likely discusses this Nazi laboratory with mutated creatures who were once human.

Nevertheless, even while the setting changed drastically, many of the gameplay elements and design were in that initial version of the game. For example, the player had the ability to use plasmids, a crucial gameplay component of the released Bioshock. Also, audio recordings were a key component of the game’s narrative.

2004-2007 was the period when the game began to morph into the world of Rapture with Little Sisters, Big Daddies, and Splicers playing the roles of the drones, protectors, and harvesters, respectively.

Ayn Rand and Objectivism

It was during Levine’s time in New York City, viewing the historic Rockefeller Center, when he began to incorporate ideas of Ayn Rand and Objectivism into the game’s story.

The philosophy of Ayn Rand is complex, but it is probably closest to the ideals of libertarianism in the modern day. For an Objectivist, the happiness of the individual is the ideal. In order for someone to maximize his or her own happiness, this person must be selfish. Only through one’s selfishness can one be happy, since the person is the only one who knows what he or she enjoys.

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While this may seem callous, Rand believed that if everyone simply maximized his or her own happiness, society would be a better place where the individual reigns supreme. So, for example, if there is a homeless person in the street, it is not the government’s duty to force someone to provide money to the homeless person.

Instead, altruism may be a contributing factor to one’s happiness, and so people will donate to the homeless without the need for an intervening government. In this manner, Rand rejected altruism for its own sake, believing that only by pursuing one’s own interests can one truly be moral. One should donate to the poor because it is in one’s own interest, not because society deems it to be moral.

More specifically, a classic example in Objectivism is the occupation of the lawyer. This individual benefits society only by fulfilling his or her own self-interests. If the lawyer is selfish, he or she will try to be the best lawyer possible for the purpose of maximizing wealth. However, the fact that the lawyer is maximizing his or her own wealth is irrelevant. By being selfish, society now has a fantastic lawyer who can defend others.

Irrational Games Incorporates Objectivism Into Bioshock

Rand stressed the greatness of the individual. She resented the government’s repression of individual liberties, happiness, and success. She wrote several lengthy novels, most notably 1943’s The Fountainhead and 1957’s Atlas Shrugged. The novels are works of fiction that incorporate her philosophy into the characters and plot.

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Rand was born in the Soviet Union and moved to the United States in 1926. It was her experience with despotism that led her to reject notions of communism, socialism, and the expansive state. It was people like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan who would have embraced Rand’s ideas.

Atlas is a symbolic representation of Objectivism. Whether that be Atlas in Bioshock, the novel Atlas Shrugged, or the statue of Atlas in the Rockefeller Center, the meaning is essentially the same. When Levine stood next to Rockefeller Center and saw the statue of Atlas, he began to formulate the world of Rapture.

Rapture Is Born

By this point, the team had already developed the notion of Rapture. However, the world expanded with Levine’s insight.

He considered a society completely based on Rand’s ideas. A man like Andrew Ryan, who believed in the worth and agency of the individual, would be the founder. Through this lens, the opening monologue of Bioshock becomes far more illuminating.

Consider once again the questions Ryan asks the protagonist as he descends into the world of Rapture: “Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?”

For Rand, the answer would be that the government should not interfere in the life of the individual. Ryan is clearly an Objectivist. In fact, Ryan’s background is remarkably similar to that of Rand. Like Rand, Andrew Ryan was a Russian Jew who immigrated to the United States.

In Russia, he witnessed the rise of the Bolsheviks and the despotism of tyranny, and he resented it. Once in the United States, he changed his name to Andrew Ryan, a Western-sounding name that coincided with his belief in a world of freedom without tyranny. In essence, he “chose…Rapture.”

Irrational Games Clearly Does Not Agree With Ayn Rand

Rapture was once prosperous, but for Levine, a world of selfishness simply cannot survive. The people of Rapture were once like Americans in the 1920s or the 1950s.

These periods were times of American expansion before the onset of additional government intervention. President Franklin Roosevelt increased government oversight with the New Deal and programs like Social Security. President Lyndon Johnson instituted the Great Society and programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

When Bioshock Takes Place

Bioshock is set in 1960, two years after Rapture officially falls apart. Ryan created the city in the 1940s. The man was a visionary who wished to create a utopia underwater. Rapture initially was wonderful for its inhabitants. Ryan, like Rand, rejected religion and believed in science and reason. Rapture was a city of scientific progress, and people quickly discovered ADAM, a type of genetic material created by sea slugs in the ocean.

