BioShock 4

Developer Ken Levine founded Irrational Games in 1997 out of former members from Looking Glass Studios. 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. While Irrational worked on other projects, Levine still wanted to create a successor to System Shock 2. 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 [it]." In regard to artistic influences, Levine cited the books Nineteen Eighty-Four and Logan's Run, which represent societies that have "really interesting ideas screwed up by the fact that we're people." Walking through Rockefeller Center near the GE Building in New York City, Levine was inspired by the art deco styling of Rockefeller Center to make a similarly inspired space that had not been experienced in the first-person shooter genre.

The series has received critical acclaim for its morality-based storyline, immersive environments, and unique settings. It is commonly listed among both audiences and critics as one of the greatest video game series of all time and a demonstration of video game as an art form. The original's plot twist, where the player discovers that the player-character Jack has been coerced into events by the trigger phrase, "Would you kindly...", is considered one of the strongest narrative elements of recent games, in part that it subverted the expectation that the player has control and influence on the game.

In February 2011 the Smithsonian Institution announced it would be holding an exhibit dedicated to the art of video games. Several games were chosen initially and the public could vote for which games they felt deserved to be displayed via a poll on the exhibit's website. BioShock was considered a front runner to be displayed because of its status as a game that demonstrated how artistic the medium can be. 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.