BioShock by way of Objectivism (a review + bonus rant)
BioShock by 2K games has been out for about 6 months now, and it’s a little embarrassing to just now be getting down to the task of reviewing it, but the reason for this delay is because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to provide the sort of rigorous game-review that the title deserved by going in cold. So rather than simply playing the game, I had to do a bit of source-material research. This involved going down to the library and checking out a copy of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead which is 727 pages of poorly-written dreck which was a torture to read through. I’m a pretty slow reader anyway, and this honestly took me months to get through. I would rate the experience just above the time I had a tonsicular abscess that had to be lanced and drained in the doctor’s office without the benefit of anesthetic. And while there was something very satisfying about using the collectivist effort of a library to read Rand’s ranting, it lost its shine on my numerous subsequent trips back to the library to re-checkout the book; suffice to say I had a hard time looking the librarian in the eye. This review will endeavor to look at the game’s themes, relationship to the works of Rand, and ultimately how the morality of the game plays out in relation to its source material.
Objectivism and Video Games
One of the driving forces that allowed me to finish reading The Fountainhead was the knowledge that I could tear Rand a new one on the blog when I was done. For those who have had the pleasure of not having read her books, allow me to summarize: The core of objectivism is that people who are “special” — creators and artists and inventors — should not be constrained by the needs and rules of the society in which they work. Rand naturally felt that she was a member of this “special class” herself, which was a very nice privilege she extended to herself, there. She believed very strongly in the rights of private industry, and believes that all resources: both environmental and human, are there to be exploited.
Rand’s opinions are consistent with those of someone suffering from borderline personality disorder. People, concepts, and aesthetics that she admires she admires absolutely, and those that she does not she detests absolutely. Her love of modern architecture is an all-encompassing asthetic ideal: An easy way to determine if Rand is setting up a person to be exalted or reviled in her books is to read their physical description. If their body is described as angular, hard, taut, strong, or sharp, the person is someone Rand wants you to like. If the body is described as soft, fat, doughy, or round, the person will invariably be stupid, weak, and sheep-like.
She reserves a special place of malice for women in the book. With the exception of the sole female protagonist of the book and a few moments where one other woman almost achieves self-awareness before succumbing to the machinations of the book’s Mephistopholes-character (a socialist), women in Rand’s books are all bubble-headed socialites whose only opinion is that which will garner them the most admiration from their peers. They and the lower-class women are the driving force behind the parasitic socialist movement: the fat old mothers whipped into a frenzy by sentimentality who are somehow both illiterate and able to write letters to the editor of the local papers. It’s not dissimilar to Ann Coulter’s assertions that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote because we’ll just fuck things up while reserving that right for herself.
With such undisguised hatred toward women, it’s not surprising, that rape themes run throughout The Fountainhead. The very first paragraphs of the book show the protagonist, an architect, standing over a scene of unspoiled nature. The sexual imagery is over the top: “The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays.” The protagonist (Howard Roark) himself is naked, surveying this scene, and imagining himself as being the natural owner of the resources that lay before him. “These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them.” Later on in the book, he rapes the one female protagonist in the book and thereafter “owns” her; playing cruel mind-games with her to bind her to him. Rand makes a weak attempt to describe the relationship between these two characters as a great love story, but there is no denying that the point is that the love is possible because of the man’s domination over the woman.
Apart from the hyperbolic dichotomies, Rand also celebrates in her own paranoia. There’s a good reason most people read Rand in high school and are forever converted — her writing is specifically tailored to the jaded high school outsider, you know the type: this is the kid who feels that no one else understands her, that she’s great in ways that everyone else will someday know, and they know that something’s “up” with her and it threatens them and so they’re doing everything they can to stop her.
If any of this seems vaguely familiar to you, it’s probably because you play videogames. If you think about it, most adventure and RPG games on the market center around a protagonist who is experiencing various forms of persecution. Oftentimes, in order to restore “justice,” the protagonist must break the law, whether by simply disobeying the orders of a corrupt law enforcement official, or actively removing a totalitarian regime. The two-dimensional Good Guys/Bad Guys dichotomy is used often in videogames — particularly in First Person Shooters: while the “traitor in our midst” theme is done to death in these genres, the point remains that the enemy dies, and you can’t shoot your allies until the moment they betray you. The emphasis on physical beauty in videogames: with heroes and heroines being sleek, muscular and devoid of fat (with the exception of bodacious breasts, which Rand would certainly have disapproved of), and enemies often being lazy, slovenly blobs with stubble. Women in RPGs are easily parsed into “virgin/whore” categories, with a small handful of faithful bikini babes who can be trusted and the rest of them being either murderous vamps or dumpy mothers imploring you to rescue their children from the monsters. Most videogames don’t explicitly reference rape as an act, but there is definitely a philosophy of “take what you need” coupled with a philosophy of women for consumption in the game, and where those lines intersect is absolutely in an area where sexual violence against women is no big deal at best and celebrated at worst. Gamers themselves, especially teenage gamers, are especially prone to the “no one understands me, they’re all out to get me because my secret awesomeness threatens them” trope, so even though this was the first time I had sullied myself by reading Rand’s work, I found her philosophies to be uncomfortably familiar.
