The Island of Dr. Steinman: The Roots of BioShock

"In 1896, H.G. Wells wrote the original script to BioShock. Ayn Rand jumped on the project some time in 1957, drafting a philosophical framework for the game world’s chief concerns (now gaming’s objectivist treatise). Then Ken Levine and the team at Irrational Games got their hands on the now century-old script in 2000, just one year after they had released the critically successful System Shock 2."

"In the adolescent studio’s hands, Wells’ island traveled to the 1940s, then sunk, then showed up again in the 1960s, the humanoid animals replaced by animalian humans. Dr. Moreau was given the medical wing of Rapture (the island’s undersea, art deco virtualization), and Ayn Rand’s anagram given a nine iron and a troubling, determinist self-awareness."

Full article at Paste.