[11] Before he got into gaming, Levine worked as a computer consultant on Wall Street but admitted he was not very good at it, describing his attitude towards the job as a "slacker".

[12] In 1995, Levine was hired as a game designer by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Looking Glass Studios after replying to a job ad in Next Generation magazine.

[14] In 1997, following his work on Thief, Levine left Looking Glass along with two coworkers, Jonathan Chey and Robert Fermier, to found Irrational Games.

After the first Freedom Force game, Irrational developed the first-person shooters Tribes: Vengeance and SWAT 4, on which Levine served as writer and executive producer respectively.

[21] In 2008, Levine delivered the keynote address at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, discussing his youth as a nerd in the 1970s and how it impacted the path of his career.

[24] He stated in a 2016 interview that the stress of managing Infinite's development had affected his health and personal relationships, and rather than stay on to lead an even larger BioShock game, opted to depart from it.

[28][29] Levine personally wrote an introduction in the deluxe edition of The Art of BioShock Infinite, published by Dark Horse Comics.

[30] In June 2013, Levine had been confirmed to be writing the script for a new film version of the dystopian science fiction novel Logan's Run.

[32] In April 2016, Levine stated he was working with Interlude to write and produce the pilot episode for an interactive, live-action series based on The Twilight Zone, which will be published by CBS.

BioShock is set in 1960, where the player controls a man named Jack who is the sole survivor of a plane crash near a mysterious lighthouse in the mid-Atlantic.

[36] BioShock Infinite is set in 1912, where main protagonist Booker DeWitt must travel to Columbia, a flying city that has no fixed location, and rescue a girl named Elizabeth and bring her back to New York.