Welcome to Rapture
As I was reading through The Fountainhead, I was beginning to fear that BioShock would be unable to reward me for my suffering. I am so happy to report that I was wrong. While I wouldn’t say that BioShock made suffering through The Fountainhead worthwhile, I can definitely say that having read The Fountainhead enhanced my gameplay experience. The creative team behind BioShock really did their homework and released a very carefully-constructed response to the Objectivist arguments of Rand, and had a lot of fun in the process.
BioShock takes place in 1960, when your airplane crashes over the middle of the ocean and when you swim to safety you find the terminal that takes you to the city at the bottom of that very spot, where a man named Andrew Ryan (if you drop an ‘r’, it’s an anagram of “Ew, Ayn Rand”) has built a city where the artist would not fear the censor, the scientist would not fear “morality,” and the creative endeavor could be left to the individual without any limitations from others.
The city has come apart at the seams.
As is pointed out late in the game, everyone came to the city expecting to be captains of industry — forgetting that someone has to clean the toilets. With a massive city full of self-entitled people, it was only a matter of time before they set upon each other with weapons. In fact, the only vending machines you happen to see in the city are there to provide health, ammo, and various combat upgrades (ok, so, this is a FPS game, but there’s still a suspension of disbelief). When a smuggling operation appeared and challenged the rule of Rapture’s founder, Ryan responded by declaring all-out war and instituting marshall law.
Like Rand, Ryan is only interested in respecting the liberties of people who do what he wants them to do. Which is not some hyperbole cooked up for the benefit of the game’s narrative: we see people like this all the time: from internet candidate Ron Paul–whose platform of freedoms only extend to patriotic white dudes who want to smoke pot, but would fall short for women or anyone who might want to exercise their first amendment right to burn a flag; to the Libertarian Nice GuysTM who really dig the free market except when it denies them their rightful underwear model girlfriend. The fact is that we’re nearly surrounded by would-be Andrew Ryans in this country. In the game, you are literally surrounded by would-be Andrew Ryans.
It’s unsurprising, then, that the city consumed itself. For over a year, it’s been in a state of total anarchy (when you first arrive, a torn banner reads “Happy Near Year 1959″). Whatever remaining “normal” citizens of the city are chewed up before your eyes, the victims of the paranoid schemes of Ryan and his rival, and the roving bands of thugs that control the various areas of the city.
The developers of BioShock did an amazing job tying together the natural end-result of objectivism; both in the big picture and in the small details. Without having to consider others, the city is marvelously un-politically correct. Offensive Mexican bandito caricatures hawk ammunition, caricatures of old Jewish men tell your fortune, and there is so much consumption of cigarettes and hard liquor that for a moment I wondered if the developers were just trying to cram as much debauchery into an M-rated game as they could; but then it dawned on me that all of this is in fact a statement about the unrestrained sense of self-justification that goes along with an objectivist point of view–the toddler sense of entitlement that prevents any sense of empathy for others.
While there are a few too many rounded edges in the architecture to make it completely fitting with Rand’s aesthetic dictates, and several of the interior designs give way to entirely superfluous touches she would have certainly frowned on, there was a great effort made to create a unified look and feel to the city: Rapture is an Art Deco masterpiece falling apart and a pure joy to experience.
To be honest, the encounter towards the end of the game with Andrew Ryan himself is actually a very intense and complex narrative scene; just as Rand works very hard to build sympathy for monstrous individuals, 2K was able to build a wonderful twist into this game (of course, we have come to expect the twist, but believe me when I say that M. Night Shyamalan could have taken a lesson or two about subtlety from BioShock); but the game doesn’t descend into a tired whine about how objectivism is just a big misunderstood cuddlebear–Rapture was fatally flawed from the start and no amount of ammunition can save it.
The Moral Choice
I’m sure by now you’ve heard that the “shocking moral choice” in BioShock is whether or not to brutally kill little girls (aka Little Sisters), or ’save’ them. It may alarm you to hear me say this, but honestly, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Don’t get me wrong: I would definitely suggest rescuing over harvesting, if only because it does seem to give you more gameplay options; but here’s the problem with the moral choice they’ve set up: when you’re in the thick of it, the moral choice is probably not to rescue them or harvest them — it’s to leave them alone-and that isn’t a choice.
The Little Sisters are living incubators for “Adam,” a form of genetic currency that allows you to develop different super-powers in the game. They travel through the city of Rapture under the protection of Big Daddies (the big guy on the cover of the box), where they appear to draw blood out of corpses. Child labor in Rapture is awesome. They are actually pretty safe in this capacity: the splicers who hunt them are for the most part no match for the Daddies, and the little girls have a series of child-sized tubes that they use to navigate the cities safely. Apart from being a little glowy in the eyes; they appear to still be little girls who are either a little overactive in the imagination or a little insane, they love the Big Daddies who protect them, they play games, and generally seem to be pretty happy.
In order to either harvest or rescue a Little Sister, you have to first kill the Big Daddy who’s taking care of her. Now you have the choice of either violently ripping the Adam out of her body which will kill her but secure for you the maximum amount of Adam, or you can “absorb” a smaller amount of Adam out of her, which appears to purge her of its influence and restore her to a happy, thankful child.
