No Gods or Kings: Objectivism in BioShock

Kotaku has put together a new article titled “No Gods or Kings: Objectivism in BioShock” that offers commentary from 2K’s Ken Levine about how the team used objectivism to help bring across the game’s philosophical elements.

Levine was careful how he presented to his team the idea of injecting philosophy into what was meant to be a mainstream game.

“The game doesn’t lead with objectivism,” he said. “I didn’t pitch it to the team that way. If you pitch it that way to the team you’re going to get the wrong game.”

So initially, the team concentrated on capturing a time period. They studied furniture from the pre and post-war period. Levine went out and took pictures of New York architecture. They brought in Jack Beatty, senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly, to talk about the time period. Levine also brought in a few copies of Rand’s books.

“There was a bit of an education process,” he said. “The artists mostly had to think about the art deco stuff, I wrote about 95 percent of the dialog.”

Late in the development process Levine decided that the game and the underwater city of Rapture needed more propaganda, things like the larger-than-life bust of Andrew Ryan and its slogan: No Gods or Kings. Only Man and the constant barrage of public service announcements.

“I felt the philosophy wasn’t coming across enough,” Levine said. And objectivism “was the glue that holds the aesthetics together.”