From playing and replaying both BioShock and Infinite, and reading interviews from Ken Levine, my own conclusion is that both of the BioShock games simply use ideology as a narrative tool to create conflict, and the only thing he is condemning broadly is extremism.
In other words, Levine and the rest of the team didn’t make BioShock because they hated Ayn Rand and wanted to spread that message. They made BioShock because they wanted to make a first-person shooter similar to System Shock 2. They needed villains to create conflict, and the easiest way a sci-fi writer can create a villain is just to take any ideology to extremes and think of ways that could go wrong.
I think this is made pretty clear by the lack of any “good” characters in either game. I can’t think of anyone the player is expected to just like and agree with- they are all charicatures taking their ideologies to extremes. Andrew Ryan is clearly bad, but the only real representative of lower classes is Fontaine who is argaubly an even more evil antagonist.
In Infinite, Comstock is clearly the villain as a racist and religious dictator. Daisy Fitzroy is the leader of the rebellion, someone who has personally suffered at Comstock’s hands. She initially starts off as the player’s ally, but then shifts to become “too violent” and “too extreme” in her rebellion, so she and the rest of the rebellion become enemies of Booker. It was really ham-fisted and just kind of waived off as “well anything can happen with the infinite possibilities of dimension hopping!”. But the real reason was more simple: they needed to add additional enemy types to shake up the combat and escalate the difficulty. They wanted to add the chaos of having the player run between two factions fighting each other without the safety of making one of those an ally.
Those two games use ideology as set pieces, but when you combine the two games together the final message is “extremeism bad, centrism good”. I don’t think every game needs to be a doctorate-level poli-sci dissertation, but I do think these two games deserve criticism for being pretty weak there.
Exactly. At least for 1&2, Objectivism is setting, not plot, the plot was created by the team. They could just as easily have used socialism, fascism, or any other “-ism” to make the same game, the main difference would be the set pieces. If it was Nazis, for example, the plasmids would be for creating super soldiers, and for socialism it would be yet another social experiment to see if it would create super workers or whatever.
Did you play the BioShock infinite dlc? They had a strange retcon where the Lutece twins approached Fitzroy and instructed her to appear to be a monster, specifically so Elizabeth would feel like she had to kill her.
It was a strange choice, because the remaining revolution was pretty blatantly horrible without her either way, and I’m not entirely sure that’s how this sanitized version of her would want it to go.
The politics of BioShock are not all that deep in the end. They’re mostly just a setting so they can tell a story of someone forced into a role without understanding it
Ah I hadn’t - it’s still in my backlog. But it sounds like it just re-affirms what I had drawn from the main games.
Those two games use ideology as set pieces, but when you combine the two games together the final message is “extremeism bad, centrism good”. I don’t think every game needs to be a doctorate-level poli-sci dissertation, but I do think these two games deserve criticism for being pretty weak there.
Imo, they get the hype for being “deep” because they are pretty deep as far as popular games go. They are certainly deeper than COD’s “Look, terrorists, shoot them!” or Mario’s “Dragon stole my princess”.
Ayn Rand,s “philosophy” is about as deep as a puddle.
‘Mine!’
Eh, I think the high level themes are interesting, and Fountainhead is a legitimately interesting book (Anthem is shorter of you just want a quick intro). It gets weird quick when you read her justification for taking land from the native peoples (the “savages” didn’t have the concept of owning land, so their claims aren’t legitimate).
I’m glad I read her books because it helped me set boundaries on my own views and recognize when a politician boosting Atlas Shrugged is full of BS. I agree with her assertion that we’re better off expecting and even encouraging people to follow their own self-interest, but disagree on leaving it at that. We should reward self-interest when it benefits society and punish it when it doesn’t, and redistribute the excess to everyone has a chance to succeed, however they define that. Asking people to not follow their self-interest leads to reduced productivity and outcomes.
Solid effortpost, but I’m left wondering what sort of alternative to “extremism bad, centrism good” you would propose that might satisfy your intellectual demands.
Well I kind of alluded to it, but both of the games lack any clear solutions other than “play the game kill the bad guy”.
Which, to be fair, is probably the reason BioShock 1 at least got so popular. I would say this point is much more important to BioShock 1 than any commentary about Ayn Rand, or any commentary about how worker’s movements can get subverted by selfish actors like Atlas. It takes the usual tropes about videogames and turns them into a commentary on how easily our assumptions and expectations can deceive us. Players do what the game tells them to, they progress the way the game allows them to, without ever questioning whether that is the morally correct thing to do. I would say that’s a pretty reasonable thing to do considering the money these games cost, but BioShock at least shines a light on that and makes the player think about it.