…who is now without protection, in a city populated entirely by people who are hunting her; where the only adult figure she can turn to is the scientist who implanted the Adam in her in the first place.
Without spoiling the ending too much, I would say that for me, if given the choice of providing a quick death or an extended period of fear and being hunted until the inevitable slip-up led to being carved up by some spliced-up lunatic, I would probably opt for the quick death and just get it over with.
The difference between harvesting and rescuing
That said, the game does offer more should you actually rescue the little sisters, without leading to the dismal outcome I had posited above when I myself was making the in-game decision of whether or not to harvest. The scientist will reward you for saving her “little ones” with most (if not all) of the Adam you would have harvested from the little girls, and free plasmids which you would have used that Adam to buy anyway — so in a way, you get more out of rescuing than you do out of harvesting.
Unfortunately, the game does have a hard and fast rule that if you harvest so much as one Little Sister, you’ll have the “bad” ending at the end which is… well… bad. And while you have the option with every encounter to harvest or rescue, the game takes a very dim view indeed of child-killing and doesn’t seem to allow you a little time to experiment with it when it damns you. Go figure.
Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to kill or rescue the little sisters is the point that the game’s objectivist premise hinges on: If you can look at a sentient being as an expendible resource, even just one of them in a multitude of resources, then there isn’t much hope for you as a human; but you would make a great objectivist. However, if you can look at a sentient being, despite being a little fucked-up, and see something whose potential to assist you should not come at the expense of their life, then you don’t have much use for objectivism.
There are some interesting analogies you could draw from the Little Sisters. After all, we have problems already with people who want to use women solely for incubation as it is in this world outside of the videogame. I don’t know that BioShock is trying to make some statement about abortion–the removal of Adam could either kill or save the little girl so there’s no clear platform on the matter. But there is a very clear point that what’s happened to these little girls is very wrong, and that it’s wrong to treat a human being as just another resource; no matter what the end result is–after all, Adam is “life,” but it is life that is only possible through the enslavement of another’s body, and that there will be consequences to such an action.
Gameplay
I highly recommend BioShock for 360 (The PC version comes with a rootkit). I still think that Portal gets my game of the year nod, but it’s a little hobbled because it’s such a short game, and you get more entertainment hours for your buck with BioShock. Like Portal, BioShock is incredibly easy, even for people who aren’t particularly well-schooled in FPS-style games. In fact, I played through the game on easy mode (console shooters aren’t my specialty) and I made it through the entire game without dying once. Naturally, if you want more of a challenge, the game should be played on either Normal or Hard mode.
The hacking mini-game in the system is fun and twitchy, but the sheer volume of stations that can be hacked before using makes it a little tedious. I found myself using autohack items more and more not because it was too difficult, but because I had gotten tired of it.
Apart from being visually stunning and well-written, the game seems to be pretty happy to let you take things at your own pace. You can hack or not, everything can be used as a weapon (using a Telekenisis plasmid to fling corpses at people should be a lot more fun than it is), and only essential dialog is something you have to sit through–the rest of the dialog and journal entries can be picked up or skipped as you like. The map, navigation, and objective system can do a lot to help you if you get off-track, and oh yes: the game is visually stunning and well-written.
There are some serious suspensions of disbelief–Yahtzee was absolutely right when he pointed out that a steam-powered turret shouldn’t be able to distinguish between different factions. The fact that a plane’s fuselage has caused some serious structural integrity damage to a city located at the bottom of the ocean has not compromised the ability of you, the protagonist, from skipping around through cracked tubeways. Because it’s not like there’s tremendous amounts of PSI down at the bottom of the ocean or anything. But once people start climbing around on the ceiling like Linda Blair in The Exorcist you have to just accept that this story is going to take some liberties and not be an entirely accurate account of Nazi Supermen’s failed attempt at building a city at the bottom of the ocean. Once you understand that, you can get on with your life and start ripping slugs out of little girls. Or not.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Good review, but don’t forget great the sound, music and voice acting. They do a lot for bringing Rapture to life. The characters are a bit visually wooden up close in these days of perfect lip synching and expressive animation, but I didn’t really notice until my third playthrough because of the voice acting.
Ayn Rand’s horrible views of women aside, she does have ideas on individual freedom that are very important to some of the people I picked up feminism from. I guess it can be different if you grow up in a collectivist society like we have.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
But that’s the problem, Rand doesn’t believe in individual freedom. She believes in freedom for individuals she deems exceptional. The rest of us are just grist for the mill. She’s like people who want abortion outlawed, but when faced with their own unplanned pregnancy fly off to another country to secure one.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
As with all philosophers, you have to be selective what you take from her. The elitist parts of her thoughts on individual rights are better left behind.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
The very nature of her particular flavor of “philosophy” does not allow for ecumenicism. Like I said, she suffered from borderline personality disorder. You were either 100% with her, or 100% against her. There is no halfway with Rand, or her followers. Look up her cult sometime. :p
December 19th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Been subscribing to your blog for a while now and always enjoy your point of view. I actually finished Bioshock last weekend and was going to write a review of it, but you’ve said everything I would’ve said — and probably much more eloquently than I ever could have said it. The only thing I would add to your thought-stream is the idea that after the twist I think the game sets up the idea that the extreme opposite of Rand’s point of view is also fraught with peril. (BTW, if you played Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath, the twist was not that far out of the blue, but still awesomely awesome.) It’s a very thought provoking game and your essay makes it even more so. I am not sure if you’ve played the game all the way through for both endings, but I only played it once and “rescued” every girl I saw… except one. I fumbled the buttons in the heat of a gunfight and accidentally harvested one. It was a horrible feeling. However, I do believe that I got the “good” ending of the game. I suppose I will have to play it through again to find out for sure, but I wanted to let you know that you can probably get away with harvesting ONE of the Little Girls.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Well, she’s dead and if we’re to go by her own philosophy, there’s no afterlife from where she can curse us.
