7 ms·

No Gods or Kings: Objectivism and Ayn Rand in BioShock

36 points by robg 18y ago

cbetz 18y ago
If you have not played this game, you must. It is easily one of the best games I have ever played. The story is really that good.
- s3graham 18y ago
  I've heard this repeated a lot, but honestly I found the story trite, and the combat pretty generic after a few levels. Maybe I was hoping for too much though. YMMV, of course.
  - prospero 18y ago
    I think video games are held to a different (lower) standard than most other mediums with respect to storytelling. This is a shame, but there's a good reason: you can't embed a narrative inside emergent, non-formulaic gameplay. Either you tell a story with how you limit the player's actions, or you don't tell any story at all. But even if you accept that as a fundamental limitation of the medium, most video games still have horrible stories. With the exception of Valve and a few others, it seems like no one's even trying. I don't think BioShock is the apex of video game development, but it's certainly a cut above almost everything else. That may not be much, but it's something.
    - ivank 18y ago
      At least one game (NetHack) sets up the framework for a story but lets randomness fill in 99% of the details. It seems like everyone in the last 12 years has tried to steal bits of NetHack for their mass-market game, with mixed success. (Diablo comes to mind. Spore, too - bones files->Will Wright's "massively singleplayer" game.)
      - prospero 18y ago
        NetHack is a good example of emergent gameplay, Daggerfall is another. They do not, however, have compelling stories. All fan-fiction to the contrary, "I kill the kobold and take his chainmail leggings" fifty times in a row doesn't constitute a real plot. Also, what story does exist is by virtue of how limited the player's interaction with his environment is: he can either kill things or carry them. If his actions were less discrete, or lacked real-world metaphors, there wouldn't even be a fan-fiction plot.
        SwellJoe 18y ago
        To be fair to nethack, you can not only kill things, you can make them your pet, appease them with gifts, use them defensively in a variety of ways, or frighten them off with bright lights or elven scribblings. And, as for things you can do with objects...I'm not even gonna try. But, yes, what "story" there is is not emergent, and is injected by human authors, and the game can only really have two outcomes: death (about 95% of the time) or ascension and success (with a few bits of story line along the way based on your character class, race, and alignment). The joy is in the many amusing ways in which your character can die, rather than in the narrative.
    - hugh 18y ago
      I think we need to distinguish between two aspects of good storytelling: having a good story, and telling it well. In a game, I think the latter matters a lot more than the former. People don't play games just because they want to see a story -- if they wanted that they'd just watch a movie and get a lot more story in a lot less time. In a game the main function of the story is to provide a reward for beating the last part of the game, and a motivation to beat the next part. Games can have quite simple, even cliched storylines (e.g. Prince of Persia Sands of Time, or the original Half Life) and still seem compelling. On the other hand, a lot of games fall down in the quality of the storytelling. Bad dialogue, bargain-basement voice-acting, or just plain dull scenes can spoil a game pretty quickly. ("I fought a seven-headed monster for this?") Bioshock may have a well-developed story for an interesting novel, but I'm not sure about the quality of the storytelling. I've only played the first couple of levels before getting bored, but so far most of the story has been pumped directly into my ear by some guy with a sepia-toned icon and a largely-incomprehensible monotonic brogue. Combine that with the fact that the levels and enemies so far have all looked pretty much the same, and I couldn't summon up the motivation to keep playing.
      - prospero 18y ago
        I think it's unreasonable to expect that even a masterpiece (which Bioshock is not) would appeal to everyone. Any creative work's impact is measured by its appeal to its core audience, who are often people who live and breath the medium or genre. For instance, one of my favorite movies is Kill! (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063186/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063186/), which is a brilliant and quite funny re-imagining of the samurai flick. It's a pretty good movie in its own right, but what makes it truly masterful is how it subtly twists the norms and tropes of its genre. These little touches are not aimed at a broad audience, they're aimed at people who are predisposed to like samurai movies, and have already seen a few dozen samurai movies in their life. That's not cheating, either, it's just knowing your audience and giving them what they want. As to the bad dialogue, voice-acting, etc. I think it's hard to break it down into anything so specific. A story is good if it allows you to suspend your disbelief. Bioshock didn't, but it wasn't necessarily because of any of the things you listed; you could just as easily have liked the game in spite of them. For instance, one of my favorite games of all time is Deus Ex, and it had absolutely laughable voice acting (check out http://ispeeeelmydreeenk.ytmnd.com/ http://ispeeeelmydreeenk.ytmnd.com/). Any great creative work is going to be more than the sum of its parts, and just because video games involve computers doesn't mean that they're somehow more quantifiable than painting or poetry.
