Once a week Art Attack will offer you a handy little travel guide to the fictional worlds of video games.
Name: Rapture, BioShock Series
Population: Several thousand at peak
Government: Laissez-faire Capitalism
Located under the North Atlantic approximately 270 miles west of Reykjavik, the underwater colony is the dream of Randian businessman Andrew Ryan. Believing that the social reforms started in 1930s America would doom the country to the same communist hellhole he saw in his native Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, he decided to construct a working man's utopia that would offer sanctuary to the brightest and the best away from government, societal or religious rule. Visitation is strictly by invitation only, and is done through the bathysphere network located in a hidden lighthouse.
From 1946 to 1952, Ryan built and completed his art deco masterpiece, and geniuses of business, science and art began disappearing from the surface world in order to ply their trade in a Libertarian wonderland without rules or regulations. This led to an explosion in amazing advances in medicine, robotics, communications, genetic engineering, architecture, weaponry and hundreds of other disciplines. For those who can pay, Rapture offers miracles.
For those that can't...well, you're out of luck. With no social safety net to speak of, Rapture boasts a dismal indigent population left over from the manual laborers that aided the city's construction but could not offer the same skills of more prominent citizens. Pauper's Row is full of these desperate men and women, many of whom rely on the intervention of psychiatrist Sofia Lamb to obtain any relief from Rapture's central council. This has led to periods of armed strife between the haves and the have-nots exacerbated by the propaganda of a revolutionary known as Atlas and the fact that firearms are available from vending machines.
Still, the city offers wonders for the well-funded tourist. Plastic surgery has reached amazing heights under the knife of Dr. J.S. Steinman, who says, "Beauty is no longer a goal or even a virtue, it is a moral obligation." The restaurants and nightclubs of the city are packed with talented entertainers and gourmet food and drink produced right in the city. Fort Frolic, under the management of acclaimed musician Sander Cohen, features concert halls, museums, performance spaces and amusement park rides, along with more adult-themed diversions like casinos, strip clubs and humidors.
The primary currency of Rapture is the dollar, but the real backbone of the city's commerce is ADAM. The unstable stem cell allows for the altering of genetic code and gifts users with any number of superhuman abilities such as telekinesis, hypnotic control, enhanced strength and even the ability to control animals. The overuse of ADAM results in madness and mutation, so prudence is highly recommended.