I’d say it’s OK to approach her ideas just as anyone else’s.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Game Dame: welcome to the blog!
I went 50/50 and got the “evil” ending — afterwards I researched the good ending and everyone was saying that if you harvested so much as one little sister, you wouldn’t get the good ending. I harvested a lot more than one; so I can’t speak from authority here. Is it possible that you loaded from a save after accidentally harvesting the little sister?
Also, I noticed that there was a bug with the harvesting — I was able to both harvest AND save one little sister. Maybe you ran into the same thing?
December 19th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Ah Ayn Rand. She was . . . insane. I read Atlas Shrugged in high school and couldn’t finish, then I picked it up again a few years ago and it took me months to get through. Your description of how she is about women is so spot on, it gets even worse in that book. We get the spiteful hating wife who’s just using you for money stereotype thrown in there as well.
I had no idea that Bioshock was a response to The Fountainhead, but then I’m not yet able to play the game so I haven’t inquired to closely into what it’s about. I can only handle so much teasing when it comes to cool looking new games. Knowing this has made me want to play it so much more. Just another reason to save up money for a 360 before the baby comes, because I will definitely need something else to sap my sleep time.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Fantastic review, thank you! And I am impressed by your willingness to sacrifice for your art — I can think of few things that would be incentive enough for me to actually pick up The Fountainhead.
Not very long ago, I saw another interesting take on Bioshock, from a distinctly less political* perspective; I thought if you hadn’t seen it you might like to take a look.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
[...] Bioshock last weekend. I had planned to review it for the blog this week. However, today I read this brilliant review. Mighty Ponygirl says everything I would’ve said and more. She is definitely a better woman [...]
December 20th, 2007 at 12:53 am
I didn’t load any saves, so that’s not it. All I can say is what happened to me. If what I saw was the BAD ending, then the good ending must be quite mind-blowing. We shall see when I play it through as a harvester.
Isn’t it ironic that a woman who wanted freedom and independence for herself was such a misogynist? Sigh.
December 20th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Game Dame: (I’ve been admiring your blog, btw) I just found an interesting way to harvest a little sister and still get the good ending: (warning, spoiler alert — YouTube ending sequence)
“To get this ending, you must NOT harvest a Little Sister, only rescued.
*There is only 1 exeption:(read only if you want the good ending but you harvest any of the first 3 Sisters).
On the first level where you interact with a Little Sister (Medical Pavlion), the setting for that level is 3 Little Sisters, however there are actually 4.
If you find 3, rescue them, and come across a fourth one, GRAB HER NOW!
If she returns to the vents SHE WILL NOT RETURN.
That fourth Little Sister will count as a ‘forgiveness’ in case you harvested any ONE of the previous Sister.”
Perhaps you managed to get the “forgiveness” little sister. I’m not sure how I feel about that — I tend to be pretty hippy-dippy “everyone deserves a second chance” in my philosophy, and you definitely harvested “by accident” but it does shoot a bit of a hole in my theory that you can get away with a “little” child-killing and still be a good person. Mostly, I wonder if it’s just a bug in the game or a sick sort of Easter Egg.
Re: Ayn Rand–this actually happens a lot: women toss in with the power structure because they figure they could either get the good scraps from the table by rolling over, or be left out in the cold by resisting. People like Phyliss Schlafly, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin — they’ve done very well for themselves by propping up the patriarchy and making sure everyone knows how much they revile women. And Hertza: there are a lot of dead “philosophers” that I don’t care to revisit. Just for example; I don’t look at Hitler now that he’s dead and think to myself: “hm. I disagree with his Jew-killing policies, but I do agree with his homo-killing policies!”
Smadin: I read the Click Nothing review you linked and it’s good. I was trying to find a good way to point out that a game that has been given numerous Game of the Year nods is in fact a parody at best and a scathing rebuttal at worst of gamer culture–the point being about the ludic contract in a strictly narrative game was well-taken–are all well and good except that 1) you aren’t a “citizen” of Rapture at the start of the game so you aren’t necessarily going to adhere to their philosophies, you’re dropped in through the game’s deus ex machina of the plane crash, and 2) I can’t spoil the twist, dammit! But let’s just say that you have a reason to ally yourself with Atlas.
