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.

[6][7][8] 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.

"[9] 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.

These weapons and powers can be used in various combinations to aid in defeating foes; for example, shocking a pool of water will electrocute the enemies standing in the liquid.

The other thing that makes it a BioShock game, it's about having a huge toolset of power and a huge range of challenges, and you being able to drive how you solve those challenges.Following from its influences in System Shock 2, the games in the BioShock series broadly raise the question of free will of the central character, often acting at suggestions of an unreliable narrator who is using the character for their own ulterior motives.

[19][20] In BioShock, the player-character follows instructions from a man named Atlas to kill Andrew Ryan, the founder of the underwater city of Rapture.

[27] Professor Ryan Lizardi draws parallels between BioShock 2's themes of community versus the individual and the issues of McCarthyism and the hippie movement that occurred around the time period of the game's setting.

[33] Separately, BioShock Infinite explores concepts related to multiple realities and "constants and variables",[34][35] and understanding the impacts of free will, choice and consequences on one's actions.

The game was critically very well received, with positive reviews that praised its "morality-based" storyline, immersive environment and Ayn Rand-inspired dystopian back-story.

Built in the late 1940s by business tycoon Andrew Ryan, it was meant to be a laissez-faire social environment for individuals to work, live, and prosper out of the increasingly oppressive hands of the world's governments and authorities.

Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum, Dr. Yi Suchong, and other scientists discovered a substance called ADAM, harvested from sea slugs that could be made into plasmids that gave the user psychokinetic powers.

Frank Fontaine, a former gangster and businessman who brought black market goods to Rapture, found a way to harvest ADAM by implanting the slugs in the bodies of young girls, "Little Sisters", and profited from this.

Jordan Thomas, level designer on the first BioShock, served as creative director, and was one of several Irrational Games members to join the new effort.

Prior to the events of BioShock, Lamb used mind control to have the Big Daddy Delta (the player-character) commit suicide, thus severing the physiological bond between him and her daughter Eleanor, the Little Sister he was assigned to protect.

Delta is resurrected ten years later by Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters and is told that unless he re-establishes his bond with Eleanor soon, he will fall into a coma or die once more.

BioShock Infinite takes place in 1912 in Columbia, a city suspended in the air through "quantum levitation", built and launched in 1893 by the American government during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, to much fanfare and publicity.

After being ordered to return to American soil, Columbia seceded from the United States and relocated above the clouds, with its whereabouts unknown to the world.

The player-character, Booker DeWitt, a disgraced member of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency discharged after his actions at the Wounded Knee Massacre, is sent to Columbia by Robert and Rosalind Lutece (the Lutece twins) to recover Elizabeth, a young woman that had been kidnapped by Columbia's leader, Zachary Comstock, and protected by the robotic Songbird.

Booker comes to discover that Elizabeth is his daughter and that Comstock is a version of himself from one of numerous parallel universes whom had accepted a baptism to atone for his actions at Wounded Knee and established the beliefs that led to Columbia's founding.

[43] Elizabeth finds one version of Comstock has ended up in the city of Rapture from BioShock, having reverted to his birth name of Booker DeWitt and working as a private detective.

Elizabeth joins him as they search for a missing girl named Sally, but become caught up in the events of Atlas' war against Andrew Ryan.

They find that scientists of Rapture have been working with those on Columbia through Rifts, sharing technology such as Plasmids and Vigors, and the Big Daddies and Songbird.

[45] Irrational believed the studio would be able to develop a game that would provide "challenging puzzles in a steampunk style", according to Lazy 8's founder, Rob Jagnow.

[47] In a 2016 interview, Levine explained that the pressure and stress of managing a large team as he had to for Infinite had impacted his health and personal relationships, and rather than stay on to build a larger game, decided to leave the BioShock franchise.

[69][70] BioShock Infinite: Mind in Revolt is a novella written by Joe Fielder and Ken Levine, offering insight to the world of Columbia and the motivations of Daisy Fitzroy, the leader of the Vox Populi.

[73] With the return to Rapture in BioShock 2, Schyman had the opportunity to revisit the setting, writing new music while retaining some elements and motifs from the first game, such as solo violins and mid-20th century compositional techniques.

Feeling that classical music of the time felt much more European than American, he opted to use less full orchestration and simpler string arrangements instead.

[78] Infinite features anachronistic covers of popular pop songs, such as Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and a barbershop quartet version of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows".

The first, initially announced in 2008, was to be directed by Gore Verbinski and written by John Logan, with Universal Pictures distributing and 2K Games involvement.

Though Universal brought in a new director to make the film on a smaller budget, Levine felt the new direction was not true to the game and ended the project.