BioShock Infinite

As its decaversary approaches, how should we remember Irrational's shining city on a hill?

- JEREMY PEEL

The intervening years having tarnished its reputation a little, it can be difficult now to appreciate the kinds of hopes on which Columbia was hoisted into the sky – even for those who had helped to lay the groundwork. “It’s funny to look back now,” 2K Marin alumnus Johnnemann Nordhagen told us in a recent interview. “I feel a little silly about it. But when BioShock came out, it felt like someone taking big, art-game kind of concepts and putting them into commercial products. I wouldn’t necessarily stand by that today, but at the time it was really exciting for me. Someone is making a philosophical statement – and also you can shoot guys.”

This was the context of BioShock Infinite’s 2013 release: an industry newly hopeful that, guided by a handful of triple-A auteurs, it could make the argument for the medium as an artform on a global stage. Thanks to Irrational boss Ken Levine, the world of video games would have its Inception – a singular blockbuster that didn’t just sneak challenging ideas into the mainstream but was sold on the strength of them.

Today, though, Nordhagen isn’t the only one who feels sheepish about that shared desire for games to be recognised by some outside force. And the medium has long overflowed with games that double as philosophical statements and paths into unique perspectives, as our Hype and Play sections attest month after month. Infinite, then, has become a totem of a time when the industry was both sure of itself and more old-fashioned – too stubborn to recognise the significance of the indie manifestos being written under its nose.