I actually like that the game makes you do some thinking for yourself without handing you long platitudes and easy answers wrapped up in a bow. In a way, I sort of feel that the endings (both of them) were a little over-wrought in this capacity.
December 20th, 2007 at 8:27 am
N1nj4: I don’t know the specific title that BioShock was referencing, it would be funny+tragic if I had to slog through The Fountainhead only to discover that I had needed to read Atlas Shrugged instead. I think mostly the game is a blanket reaction to the philosophies behind the books, and not necessarily to a particular title.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Okay, I’m not trying to be a pill here. I swear! The little sister I accidentally harvested came in the last quarter of the game (ish). I’m wondering if a couple of things you mentioned are possible. It IS possible that I did the harvest/rescue at the same time thing. I was pretty baffled as to why the doctor didn’t chastise me for doing it (she said nothing). As I said, gun fight, too many things happening at once. Also, I concede that it’s possible that I did NOT get the “good” ending. For the overall dark tone of the game, I thought the ending I got was fairly upbeat. But now that I think about it, it’s a bit melancholy. Man. How ticked I will be if I play the game over as a bad guy and get the same ending — so that I have to play it a THIRD time to get the “real” good ending??!? Dude.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:55 am
The different endings are DEFINITELY polar opposites, I doubt you could be confused about which ending you got.
I know that I tried to harvest a little sister in the last part of the game (after the twist) and it actually went buggy on me–I didn’t get the slug or the Adam after the animation, and she just reappeared in front of me and I was able to Rescue her and proceed. So I really wonder if you just hit the same quality of bug — because *every* discussion of the good ending is prefaced with “you have to rescue every little sister to get it.”
December 21st, 2007 at 8:48 am
[Admin edit: Some spoilage]
I still want to play Bioshock eventually, but I’m still weary of the PC version and I don’t plan on getting an xbox…
Anyway never really having done much research into Ayn Rand or objectivism I found your discussion of it very interesting. It’s probably best that I didn’t read such things when I was young as I was a bit of an outcast and an artist and may have just gobbled it up back then. I also tend to be rather shallow about seeing attractive men and women in games and media I enjoy and tend not to raise issue with the lack of less ‘perfect’ body types (heck it’s probably why I’m an anime fan). I’ve always ticked that off to being an artist and liking things that look good (though I have started in recent years to look at forms differently and see different aspects of beauty in figures like the grotesques). So I’m glad when I read things like this and it gives me a chance to look at my own values and motives for those values.
Moving on I was looking through wikitropes a while ago and remember them talking about how Bioshock’s aesop is a bit broken: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenAesop
“A big aesop delivered to the main character is that power at the price of innocent life isn’t worth it — killing Little Sisters to get more of the Applied Phlebotinum earns you the bad endings to the game. Except killing the Little Sisters doesn’t actually get you extra power, it just delivers the Applied Phlebotinum half a stage earlier than saving them would, and actually costs you access to some of the most powerful spells in the game. Even worse, later on you can cause the death of multiple Little Sisters during an Escort Mission, in which case you sacrifice innocent life just for revenge. Finally, the Little Sisters are protected by Big Daddies, poor souls who were turned into powerful guardians, but won’t attack you unless you endanger their Little Sister or attack them. This makes them objectively less evil than many main characters. You are not only able to kill those guys without spending a tear, but are encouraged to do so.
* So the aesop eventually comes out as “Power at the price of innocent life isn’t worth it, cause you’ll be rewarded anyway. That is, unless the innocent life looks scary. And you can sacrifice innocent lives for revenge, that’s A-OK.” “
December 21st, 2007 at 9:56 am
I actually found Stranger’s Wrath twist just as shocking as Bioshock’s Game Dame. But that’s probably because thinking ahead isn’t a forte of mine.
As for Bioshock itself, you’ve touched on it here MPG but the part that really intrigues me is the meta criticism of FPS games in the narrative. Really well done and it’s amazing no one thought of it sooner. It’s one of those genius ideas everyone has after the fact.
December 21st, 2007 at 10:00 am
People who have beaten the game: Would you kindly make sure to put spoiler tags on your comments if you’re going to talk about anything that happens “twist and beyond” ?
Some spoilers
I felt that it was a bit of a punt on the part of 2K to give you just as much Adam for rescuing as you did harvesting (moreso, if you count the free plasmids she gives you); because it takes some of the weight away from the choice.
The point about the Big Daddies is very interesting; I had played most of the game thinking that they were automatons and not human beings who had been converted to a resource; and when I was suddenly “becoming” a Big Daddy at the end of the game I was very conflicted about the process. Were Big Daddies really “poor souls” who were turned into powerful guardians, or were they just another round of nutty splicers who were going through a form of rehabilitation? Were they just workaday guys who were doing their part to help Rapture by donning the suit and stinking to high heaven and getting their vocal chords scraped, or were they the castoffs of another one of Dr. Suchong’s mental conditioning experiments? Was their need to protect the little sister that of a loving caretaker, or more for jealous property reasons? I admit I didn’t like initiating combat with the Big Daddy. He was minding his own business, taking care of the Little Sister–but you don’t have a choice to just leave them alone in the game. But yeah — they look scary, and they will definitely fuck your shit up if you start with them, which mitigates any moral quandry you might have when you engage them.