ADAM is based on stem cells. These cells can repair parts of the body due to their capacity to develop into a variety of important body cells. The people of Rapture quickly figured out that ADAM could be used to alter the body’s DNA to grant special powers and abilities to humans.

Rapture’s citizens began to harness the power of plasmids. These plasmids were serums that used ADAM to implant stem cells into the body and give the human access to superpowers.

The player uses these superpowers, which range from shooting fireballs to freezing people, to defeat the enemies in the game. In order to protect the progress of Rapture, Ryan bans any contact with the outside world.

Rapture Falls Apart

Like in any utopia, Rapture quickly begins to fall apart. Part of the promise of Rapture was that the world’s greatest minds would be able to come to the city to be free to pursue their own dreams.

Rapture’s slogan was “No Gods or kings. Only man,” a clear representation of Objectivist beliefs. Unfortunately, class divisions quickly began to foment in Rapture. Former gangster Frank Fontaine, one of the main characters in Bioshock, decides to take advantage of this anger among the people.

He creates a black market with the outside world to build his wealth. After that, he develops an industry where even the common people can harness the power of ADAM and plasmids. To do this, however, required a plan that creates the emotional aspect of the player’s experience with Bioshock.

He essentially takes orphaned girls, implants the sea slugs into their stomachs, and uses them to mass-produce ADAM. Through the cheap development of ADAM, he is able to build an army full of commoners with the capabilities of plasmids. The girls are nicknamed “Little Sisters,” representing the drones of Bioshock’s original vision.

Rapture’s First War

Fontaine uses his army to initiate a war against Ryan, and the people believe Fontaine dies in the ensuing battle. The people are dismayed, and Ryan wins the war.

Ryan then seizes all of Fontaine’s plasmid factories, where the Little Sisters are held, to prevent the commoners from obtaining the power of the plasmids. Already, Rapture’s transformation from a free utopia into a despotic dystopia is underway.

A man named Atlas seizes the opportunity to act as the voice for the common people following the perceived death of Fontaine. For people who have read Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Atlas is the equivalent of the book’s mysterious John Galt.

In the game, the player can see the phrase “Who is Atlas?” scattered around Rapture. This is a clear influence from Atlas Shrugged, where the protagonist hears the strange words “Who is John Galt?” throughout the novel.

Atlas is the inspiration of the people following Fontaine’s disappearance, and he encourages them to revolt against Ryan. Specifically, he instructs them to raid the plasmid factories. At the factories, Ryan is attempting to ensure that the people cannot use the powers of the plasmids to initiate another war against him.

Irrational Games Creates The Splicers and Big Daddies

Ryan fears Atlas’s attempts at another coup. Therefore, he creates the Big Daddies to protect the Little Sisters. The Big Daddies are perhaps the most iconic characters of Bioshock, with one of the mutated humans featured on the game’s front cover.

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The Big Daddies are people who had an excessive amount of ADAM pumped into them. Their skin is then grafted into diving suits. They are provided with deadly weaponry like a rivet gun and drill.

The Big Daddies no longer have any free will. They roam Rapture with the sole job of protecting the Little Sisters. Remember that Objectivism is all about the power of free will. By having Ryan taking away free will, Irrational Games is criticizing the ideology.

At the same time, Ryan takes members of the population and enhances them with plasmids. He dubs these people “Splicers.” Ryan releases pheromones into the atmosphere of Rapture to control them.

Through the excessive amount of ADAM pumped into their systems, the Splicers become insane. It is these characters whom the player encounters upon entering Rapture and who serve as the common enemies of the game.

The Rapture Civil War

In 1958, the strife in Rapture finally leads to a Civil War. Atlas leads the common people to revolt against Ryan. Ryan uses his army of Splicers and Big Daddies against the people of Rapture. By 1960, when the main character finds himself in Rapture, the once charming city has completely fallen apart.

Irrational Games Finds Success With Bioshock

Irrational Games released Bioshock in 2007 to astounding critical acclaim. It was one of the first games with a serious and complex story that transcended the world of video games. Even outlets like The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times reviewed and praised the game.

