It now looks like 2K games is ramping up development on the next BioShock game.
As reported by Eurogamer, Cloud Chamber’s senior cinematic designer Jeff Spoonhower posted 30 open positions in his studio. When 2K Games announced the formation of Cloud Chamber in 2019, they revealed that the studio would be assigned to work on the next BioShock game.
Yesterday, we reported that 2K is working on an unannounced remake, also based on a LinkedIn post. We theorized that it’s possible that remake was for either BioShock 1, 2, or both. That’s because both games could genuinely benefit from a generational upgrade, to better realize its vision of an underwater utopia gone awry.
After five years, we have no idea what Cloud Chamber exactly has planned for the next BioShock game. The former lead dev on the franchise, Ken Levine, seemed to have burned out on making the last major title, BioShock Infinite.
Ken was convinced to stay by 2K Games, but ultimately chose to keep less than 1/6th of Irrational Games, the studio that made the BioShock games at that point. As he wanted, he would reform the studio to 33 employees, and effectively rebrand Irrational Games as Ghost Story Games.
As for Cloud Chamber, we can at least say that its studio head, Kelley Gilmore, is known as a former executive at Firaxis Games. 2K also brought in some of Irrational’s former employees to Cloud Chamber, including Hoagy de la Plante, Scott Sinclair, and Jonathan Pelling.
Often, video games coverage makes the mistake of buying in too much into the idea of auteur theory. While no one will dispute that Ken Levine built a big part of what made BioShock successful and memorable, Ken did not make all the art assets, music, CG graphics, port programming, etc. Ken is not even solely responsible for BioShock’s game design.
While what we know is that Cloud Chamber is not necessarily the rest of Irrational Games spun off into its own studio, we should recognize that the developers in that studio now that were a part of Irrational will carry over their ideas and specialties when they were making those original BioShock games.
Is this a hope that the next BioShock will recapture the glory of those older games? In fact, maybe we should hope that it’s possible Cloud Chamber can exceed what Irrational was originally able to achieve. Expectations are certainly higher, in terms of building a cohesive open world, engaging combat, and a memorable narrative. Really, it’s the only way forward for BioShock, so that it will be more than just a ‘classic’ franchise.