There are plenty of other examples of games that DO engage with political ideologies, and use games as a mechanism to think about then. The most famous one is probably Monopoly, which was stolen from the original creator who called it “the landlords game” to show how capitalism eventually leads to one rich person and a bunch of broke people.
If you want a videogame, Disco Elysium is a fabulous, recent, and well-reviewed example. Personally it’s a bit dense for me to play for too long (sometimes it feels more like reading a textbook than playing a game).
I don’t think BioShock 1 or Infinite are terrible or that they shouldn’t have delved into politics at all. I think that they are overrated in part because they get credit for political commentary that ends up being pretty superficial. I think they could have executed the ideas better.
Fitzroy for example: either give us a better reason to fight her or don’t make us do it. Maybe she gets killed by Comstock and leaves a power vacuum, with the chaos of rebel leaders trying to promote solidarity, fight for their own power, hold off or even negotiate peace with Comstock. Or maybe someone like Lady Comstock or Fink could be a source of division within Comstock’s ranks. Or maybe Fitzroy gets convinced that she needs to kill Elizabeth because she’s some dimensional McGuffin protecting Comstock. Maybe get rid of the rebellion entirely and have another country attack Colombia. They already ceded from the US- surely Uncle Sam isn’t cool with losing this technological marvel, nor having this independent state potentially floating above US territories. It’s been a while since I replayed it but I remember the Boxer Rebellion being a key piece of the story: maybe some fallout from that cones to Colombia.
Right, that makes sense. Unfortunately the “kill the bad guy and the evil will end” trope is very much entrenched not just in video games, but also most popular fiction as well (“all we need to do is throw the Ring into the fires of Mordor and Sauron’s reign will come to an end”).
I guess growing up is realizing there’s a new evil forged every day and you have to keep making the trip again and again, like Sisyphus. But I suppose that wouldn’t make for a good game, would it.
I guess growing up is realizing there’s a new evil forged every day and you have to keep making the trip again and again, like Sisyphus. But I suppose that wouldn’t make for a good game, would it.
I think it could make a pretty good game, actually. You know how some games unlock difficulty modes when you beat them? Do something like that, but with different villains. You beat the game, then you can play it again with a different bad guy. They could make a few bad guys to swap into the game with each one getting a bit harder, like they’ve learned from the mistakes of their predecessors.
Yeah, that’s kinda what roguelikes are doing, isn’t it? Unfortunately it’s not that easy to generate compelling levels and bosses randomly, and more importantly, a story that’s good enough to keep you going. I guess OG Diablo did a pretty good job of it, though.
Whomst amongst us would not be guilty of a little sperging under a completely unregulated oligarchy? Surely the social contract would protect everyone from lead poisoning 🧐
I mean, seriously, a legal injection that can give me superpowers? Give me that shit now!
A little sperging, as a treat.
Among us
They all started killing each other because plasmid use makes you psychotic, unless you can afford to keep taking more and more.
They all started taking plasmids because they needed to compete in the workplace (then later, in the war) or end up homeless / dead.
Plasmids were legal in the first place because Randism, being based 100% on individual responsibility, doesn’t believe that things like feedback loops or cumulative effects can happen at a socital level, and so doesn’t believe in regulations.
Plasmids are a pretty clear metaphor for dehumanizing yourself to serve the market, especially because the Randian superman is a psychopath that is only self interested.
But even without plasmids the fact that the worlds elite were brought down to Rapture, yet (to quote an audio log) “we couldn’t all be captains of industry, someone had to scrub the toilets” bred a huge amount of resentment from people who felt scammed and now trapped down there. Just like in the real world the markets in BioShock rely completely on low level workers to be able to function, and yet punish them for being in that position.
Your takes gets more and more based as it goes on.
Counterpoint: it’s a videogame, and if it’s shallow it’s no more shallow and vapid a deconstruction of objectivism than Atlas Shrugged is the opposite.
Ayn Rand isn’t really studied if you do a philiosophy degree. She’s more on the literature side of “philosophy” as opposed to belonging to the analytic tradition or whatever.
Philosophy fiction
Like the way science fiction isn’t science, but less cool.
Yes, I suppose it’s similar to Herman Hesse or maybe Borges… except those two are quite cool
Borges
borges sucks ass. his book of short stories was basically “yo dawg, this reminds of a story of when I was in a bar an the old guy told me of a story that when he was a boy in a cafe, an old guy told him the story of some ancient gaucho…”
People were easier to entertain back in the day. There is also a clear line between Borges and modern short story authors like Ted Chiang who take what he started and develop it further.
And her main contribution is that unextended phenomina can override physical reality (!?!?!)
A libertarian that doesn’t understand satire, what a shock.
What a bioshock
No Gods or Kings or Mans.
Only Dinosaur.
Open the door.
Get on the floor.