Bioshock landed a 96/100 Metacritic score on the Xbox 360 and is still praised as one of the best games ever. The game would quickly sell over 4 million copies.

Due to the game’s niche moral philosophy, the team initially wasn’t sure it would sell well. In fact, Levine often recalls the story when a focus group that played the game bashed it to his face. “It was pretty depressing,” said Levine. “The guy who managed the focus group came to us afterwards. It was like the doctor telling you you’ve got two weeks to live. He was saying, ‘Yep, you guys are kind of fucked.’”

The Little Sisters

One more point on the game itself and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Consider the role of the Little Sisters in the first Bioshock.

There are 21 Little Sisters in the game, and the player has the ability to either harvest or save each one. If the player harvests a Little Sister, he gains ADAM, which can be used to purchase plasmids. By saving a Little Sister, the player receives roughly half the amount of ADAM. In exchange, the player also receives some other gifts like health kits, an exclusive plasmid, and the knowledge that he didn’t subject a Little Sister to future torment for the sole sake of obtaining ADAM.

By the end of the game, the player can receive much of the missed ADAM even by saving the Little Sisters. Still, harvesting them certainly makes the first part of the game easier. The player’s choices also affect the final ending of the game.

Consider this aspect of the game under the lens of Objectivism. If the player harvests the Little Sisters, he is making the Randian choice. This is the selfish option. If the player saves the Little Sisters, he is making the compassionate choice.

However, it’s really even more complicated than that. Remember the example of the lawyer? Well, acting in self-interest doesn’t mean making an immoral choice.

Saving the Little Sisters could be selfish. If the player expects some kind of return from saving the Little Sisters, he is making a selfish choice. In the game, the player does end up being rewarded for saving them. Indeed, the game demonstrates that the “selfish” choice isn’t always clear.

Irrational Games Reflects on Bioshock

Even now, Levine admits that not every part of the game was on par with Bioshock’s overall quality. In one interview, he modestly said, “The gunplay was good but not great. We didn’t have a ton of experience with that. And the ending lagged a little bit.”

The final boss fight of the game, which Levine alludes to here, is commonly agreed to among gamers as one of the weakest parts of the game. The player finally confronts Frank Fontaine, the gangster who masqueraded as Atlas and manipulated the player throughout the game.

Fontaine’s body is mutated due to the effects of ADAM, and for some reason—is completely naked. Levine commonly jokes about this last part of the game. In a Tweet on Yom Kippur in 2018, he wrote, “Today is the Jewish day of the atonement, it seems. So I’m here to apologize for the naked Atlas boss battle at the end of Bioshock.”

The Worth of Video Games

For Levine, the point of Bioshock was not to prove the worth of video games to outsiders. Levine always believed in the worth of video games in and of themselves. He didn’t feel like it was necessary to prove video games to people who will simply never accept them.

“One thing BioShock did for people was it became that thing that people could point to and say, ‘See, Mom! It’s serious!’…I was never ashamed to play video games. I never needed something to point to, to say, ‘This is why I do it.’”

Kenn Levine

Irrational Games After Bioshock

There’s a lot that happened after Bioshock. For that reason, I’m going to save that story for another day. For the time being, what I’ll say is that there was a long gap between Bioshock and Irrational’s next game: Bioshock Infinite.

If you haven’t noticed, Irrational Games (and now Ghost Story Games) takes a long time to develop games. The studio has also canceled a lot of them.

Beginning in 2006, the studio began developing Division 9, another game that the studio ended up canceling. Division 9 was a tactical zombie shooter based on the studio’s SWAT series. Irrational Games also ended up canceling a Bioshock game on the PlayStation Vita.

Alright, that’s enough for one story. Thank you for reading if you got this far! Let me know your thoughts!

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This article is the property of Damon Todd and The Prisoner Book. Any reproduction of this post on external sites without clear citation and approval from Damon Todd is plagiarism and will be met with legal action. Direct quotes with clear citation are fine. If you see this paragraph on a website other than prisonerbook.com, please return to The Prisoner Book website. Also note that there are several Amazon affiliate links in this article. I am required to disclose that I receive a commission upon the successful sale of products from referral links on this page. However, I am in no way obligated to promote nor praise any product, and I have discretion over which products I choose in my stories.

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