BioShock games are known for their city settings, but those settings, their philosophies, and their descent into dystopias criticizes would be nothing without the time period each game is set in. The original game tackles Objectivism and is set just three years after the publication of Atlas Shrugged. BioShock Infinite takes on American exceptionalism and racism in 1912 as the USA is on the cusp of becoming a dominant world power. BioShock 4 needs to follow suite.
BioShock 4’s setting will need to help Cloud Chamber, the series’ new development studio, focus in on a particular ideology while surrounding itself with an intense aesthetic from the time. For those reasons and more, the 1970s would be a fantastic setting for the next BioShock game.
Over the last decade, pop culture has increasingly focused on the 1980s and ‘90s as the people who grew up in those decades formed a new audience for media looking to cash in nostalgia. However, by this point, the neon aesthetics and Steven Spielberg references have become worn out. The 1970s had its own intense aesthetic culture from disco to the birth of punk as people emerging from the social revolution of the 1960s were left with one huge question: what’s next?
From the late ‘60s through the ‘70s, the American popular consciousness saw the optimistic belief in the revolutionary ideals of the past decade give way to mass riots, multiple high profile assassinations, murderous and suicidal cults, and an increasing focus on improving and enriching the individual that appealed to the many former revolutionaries who felt that collective action had failed to fully realize change, and that alternate approaches were necessary. In other words, whatever philosophy BioShock 4 sets its sight on, the ‘70s are an incredibly rich vein for the birth of many philosophies which still have huge influence on politics today.
Not only that, but the ‘70s have a plethora of extremely distinct looks that BioShock 4 could draw on as inspiration for its next dystopian city. The next BioShock city could have started as the commune of a seemingly benevolent organization-turned-cult, or it could go to the other end of the spectrum to explore the rise of neoconservatism and the religious right in America. New Age religious movements and Movement Conservatism both rose to prominence over this decade, offering Cloud Chamber a good range of influences to draw from.
The fact that BioShock 1 took place in 1960 very specifically places it during a moment of transition, just as BioShock Infinite is set just two years before the outbreak of the First World War. A game set in the 1970s could really explore a time that is forgotten by many as a transitional decade between the end of the ‘60s and the political dominance of neoliberalism in America and Britain throughout the 1980s. BioShock 4 would have a lot of room to explore some of the philosophies which came about in this time of immense change that are often left behind in summaries of the 20th century.
While the worlds of BioShock 1 and Infinite revealed their philosophies to be broadly unsympathetic from the get-go, BioShock 4 could take advantage of a gap in popular knowledge and some of the ways ostensibly progressive ideals became warped over the 1970s in organizations like the People’s Temple to create a world which doesn’t reveal its true nature until later in the game.
There are plenty of other time periods Cloud Chamber could draw on. However, a BioShock game set in the 1970s could help it develop an aesthetic that truly stands out and a critical edge that’s just as relevant as the first game’s condemnation of rugged individualism in Andrew Ryan’s Rapture.
BioShock 4 is reportedly in development by Cloud Chamber Studio
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