Return to monke
Nae King! Nae Quin! Nae Laird!
We won’t be fooled again?
Wee free men?!
Verrrrrrrrry complicated documents!
Ach wheel
Wow it’s like with vague enough framing, anybody can be the bad guys.
“Germany was making unprecedented scientific discoveries and innovating every aspect of their country from equality to population control when they were brutally attacked and their leader driven to suicide.”
Not only that, he saved the country from a tanked economy and hyperinflation!!!
also gave his life heroically to kill hitler
For everyone interested: there is actually a book about the creation and downfall of Rapture. (it’s called Rapture)
Yeah, I hate when underwater Randism with injectable superpowers.
It’s a fictional universe.
Almost like it doesn’t take a deep and thoughtful deconstruction of Ayn Rand to knock the whole thing over.
I’ve already depicted you as the Sander Cohen and myself as the Atlas.
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BioShock 2 revealed that Andrew Ryan had a secret prison to throw people into when they disrupted his control over the city. And more than once he decided he would burn it all down rather than let someone else win.
It may have masqueraded as anarchy, but the system was still rigged from the start. There was always a ruler. And power can corrupt even the strongest idealistic convictions
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but the system was still rigged from the start
And this, intentionally or not, is the real message. There’s no such thing as a real meritocracy, the system is always rigged in favor of the people who created it.
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Anarchy is explicitly against “profits”.
And it doesn’t mean that there are no rules but not rulers.
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No, what you describe is chaos. Anarchy means there are no rulers. People rule themselves and are also looking out for each other thus enforcing the minimum set of rules that are necessary to have a stable society. Rules can come from a consensus, yes.
A current example is the anarchist punk camp on Sylt where it was decided that dogs need to be on a leash when your are in the camp. If someone sees someone with a dog without a leash, they tell them of the decision and why it was made and that’s it.
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Since writing that last comment I have that funny thought of a diplomacy lottery in my head where it’s randomly decided who will join a trained diplomat or experts on state visits to represent the people. “… And this year… Dale will visit the environmental summit with our experts in …” followed by an AMA where Dale can share their impressions. I’d love it ;D
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https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchism
1: a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups
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usually anarchists advocate for elected or rotational positions for policing.
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The same thing that happens anywhere else? A power struggle between the people who want it and don’t? Are you implying this is unique to anarchism in some way? I don’t see why it would be.
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There is a legal recourse, you’re saying someone with power ignored the law and attempted a coup… do you think coups don’t happen in non anarchist countries? How is this unique to anarchism in any way?
Core ideas of anarchism: mutual aid, no hierarchies, stateless moneyless society, free association.
This person: anarchism is capitalism without rules
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Surely you know better after skimming through a dictionary than me, an anarchist that has read dozens of anarchist theory books
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You might wanna read up slightly on this, you’re quite far away from the consensus meaning of anarchism. While superficial, you could start with the first three paragraphs of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
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Which anarchist philosophers or anarchists agree with you?
Three paragraphs may be too long of a read for that person
That’s not anarchism you’re describing, maybe you’re thinking of "anarcho"capitalism?
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Anarchism is full of rules and laws, though. Arguably, one aspect of anarchism is replacing rulers with rules as far as possible, but that’s possibly a contentious phrasing.
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I don’t think you’re engaging in good faith here, not sure why. For what it’s worth, in your example, the negotiation of rules with the goal of consensus finding and avoidance of unjust exertion of power plays a major role in anarchist practices. Anomic states of existence and anarchic ones are far apart. The former leads to kings and conquest, the latter to tedious discussions about minutiae of daily existence.
There are reasons why anarchist groups are hard to infiltrate by cops
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No they’re saying the spleen harvesters are NOT anarchists at all.
The issue is that finitebanjo has conflated the two different meanings of Anarchy. Donpiano is talking about contemporary anarchism, a mode of governance without authority structures. One that argues that hierarchies and centralized power is the root of most of humanities ails. Governance is still performed, but it’s on an individual level between peers where each member of the group is an active part in decision making.
Finitebanjo is talking about anarchy, the state of lawlessness that arises when the state fails to perform its governing duties. Most associated with riots and looting. The problem is when they call it “anarchism in it’s truest form”, they’re conflating the state of lawlessness when the state abandons an area with a system of governance. It is not the same thing.
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A democratic power structure is decentralized.
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Ah yes, such trivialities like the answer to your conundrum are meaningless to someone as proudly ignorant on a topic as yourself. My bad.
Lol You can’t just do a potatoes level analysis of the game and be like “wow what a bad critique.” The game is not a bad critique, but many players are bad at critical thinking.
- Makes a shallow analysis of a piece of media
- Piece of media appears to be shallow
I’m a genius, and this piece of media is dumb
