BioShock

BioShock is a first-person shooter with role-playing customization and stealth elements, and is similar to System Shock 2. The player takes the role of silent protagonist Jack as he is guided through Rapture towards various objectives. The player battles enemies using a combination of traditional weaponry and magic-like plasmids. Aside from the wrench, a melee weapon, players can upgrade their weapons through upgrade stations scattered across the environment; these upgrades modify weapons with added range, lessened recoil, or similar improvements.

Weapons can also be equipped with different ammo types to increase effectiveness against varied targets. Plasmids confer superpowers such as casting fire or electric attacks, and in some cases can be used to access new areas—for example, melting ice blocking a path, or tripping the electric lock to open a door. Using plasmids requires EVE—the equivalent of mana—which can be replenished with EVE hypos or certain consumable food and drink. The player has a health meter that decreases when they take damage.

BioShock takes place in Rapture, an underwater city built in the 1940s by business magnate Andrew Ryan, who wanted to create a utopia for society's elite to flourish outside of government control. To protect and isolate Rapture, Ryan bans contact with the surface world. As Rapture flourished, wealth disparities grew, and con man Frank Fontaine used his influence over the disenfranchised working class to establish illegal enterprises and obtain power—enough to rival Ryan. With doctors Brigid Tenenbaum and Yi Suchong, Fontaine created his own company dedicated to researching plasmids and gene tonics.

The scientists discovered that sea slugs could produce a substance called ADAM that grants superhuman powers by rewriting a person's DNA. As ADAM became addictive and demand skyrocketed, Fontaine secretly mass-produced ADAM through slugs implanted in the stomachs of orphaned girls, nicknamed "Little Sisters". Fontaine was killed in a shootout with police, and Ryan took the opportunity to seize his assets, including control of the Little Sisters.

Ken Levine and other members of Looking Glass Studios founded Irrational Games in 1997. Their first game was System Shock 2, a sequel to Looking Glass's System Shock, and was a critical, but not commercial, success. Levine had attempted to pitch a sequel to System Shock 2 to Electronic Arts, but the publisher rejected the idea based on System Shock 2's disappointing sales. Irrational developed other games, including Freedom Force, Tribes: Vengeance, the canceled title Deep Cover, and The Lost which was never released due to legal complications.

The wanted to return to a more free-form game with strong narrative in the same style as System Shock 2, feeling there was more to do with some of the concept of that game. At the same time, they were mindful of making a successor that was more accessible to a wider variety of players. "We recognized that there were things in System Shock 2 that were holding it back, that were excessively complicated, that were opaque or hard for people to understand or that they simply didn't like," Irrational co-founder Jonathan Chey recalled.

BioShock received highly positive reviews from critics, with an average review score of 96/100 for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows, and 94/100 for PlayStation 3 on reviews aggregator Metacritic. Mainstream press reviews praised the immersive qualities of the game and its political dimension. The Boston Globe described it as "a beautiful, brutal, and disquieting computer game ... one of the best in years", and compared the game to Whittaker Chambers' 1957 riposte to Atlas Shrugged, "Big Sister Is Watching You".

Wired also mentioned the Ayn Rand connection (a partial anagram of Andrew Ryan) in a report on the game which featured a brief interview with Levine. The Chicago Sun-Times review said "I never once thought anyone would be able to create an engaging and entertaining video game around the fiction and philosophy of Ayn Rand, but that is essentially what 2K Games has done ... the rare, mature video game that succeeds in making you think while you play".

BioShock has received praise for its artistic style and compelling storytelling. In their book, Digital Culture: Understanding New Media, Glen Creeber and Royston Martin perform a case study of BioShock as a critical analysis of video games as an artistic medium. They praised the game for its visuals, sound, and ability to engage the player into the story. They viewed BioShock as a sign of the "coming of age" of video games as an artistic medium.

John Lanchester of the London Review of Books recognized BioShock as one of the first video games to break into coverage of mainstream media to be covered as a work of art arising from its narrative aspects, whereas before video games had failed to enter into the "cultural discourse", or otherwise covered due to moral controversies they created. Peter Suderman for Vox in 2016 wrote that BioShock was the first game that demonstrated that video games could be a work of art, particularly highlighting that the game plays on the theme of giving the illusion of individual control. In February 2011, the Smithsonian Institution announced it would hold an exhibit dedicated to the art of video games. Several games were chosen by the Smithsonian's curators; when the public voted for additional games they felt deserved to be included in the exhibition, BioShock was among the winners.