    - unalone 18y ago
      Have you played Half-Life 2? That's a perfect example of telling a story and keeping the gameplay top-notch. The voice on the speaker in the beginning are particularly well-done. And if you compare Half-Life 2 to BioShock, I think you find that there's no real comparison: Half-Life wins hands-down.
      - prospero 18y ago
        I agree, Half Life 2 is amazing. Like I said, Valve is a notable exception.
josefresco 18y ago
I'll buy anything not published and DRM'd by EA.
- Zev 18y ago
  A. The activation limit in BioShock was already removed, and Ken Levine has said that once sales aren't a concern anymore, they'll (2K Games) will remove the online activation as well. So DRM isn't a huge issue here B. It's not published by EA, but rather 2K Games. Which is owned by Take Two, not EA (which hasn't managed to acquire Take Two yet).
- bendotc 18y ago
  Then I guess you'll buy Bioshock. And you should, too. For those of us interested in videogames as an artistic medium, this is one of the most exciting games out there.
  - unalone 18y ago
    That's a slight exaggeration. I think it reveals an exciting trend, but the game itself fails artistically. Its gameplay is more or less generic, and its story has a great concept but poor execution. Portal, on the other hand, or Half-Life 2... Those games seem to get dismissed by the "games are art" crowd, or at least not brought up. I've never understood that. And Psychonauts, Killer 7, Shadow of the Colossus... But I think that the real innovative games don't get the same level of heralding because people who find those games know that games have been artistic since at least the NES stage. Final Fantasy II/IV, anybody? Zelda?
    - bendotc 18y ago
      It's not an exaggeration at all. I didn't say Portal, Psychonauts, Killer 7 (which I'm ashamed to say I haven't played), or Shadow of the Colossus aren't interesting or innovative, although your inclusion of Zelda, Final Fantasies, and Half-Life 2 makes me think that you're confusing "entertaining" and "artistically interesting." And I'm not looking down on games that are "just" entertaining. Portal was an extremely fun and funny game. What does Portal say about the human condition and how does it use the mechanics of videogames to convey that meaning? In what way is this use of the mechanics new and exciting? I'm not going to get into a full discussion of the ramifications of Bioshock here, but they're not hard to come by. The game is far from flawless, but that's not the point. The point is that it uses the medium in a way that is fundamentally more purposeful than most games that people consider to be "great." * Herein, a reference is made to a MASSIVE Bioshock SPOILER * When Ryan reveals that the protagonist has been under Fontaine's control the entire time, and you look back at all the instances where your conditioning forced you to do something, it calls into question the very idea of freedom and choice in games. Because, while the game didn't compel you to perform those actions, the system (of the game rules and genre conventions) was set up so that you had to (unless you wanted to stop playing there, the meaning of which is the subject for another discussion). This forcing of your hand is itself a commentary on Objectivism and capitalist societies which put freedom first and foremost, but systematically pushes everyone to fill the economically "best" niche, a concept Ryan refers to as "the great chain." To reinforce this connection, you'll notice that the protagonist has a tattoo of the chain on his wrist. His wrists are literally chained by "the great chain" which in this case is a metaphor for the game's rules. * SPOILERS over * Now, before anyone tells me to get a life: I have a life. I make videogames. Before you tell me that the game designers didn't intend this and I'm reading too much into it: I don't care about authorial intention. Lots of people have made art that they themselves didn't understand. If you doubt that, look for homosexual undertones in Victorian literature. Aside from that, I welcome responses.
rantfoil 18y ago
This article is truly fascinating. Having read Ayn Rand, and briefly taken by the stark ideology, it all falls into place. I suddenly have a deeper appreciation for the gameplay, the philosophy, and the artwork of Bioshock. I love the commentary too -- it's both an homage and a cautionary tale. Bioshock starts as a utopia and de-evolves into an awful dystopia.
