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Anon has a problem with Bioshock

⁨301⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨greentext@sh.itjust.works⁩

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/d3f97695-8ddd-4013-98a9-eabb2c02dd2d.jpeg

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  • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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, but (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.

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    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Your takes gets more and more based as it goes on.

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  • paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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.

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    • blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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”.

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    • krunklom@lemmy.zip ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Ayn Rand,s “philosophy” is about as deep as a puddle.

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      • chuymatt@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        ‘Mine!’

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    • aaaa@piefed.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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

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      • paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        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.

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    • MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

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      • paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        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.

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  • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think it’s kind of a logical conclusion to science and technology when not constrained by ethics, morality or other regulations aimed at safety. It might not be superpowered mutants, but more like human experimentation like the Nazis did.

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    • GTG3000@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yup. As Atlas puts it:

      These sad saps. They come to Rapture thinking they’re gonna be captains of industry, but they all forget that somebody’s gotta scrub the toilets.

      Ryan likes to talk about “the chain” and being in control, but he also used and discarded his associates and the moment he was no longer in absolute control, he started murdering people and using pheromones to mind-control splicers.

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  • vga@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    A science fiction game totally disproves a science fiction ideology.

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  • TheBat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Anon lacks media literacy

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    • tim@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      What’s your take on it? (I just like reading takes on Bioshock)

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      • Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        That executive meddling ruins final bosses.

        But on a serious note, look at modern society and the tipping points we’re reaching. AI, climate change, ultra-individualism bred by class disparity. Rapture just happened to get capitalism’d a hundred years earlier.

        There are points to be made about comparability to Hitler’s rise, slavery through class busting and then mind control, races to the bottom, oligopolies, regulatory capture, and-and-and- but this is a greentext community.

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      • TheBat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        It’s been a long time since I played it. And honestly, it doesn’t have to be a take. Things are spelled out for the player from what I remember.

        The ‘intellectuals’ in the rapture considered activities such as plumbing, cleaning etc to be beneath them. Which led to having an underclass of workers doing these things and eventually there was a rebellion.

        Basically, cooperation is far more important than intelligence (or any other talent for that matter) in isolation.

        An example I can give is Josh Trank. After Chronicle, his directorial debut which received great reviews, he got opportunity to direct Fant4stic. The production was an absolute shitshow.

        Compare that to David Fincher. He was directing music videos before he got Alien 3. That movie had a lot of studio interference. David kept his head down, did his job and moved on. Only spoke negatively about Alien 3 after more than 15 years.

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    • MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Does he though? In Atlas Shrugged, which Bioshock seems to be somewhat of an antithesis to, it’s not the capitalists that go crazy, but the socialists, who enact more and more draconian laws depriving the productive class of all their profits in order to funnel more money to the unproductive, which ultimately makes working entirely unprofitable.

      Both works are basically at opposite ends of the spectrum — Atlas Shrugged depicts a communist utopia gone wrong, while Bioshock shows a capitalist utopia gone wrong. They’re both myopic in their own way, but the common thread seems to be that absolute power corrupts absolutely, which is a truth no one can escape. In reality, a functioning society requires a delicate balance between both forces, not a winner-takes-tall approach. Unfortunately, that idea seems to be lost on both of them, which is probably what anon is trying to hint at.

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      • SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        but the common thread seems to be that absolute power corrupts absolutely

        This is not at all the intended message of Atlas Shrugs.

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      • julietOscarEcho@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Difference is, everyone knows bioshock is entertainment. And no one bases their actual political philosophy on it.

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  • kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    A 12 year old can deconstruct objectivism and see how its DOA because I did it in middle school for an advanced English course. We read this trash book called “The Girl Who Owned a City” that was some guys attempt at teaching Rand’s bullshit to children. The book boils down to “be a heartless warlord who hoards supplies and throws hot oil on desperate children who come seeking food”.

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  • Glytch@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    A libertarian that doesn’t understand satire, what a shock.

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    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      What a bioshock

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  • molten@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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.”

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    • ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Not only that, he saved the country from a tanked economy and hyperinflation!!!