BioShock is one of those rare games that gets to call itself “art,” IMHO. When you can actually talk about the structure of the game in a moral and intellectual framework, and it provokes thought like this, that’s where a game “wins” for me.
December 21st, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Ayn Rand’s horrible views of women aside
“But other than THAT, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
December 22nd, 2007 at 12:07 am
My high school makes freshmen read Ayn Rand’s “Anthem”.
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:45 am
Ayn Rand’s books were written in the 20s or 30s I believe. A very different time. While she may appear warped to us today, she was hugely ahead of her time for a woman. Women got the vote in 1920. Prior to that, they were literally properly of men. Think of what the mindset of a typical woman of that time was, and then imagine the ovaries it took to write a book like TF or AS.
Be careful of using psychological terms like ‘borderline personality disorder’ - Freud and Jung, who started all the psych mess we are in today, could perhaps be judged BPD (Freud) and psychotic (Jung) today. Freud died from his oral fixation on cigars/pipes, of mouth cancer. Oh the irony.
What was hailed then as groundbreaking, is very different for today. “Over 100 Years of Pyschology, and We’re More Screwed Up Than Ever ™”
I haven’t read much at all about the premise for Bioshock, but IIRC, The Fountainhead was not the book about a utopian society going wrong, Atlas Shrugged was. The ‘brains’ of society removed themselves to the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, and there created a new society - which was having ’self-sustainment’ issues. Is that the book Bioshock launches itself from?
Thanks for the nice review, and the Youtube video. This doesn’t look like my type of game, too gross and depressing. I can watch CNN for that IRL.
December 25th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Worth noting:
The creators of Bioshock may have intended it as a criticism of Ayn Rand’s philosophy (though I read her books some years ago and I don’t recall where she condones mentally enslaving people or doing genetic experiments on unwitting children; she was a pretty live-and-let-live sort), but if so it would be pretty crass of them. They made a game deeply indebted to Rand’s work in everything from the architecture of the environments to the name of the chief antagonist. I myself probably wouldn’t have given the game a second look if I hadn’t heard about the whole crumbling-Objectivist-dystopia angle, and given the popularity of Rand’s books I’m sure that what snagged a lot of other gamers’ interests as well. Whether the creators agree with Rand or not they’ve made a pile of money by using her popularity to market their game, and they owe her some gratitude for cutting a path for them.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if the release of Bioshock had some measurable effect on the sales of Atlas Shrugged.
December 28th, 2007 at 10:33 am
LadyPao: I disagree with you vehemently about whether or not mental illness is subjective, and the borderline personality disorder is not sprung from the branch of the psychoanalytical mental illness model, but rather the cognitive psychology model, which is much more methodical than Freud or Jung were. I suppose I should have read Shrugged instead of Fountainhead but it will be a cold day in hell before I pick up another Rand book. And as far as CNN being like BioShock — I don’t think CNN asks you to think about the horrific issues they present like the game does.
Mannerheim: That’s why I checked out Rand from the library. I didn’t want another cent going to the Rand foundation. However, I don’t think that the creators of BioShock owe Rand anything more than the cursory “gratitude” you speak of. After all, should the creators of Call of Duty and Medal of Honor and all those WWII shooter games be “grateful” to the Nazis for giving them such an awesome war and “cutting a path for them” ? Should the Anti-Defamation League be “grateful” to the KKK and other hate groups because they’ve “made a pile of money from [their] popularity” ?
Make no mistake: Rand declares war in her books. If you are not with her, you are against her, and you are expendable. I don’t “admire” people who declare war on me, I defend myself.
December 28th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Ponygirl- the cognitive model would most likely not exist without Freud and Jung. It shares the model of inquiry into the human psyche that Freud and Jung pioneered. I did not say that BPD sprang from F and J’s work, but was trying to get you to mind shift into another time and another reality of thought, and not judge using today’s standards. We cannot judge and label others we don’t know, and who we didn’t live with in their times, especially by one work (that you have obviously had a strong reaction to).
Personally, I have a real hard time with labels for people. I think it limits compassion for others, it limits their potential, and narrows all of our minds.
And I didn’t say CNN was like BioShock - since I haven’t played it I wouldn’t know. I said it looked depressing, like CNN. That was a bit of tongue in cheek, see the winky-smiley there?
December 29th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Mental illness is not something that was invented by Freud and Jung, anymore than electricity was invented by Franklin or Edison. Reading Rand’s work and closely examining her themes, as well as her right-wing crusades in real life leaves no doubt in my mind that the woman was a zealot, and Borderline Personality Disorder’s inability to see in shades of grey fits her like a glove. I don’t disagree with you that we need compassion, but it does no one any good to ignore a problem in the name of making sure we don’t limit someone. I have compassion for the fact that she grew up in Stalinist Soviet Union — that is definitely going to influence her beliefs. But once she advocates throwing people to the wolves who don’t have the resources to elevate themselves to some totally subjective “superior” status that she herself is the arbiter of — well, that’s when I stop having compassion for the person doing the persecuting.