- davidw 18y ago
  If it weren't terribly off topic and likely to lead to pointless flame wars, that might make for a fun poll. "At what age did you go through your Ayn Rand phase? How long did it last?"
  - msg 18y ago
    17, 6 months I would be interested in knowing how many are still under the baleful Eye as well.
    - unalone 18y ago
      I suppose I'd fall under the category of "baleful Eye." I still haven't heard a good argument as to why the ideals of her philosophy is flawed, and her ideas still make logical sense to me, so I'd identify myself as objectivist faster than I'd identify myself most other things.
    - SwellJoe 18y ago
      I was 18 or 19. And it was pretty much like a rope swing to the other side of the river for me, rather than a convincing argument to go for a swim (i.e. I turned out to have anarcho-capitalist tendencies, rather than Objectivist ones--and I was already an atheist before reading Rand, so there wasn't much room for her to have an impact on that front). But, mostly, I'd be happy if everybody would just agree that the founding fathers of the US got things mostly right (excepting the obvious bugs: slavery, male-only voting) and leave well enough alone. I don't much care for the strident tone of Rand's books (excepting Anthem which was short enough that it avoids all of the mind-numbing angry repetition of all of her other works).
ank7ovy7 18y ago
The Economist actually used Bioshock as an analogy for one of its articles: "IN “BIOSHOCK”, a hit video game from last year that was heavily influenced by the libertarian philosophy of Ayn Rand, the main villain builds a fantastical city under the sea, where businesses can escape the stifling grasp of government. If you are an internationally minded entrepreneur looking to set up a small to medium-sized business, that is probably going a little far. But where should you set up shop?" http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12208572 http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
even afterpatching mine crashes and I can't figure out why. it only seems to happen when I am picking up money off a corpse.
- 0x44 18y ago
  Your game isn't crashing, it's protesting your strong-arm tactics toward taxation. /tongue-in-cheek.
jonny_noog 18y ago
I'm not going to say that I don't find some of Ayn Rand's ideas interesting, but some of the comments attributed to Yaron Brook in that article are just plain scary. "It seems to me that he's misrepresented what Ayn Rand believes and her ideals beyond objectivism," he said. "He's setting it up to fail. He believes , based on what I've read, that any system that is absolutist is ultimately going to lead to disastrous effect. Any system of black and white, any system of ultimate morality." I'm sure a system of "ultimate morality" would work just fine for me... if I was defining the "ultimate morality". "I think its flawed logic in the sense that he thinks that people have to be flawed" "I think there are great people and perfect people and I think we all should strive to be great and perfect." To strive for perfection is a worthy endeavour, to assume that I or anyone else has achieved it, is naive, limiting and possibly dangerous. I'd like to know who Yaron Brook's puts in this category of great and perfect. Ayn Rand, I suppose would be one.
- unalone 18y ago
  I'd actually bet that most people who really believe in objectivism would NOT call Rand perfect, because she most certainly was not. She was flawed both in writing and in character. It's just that she happened to do a much better job with both than most other people do, and she created a set of principles that are greater than she was. "Just plain scary?" A lot of people exaggerate like that. And what's the downside in thinking that people are capable of being perfect? What sort of a situation would have that leading to a downfall?
  - jonny_noog 18y ago
    Call it exaggeration if you like, but actually I firmly believe exactly this. People are not capable of achieving perfection. Perfection is by definition not achievable. What are the downsides? Well without writing a thesis on the subject, basically what I have already mentioned. If one believes ones self to be perfect, then logically, there is no reason to continue to strive for improvement is there? Again by definition, you can't improve on perfection. If one believes ones self to be perfect, then ones opinions/decisions/actions must also be perfect (i.e., perfectly correct) and therefore beyond doubt or compromise. I see such an absolute and unquestionable position (particularly if that position is held by a person in any kind of leadership role) having the possibility to lead to all sorts of unfortunate social consequences. History is filled with examples of leaders who believed their point of view to be beyond question or compromise, usually with bad results. So if it's not Ayn Rand, who's perfect then? I stand by my original comment.

36 points by robg 18y ago

cbetz 18y ago

If you have not played this game, you must. It is easily one of the best games I have ever played. The story is really that good.

s3graham 18y ago
I've heard this repeated a lot, but honestly I found the story trite, and the combat pretty generic after a few levels. Maybe I was hoping for too much though. YMMV, of course.
- prospero 18y ago
  I think video games are held to a different (lower) standard than most other mediums with respect to storytelling. This is a shame, but there's a good reason: you can't embed a narrative inside emergent, non-formulaic gameplay. Either you tell a story with how you limit the player's actions, or you don't tell any story at all. But even if you accept that as a fundamental limitation of the medium, most video games still have horrible stories. With the exception of Valve and a few others, it seems like no one's even trying. I don't think BioShock is the apex of video game development, but it's certainly a cut above almost everything else. That may not be much, but it's something.
  - ivank 18y ago
    At least one game (NetHack) sets up the framework for a story but lets randomness fill in 99% of the details. It seems like everyone in the last 12 years has tried to steal bits of NetHack for their mass-market game, with mixed success. (Diablo comes to mind. Spore, too - bones files->Will Wright's "massively singleplayer" game.)
    - prospero 18y ago
      NetHack is a good example of emergent gameplay, Daggerfall is another. They do not, however, have compelling stories. All fan-fiction to the contrary, "I kill the kobold and take his chainmail leggings" fifty times in a row doesn't constitute a real plot. Also, what story does exist is by virtue of how limited the player's interaction with his environment is: he can either kill things or carry them. If his actions were less discrete, or lacked real-world metaphors, there wouldn't even be a fan-fiction plot.
      - SwellJoe 18y ago
        To be fair to nethack, you can not only kill things, you can make them your pet, appease them with gifts, use them defensively in a variety of ways, or frighten them off with bright lights or elven scribblings. And, as for things you can do with objects...I'm not even gonna try. But, yes, what "story" there is is not emergent, and is injected by human authors, and the game can only really have two outcomes: death (about 95% of the time) or ascension and success (with a few bits of story line along the way based on your character class, race, and alignment). The joy is in the many amusing ways in which your character can die, rather than in the narrative.
  - hugh 18y ago
    I think we need to distinguish between two aspects of good storytelling: having a good story, and telling it well. In a game, I think the latter matters a lot more than the former. People don't play games just because they want to see a story -- if they wanted that they'd just watch a movie and get a lot more story in a lot less time. In a game the main function of the story is to provide a reward for beating the last part of the game, and a motivation to beat the next part. Games can have quite simple, even cliched storylines (e.g. Prince of Persia Sands of Time, or the original Half Life) and still seem compelling. On the other hand, a lot of games fall down in the quality of the storytelling. Bad dialogue, bargain-basement voice-acting, or just plain dull scenes can spoil a game pretty quickly. ("I fought a seven-headed monster for this?") Bioshock may have a well-developed story for an interesting novel, but I'm not sure about the quality of the storytelling. I've only played the first couple of levels before getting bored, but so far most of the story has been pumped directly into my ear by some guy with a sepia-toned icon and a largely-incomprehensible monotonic brogue. Combine that with the fact that the levels and enemies so far have all looked pretty much the same, and I couldn't summon up the motivation to keep playing.
    - prospero 18y ago
      I think it's unreasonable to expect that even a masterpiece (which Bioshock is not) would appeal to everyone. Any creative work's impact is measured by its appeal to its core audience, who are often people who live and breath the medium or genre. For instance, one of my favorite movies is Kill! (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063186/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063186/), which is a brilliant and quite funny re-imagining of the samurai flick. It's a pretty good movie in its own right, but what makes it truly masterful is how it subtly twists the norms and tropes of its genre. These little touches are not aimed at a broad audience, they're aimed at people who are predisposed to like samurai movies, and have already seen a few dozen samurai movies in their life. That's not cheating, either, it's just knowing your audience and giving them what they want. As to the bad dialogue, voice-acting, etc. I think it's hard to break it down into anything so specific. A story is good if it allows you to suspend your disbelief. Bioshock didn't, but it wasn't necessarily because of any of the things you listed; you could just as easily have liked the game in spite of them. For instance, one of my favorite games of all time is Deus Ex, and it had absolutely laughable voice acting (check out http://ispeeeelmydreeenk.ytmnd.com/ http://ispeeeelmydreeenk.ytmnd.com/). Any great creative work is going to be more than the sum of its parts, and just because video games involve computers doesn't mean that they're somehow more quantifiable than painting or poetry.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Have you played Half-Life 2? That's a perfect example of telling a story and keeping the gameplay top-notch. The voice on the speaker in the beginning are particularly well-done. And if you compare Half-Life 2 to BioShock, I think you find that there's no real comparison: Half-Life wins hands-down.
    - prospero 18y ago
      I agree, Half Life 2 is amazing. Like I said, Valve is a notable exception.