January 6th, 2008 at 8:25 am
[...] Ponygirl reviews BioShock as an end result of objectivism, paying special attention to the philosophy’s disdain for the disenfranchised, and the [...]
January 6th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Wow. I’m not even a gamer and I loved this review. My hatred of objectivism (dumbest name for a movement EVER; why not just call it Correctism?) and Rand’s greed-cult of assholes ( I borrowed that phrase from a friend because I couldn’t think of a better one) are probably the reason, as is my current puzzlement over how many otherwise reasonable people I know have turned into nutcase Libertarian Ron Paul-Bots right now; but you actually got me interested in a video game which, as my gamer roommate would tell you, is no small task.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
“Greed cult of assholes” is the most amazingly accurate 4-word summation of Objectivism I have Ever. Read.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Wow I thought I didn’t like feminists before. Don’t get me wrong i think women are fine and can do whatever they want and don’t need to be stuck in a kitchen 24/7. Atlas shrugged takes on social conservatives and says that women can do great things. Ayn Rands philosophy is about giving people, the choice to trade and work or to live in a tent and eat home grown potatoes, not that it doesn’t make out tent living potato eaters are wasting their lives. but those who do not work will not reap the benefits of capitalism without participating in it. It says that people should be free to do what they wish and NO person should be forced into anything they don’t want to do. and that without having businesses for people to work for then people wouldn’t have anything except for what they can produce on their own. As Francisco Danconia says in Atlas Shrugged money allows any man to reap the benifits of the greatest minds of humanity, in a way that both sides are mutually benefited. If not stealing is what you see as evil then I guess Ayn Rand is about the most evil person you guys will find. Email me if you would like to complain. PS: Some studies claim that men outperform women on average by 3-4 IQ points.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Hork if ye be goin’ t’ read ‘t an’ moderate me comments then hork ye “guys”. I hope ye horkin’ sink t’Davy Jones’ locker, its funny how feminists would take th’ me starboards away so that ye guys dont be havin’ t’ hear opposin’ viewpoints, ereheard o’ free speech? oh wait i forgot all special interest squadrons hate free speech on accoun’ o’ they dont be havin’ enough o’ a horkin’ issue t’ aft them th’ hork up. ‘t really frickin pisses me off that thar would be a moderation fer yer horkin’ comments. I be wonderin’ why i didnt be seein’ ere defendin’ ayn rand. Well if ye would like t’ understand why Ayn rand says that in free markets thar be nay such thin’ as a monopoly ye can look an’ be seein’ how in restricted websites they be havin’ a monopoly on what swabbies can horkin’ write. but feminists nerewanted an intelligent discussion they jus’ wanted t’, well whatere’tis that feminists do, probably nay much eat organic tofu
.
[Pirate translated for your pleasure by MP]
January 8th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
A cutting criticism of Atlas Shrugged in 8 panels or less:
http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
January 9th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Ooooh, that’s too bad, because we really wanted you to like us. Does this mean you won’t come over and play Slip-n-Slide with us? *sniff*
Like have sex? Tell that to Dominique Francon when Howard Roark rapes her.
Like when Gail Wynand bought up the best journalists in town so that he could own them and tell them what to write and made millions off of their yellow journalism?
It must be nice to have a study to point to when it’s painfully clear to everyone else that you’re a moronic choad.
As to your second rant: well… I’ve never cottoned to “I bet you don’t have the guts to allow my comments through!” and my posting policy is generally anti-troll. Buuuutttt…. it seemed a good object lesson for you. Now you see what it’s like when you’re held hostage by a dictator with an agenda…! For you see, Rand does not believe that everyone should be allowed to say what they like. From her testimony at HUAC to the implication that it would have been better had Stephen Mallory actually succeeded in killing Ellsworth Toohey. You’ve overlooked these things because it’s against your religion to think bad of your messiah, but she was in fact a nasty little censor in her own right. Now you know what it’s like to be censored, and you’re full of bile and vulgarity. Funny how that shoe pinches a bit once you actually put it on, isn’t it?
January 9th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Owesome: yeah– that would be Rapture.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Here are a couple of links. One is a blog where a guy goes through Atlas Shrugged in more detail, pointing out the things wrong with it, both large and small. He insists that he actually had to leave substantial parts out, as it was already really damn long.
http://dkh.livejournal.com/197259.html#cutid1
This second one is a link to a website chronicling Rand’s objectivist cult.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
I also want to point out to LadyPao that Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, and the Fountainhead in 1943, so women had been voting for years by that point.
January 17th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Hey there, Ponygirl. I saw your review/rant and I thought I’d put in a cent or two — hope you don’t terribly mind.
I think you misunderstand Ayn Rand. Rand isn’t arguing for special rights or privileges for the “special.” She argues for a society based on liberty, guaranteeing equal rights for all. Rand, the human being, was a flawed individual (as are we all)… and God knows that many Objectivists & tools like Derek really have no clue what they’re about. But the flaws of Rand & Derek don’t necessarily make her arguments wrong. Rand argued that physical force should be eliminated from society, except in retaliation to physical force… and I find her arguments and reasoning compelling.