josefresco 18y ago

I'll buy anything not published and DRM'd by EA.

Zev 18y ago
A. The activation limit in BioShock was already removed, and Ken Levine has said that once sales aren't a concern anymore, they'll (2K Games) will remove the online activation as well. So DRM isn't a huge issue here B. It's not published by EA, but rather 2K Games. Which is owned by Take Two, not EA (which hasn't managed to acquire Take Two yet).
bendotc 18y ago
Then I guess you'll buy Bioshock. And you should, too. For those of us interested in videogames as an artistic medium, this is one of the most exciting games out there.
- unalone 18y ago
  That's a slight exaggeration. I think it reveals an exciting trend, but the game itself fails artistically. Its gameplay is more or less generic, and its story has a great concept but poor execution. Portal, on the other hand, or Half-Life 2... Those games seem to get dismissed by the "games are art" crowd, or at least not brought up. I've never understood that. And Psychonauts, Killer 7, Shadow of the Colossus... But I think that the real innovative games don't get the same level of heralding because people who find those games know that games have been artistic since at least the NES stage. Final Fantasy II/IV, anybody? Zelda?
  - bendotc 18y ago
    It's not an exaggeration at all. I didn't say Portal, Psychonauts, Killer 7 (which I'm ashamed to say I haven't played), or Shadow of the Colossus aren't interesting or innovative, although your inclusion of Zelda, Final Fantasies, and Half-Life 2 makes me think that you're confusing "entertaining" and "artistically interesting." And I'm not looking down on games that are "just" entertaining. Portal was an extremely fun and funny game. What does Portal say about the human condition and how does it use the mechanics of videogames to convey that meaning? In what way is this use of the mechanics new and exciting? I'm not going to get into a full discussion of the ramifications of Bioshock here, but they're not hard to come by. The game is far from flawless, but that's not the point. The point is that it uses the medium in a way that is fundamentally more purposeful than most games that people consider to be "great." * Herein, a reference is made to a MASSIVE Bioshock SPOILER * When Ryan reveals that the protagonist has been under Fontaine's control the entire time, and you look back at all the instances where your conditioning forced you to do something, it calls into question the very idea of freedom and choice in games. Because, while the game didn't compel you to perform those actions, the system (of the game rules and genre conventions) was set up so that you had to (unless you wanted to stop playing there, the meaning of which is the subject for another discussion). This forcing of your hand is itself a commentary on Objectivism and capitalist societies which put freedom first and foremost, but systematically pushes everyone to fill the economically "best" niche, a concept Ryan refers to as "the great chain." To reinforce this connection, you'll notice that the protagonist has a tattoo of the chain on his wrist. His wrists are literally chained by "the great chain" which in this case is a metaphor for the game's rules. * SPOILERS over * Now, before anyone tells me to get a life: I have a life. I make videogames. Before you tell me that the game designers didn't intend this and I'm reading too much into it: I don't care about authorial intention. Lots of people have made art that they themselves didn't understand. If you doubt that, look for homosexual undertones in Victorian literature. Aside from that, I welcome responses.

rantfoil 18y ago

This article is truly fascinating. Having read Ayn Rand, and briefly taken by the stark ideology, it all falls into place. I suddenly have a deeper appreciation for the gameplay, the philosophy, and the artwork of Bioshock. I love the commentary too -- it's both an homage and a cautionary tale. Bioshock starts as a utopia and de-evolves into an awful dystopia.