Regarding possible misogyny, well, it’s possible you’re right. The rape, and its acceptability, in The Fountainhead is pretty disturbing, and The Fountainhead isn’t the only thing Rand wrote that suggests a bit of misogyny to me. It might not help much to say that misogyny isn’t central to Rand’s Objectivism, which is really more about politics, ethics, and metaphysics (and she holds men and women to be equals, come to those)… but there it is.
Anyways, I thought you might appreciate the perspective from someone who has a fair amount of familiarity with the material (I’ve read most of her writings, fiction & non, and I once worked full-time for the Ayn Rand Institute). I won’t say that you should change your mind, or read more Rand, or anything like that, but please take it from me — the philosophy is a fair amount deeper than your initial impressions of it.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
*yawn*
What, did the Rand high priest at the institute send you all after me?
Let me put it this way: Rand’s writing, apart from being politically abhorrent, is shit. She’s a shitty writer. For Maude’s sake read the quotes in the 5th paragraph. That’s horrible writing. I had to dig through 727 pages of shit in order to write this review. I seriously doubt there’s a nugget of gold inside more of her shit. I strongly suspect the nugget is just… more shit. Her philosophy may be a fair amount “deeper” but one can be completely immersed in shit. That doesn’t make it better, it just makes it deeper.
And all of the apologists who have come to this blog in order to instruct me on how *wrong* I am about Rand, who will leave after this and never return, I really don’t care that you somehow think that Rand believed that men and women are equal, because it’s right there in her writing how much she hated women, and only had a cursory belief that men and women ’should be equal’ because she herself was in possession of a uterus and didn’t want to be tossed on the fire along with the rest of us worthless stupid females. The rest of us can just piss off and die as far as she cared. In fact, our greatest calling seemed to be the occasion to be raped by one of her “great men.” So, no thanks. Here’s a nice shit sandwich, all for you, be sure to eat it all up, because I don’t really care for it.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Reading back over my post, I realized that I actually wasn’t clear. I didn’t come to challenge your post, but rather to support it. I abhor objectivism and about half of the objectivists I’ve met or talked with. The blog link about Atlas Shrugged was just someone who had, similarly to you, slogged through Rand’s crap. It’s some nice criticism without actually having to read 1000+ pages of Rand.
The second one demonstrates the way that Rand personally worked with other objectivists, that their society basically became a cult where no one was allowed to dissent.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Oh, don’t worry bg–I saw the comment in the way you intended. I definintely feel the pain of the dude who had slogged through Atlas Shrugged.
January 18th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
On libertarianism in general:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Hi, Ponygirl.
I appreciate that your review wasn’t exactly an invitation to a philosophical debate, but we’re all protective over our own spheres, you know? I can’t answer for anyone else, but no… the Institute didn’t send me.
I was interested in other peoples’ opinions on how Bioshock dealt with Objectivism, and that’s how I stumbled onto your blog.
About Rand’s writing being shit, well, I don’t agree, but I respect your opinion. We all have different feelings about fiction style. For instance, I love Dumas and hate Joyce, but I know others who feel exactly opposite about that. My fiancee couldn’t get into my recommendation — The Hunchback of Notre Dame — and I’m really struggling with her recommendation, The Left Behind series (talk about misogynistic!). Myself, I think Rand is a pretty good fiction writer, but by no means my favorite. I enjoyed reading The Fountainhead a lot, Atlas Shrugged slightly less so, and Anthem less so than that. Actually, it’s non-fiction where I think Rand *really* shines — she’s my favorite non-fiction author, with C.S. Lewis being a close second.
About your being wrong about Rand’s philosophy… well… I really do think that you are, and that’s why I wrote in to you in the first place. Not wrong about the misogyny, necessarily (and you can see that I conceded that in my initial post), although saying that “she hated women” or implying that she considers women “worthless” or “stupid” might be too strong (I don’t think a person who hated women could have written Dagny Taggert the way she did — one of the strongest heroines I’ve yet read in all fiction), but wrong about other aspects of the philosophy that you’d gleamed from your reading of The Fountainhead.
Maybe Feminism is so important to you that you feel nothing of worth can be gained from someone who doesn’t see men and women as complete equals (or however it is you view Feminism). I’d understand that, if it was the case. But I truly believe that Rand offers a fair amount of value, whatever mistakes she may also have made.
Well.. I’ve far exceeded my two cents and am fast approaching a dime, so I’ll leave it there. Being your blog, you can have the last word, if you’d like. It’s just that I feel that… hmm… you’re being dismissive beyond your current understanding. Which is, after all, your right to do if you choose.
Take care.
Yours,
Tyler
January 24th, 2008 at 8:11 am
So what you’re saying, as an objectivist is that whether or not Rand is a good writer is subjective.
Hm. Very interesting.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I wonder if Tyler would see Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” as a utopia instead of a distopia if he thinks Rand’s treatment of women isn’t a bad thing? Atwood’s a dry writer, but “The Handmaid’s Tale” is still the most frightening fictional book I’ve ever read. He’d especially enjoy it if his definition of a strong female character means being able to shrug of multiple rapes without batting an eyelash. Offred may not be as ’strong’ as Dagny that way, but given time and enough Stockhold Syndrome, she’ll come around.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:01 am
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