davidw 18y ago
If it weren't terribly off topic and likely to lead to pointless flame wars, that might make for a fun poll. "At what age did you go through your Ayn Rand phase? How long did it last?"
- msg 18y ago
  17, 6 months I would be interested in knowing how many are still under the baleful Eye as well.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I suppose I'd fall under the category of "baleful Eye." I still haven't heard a good argument as to why the ideals of her philosophy is flawed, and her ideas still make logical sense to me, so I'd identify myself as objectivist faster than I'd identify myself most other things.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    I was 18 or 19. And it was pretty much like a rope swing to the other side of the river for me, rather than a convincing argument to go for a swim (i.e. I turned out to have anarcho-capitalist tendencies, rather than Objectivist ones--and I was already an atheist before reading Rand, so there wasn't much room for her to have an impact on that front). But, mostly, I'd be happy if everybody would just agree that the founding fathers of the US got things mostly right (excepting the obvious bugs: slavery, male-only voting) and leave well enough alone. I don't much care for the strident tone of Rand's books (excepting Anthem which was short enough that it avoids all of the mind-numbing angry repetition of all of her other works).

ank7ovy7 18y ago

The Economist actually used Bioshock as an analogy for one of its articles: "IN “BIOSHOCK”, a hit video game from last year that was heavily influenced by the libertarian philosophy of Ayn Rand, the main villain builds a fantastical city under the sea, where businesses can escape the stifling grasp of government. If you are an internationally minded entrepreneur looking to set up a small to medium-sized business, that is probably going a little far. But where should you set up shop?" http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12208572 http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...

nazgulnarsil 18y ago

even afterpatching mine crashes and I can't figure out why. it only seems to happen when I am picking up money off a corpse.

0x44 18y ago
Your game isn't crashing, it's protesting your strong-arm tactics toward taxation. /tongue-in-cheek.

jonny_noog 18y ago

I'm not going to say that I don't find some of Ayn Rand's ideas interesting, but some of the comments attributed to Yaron Brook in that article are just plain scary. "It seems to me that he's misrepresented what Ayn Rand believes and her ideals beyond objectivism," he said. "He's setting it up to fail. He believes , based on what I've read, that any system that is absolutist is ultimately going to lead to disastrous effect. Any system of black and white, any system of ultimate morality." I'm sure a system of "ultimate morality" would work just fine for me... if I was defining the "ultimate morality". "I think its flawed logic in the sense that he thinks that people have to be flawed" "I think there are great people and perfect people and I think we all should strive to be great and perfect." To strive for perfection is a worthy endeavour, to assume that I or anyone else has achieved it, is naive, limiting and possibly dangerous. I'd like to know who Yaron Brook's puts in this category of great and perfect. Ayn Rand, I suppose would be one.

unalone 18y ago
I'd actually bet that most people who really believe in objectivism would NOT call Rand perfect, because she most certainly was not. She was flawed both in writing and in character. It's just that she happened to do a much better job with both than most other people do, and she created a set of principles that are greater than she was. "Just plain scary?" A lot of people exaggerate like that. And what's the downside in thinking that people are capable of being perfect? What sort of a situation would have that leading to a downfall?
- jonny_noog 18y ago
  Call it exaggeration if you like, but actually I firmly believe exactly this. People are not capable of achieving perfection. Perfection is by definition not achievable. What are the downsides? Well without writing a thesis on the subject, basically what I have already mentioned. If one believes ones self to be perfect, then logically, there is no reason to continue to strive for improvement is there? Again by definition, you can't improve on perfection. If one believes ones self to be perfect, then ones opinions/decisions/actions must also be perfect (i.e., perfectly correct) and therefore beyond doubt or compromise. I see such an absolute and unquestionable position (particularly if that position is held by a person in any kind of leadership role) having the possibility to lead to all sorts of unfortunate social consequences. History is filled with examples of leaders who believed their point of view to be beyond question or compromise, usually with bad results. So if it's not Ayn Rand, who's perfect then? I stand by my original comment.