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      • BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        also gave his life heroically to kill hitler

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  • Luffy879@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Now, disregarding the whole ethical thing, the reason why Rapture Fell was because there was a very big divide beetween the workers and the people. (Also because Plasmids were not regulated and the poor became addicted)

    And since there was no social housing and stuff, they Protested, and then joined Sofia Lamb, who was appealing to them

    So, its more of a mix of the people going insane without ethical restrictions, the consumers going insane because of addiction, and a bunch of people dying because of protests by the workers

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    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The Sofia Lamb bit is a retcon by hurt objectivists who thought the first game unfair. So, they retconned it to be not their fault. It was, instead, the dirty socialists fault.

      Anyways, Rapture fell because unfettered business interests always end up at massive inequality. This was made worse by magic addictive powers and a complete lack of ethics. Plus, being at the bottom of the ocean meant you couldn’t just ship in a new lower class to ease tensions.

      I’m surprised some egomaniacal billionaire didn’t start flooding areas if people couldn’t pay him to not to.

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      • Luffy879@lemmy.ml ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The Sofia Lamb bit is a retcon by hurt objectivists who thought the first game unfair.

        I can see that, I was just playing BioShock 2, and in the Hotel section, there was just this Audiolog with 2 people, one of whom was supplying the other with raw supplies, the other manifacturing Adam Syringes out of it, and selling it to the same guy who then sells it to Ryan industries, monologing about „how big of a fool the other was, because they make so much Profits”, essentially retconning all of Capitalism in BioShock.

        Which first of all wouldn’t even work, because they have a fucking Monopoly at that point and can raise prices all they want

        And second just goes back to „Why the fuck would they Vote for Lamb, if they weren’t oppressed? Lamb addressed Problems in rapture that didn’t even exist according to BioShock 2

        I’m surprised some egomaniacal billionaire didn’t start flooding areas if people couldn’t pay him to not to.

        I always like to add it to my head cannon that when Rapture started leaking, the billionaires just started demanding money for the big Daddies and all the repairs

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  • sad_detective_man@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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 🧐

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    • CitizenKong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I mean, seriously, a legal injection that can give me superpowers? Give me that shit now!

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    • abbotsbury@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      A little sperging, as a treat.

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    • PlexSheep@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Among us

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  • frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Almost like it doesn’t take a deep and thoughtful deconstruction of Ayn Rand to knock the whole thing over.

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  • finitebanjo@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    My take on Bioshock is people became mutants and started killing each other because there were no laws or regulations aside from "you can't stop others from profiting." It was legal for them to become mutants. It was legal for them to weaponize and arm themselves before the inevitable revolution / civil war of Rapture. The closest thing to a law enforcer was the big daddy and he does NOTHING about the hordes of cannibalistic telepathic monsters. You know why? Because there are no laws against what they're doing, the daddy was only made to protect the little sisters who produce profit for Fontaine.

    Bioshock is steampunk scifi but it's also anarchism in it's truest form. People built whatever they liked, and they destroyed whatever they liked, and when violently mutating psychoactive drugs were introduced the latter succeeded over the former.

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    • aaaa@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      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

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      • SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        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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      • finitebanjo@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        That's fair, and to add onto that Ryan did have a self destruct button in his office that would wipe out the whole city.

        On the other hand, though, Fontaine and Lamb both rose to power despite Ryan's head start on authoritarianism.

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    • A_cook_not_a_chef@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Anarchy is explicitly against “profits”.

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      • ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        And it doesn’t mean that there are no rules but not rulers.

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      • finitebanjo@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Who is gonna stop them?

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    • OrganicMustard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Core ideas of anarchism: mutual aid, no hierarchies, stateless moneyless society, free association.

      This person: anarchism is capitalism without rules

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      • finitebanjo@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        You're probably thinking Anarcho-Communism or some other convoluted trite. Dictionaries all say the same thing: no laws, no leader, no order.

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    • DonPiano@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      That’s not anarchism you’re describing, maybe you’re thinking of "anarcho"capitalism?

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      • finitebanjo@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Anarchy:

        No order, no laws, no rulers.

        Obviously the existence of Ryan and the city council defeats that ideal, but that was only true before the fall.

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    • MotoAsh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      rofl Bioshock is explicitly NOT anarchism in its truest form… Big Daddys existing at all disproves that by itself, let alone Ryan’s ruling of the city.

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      • finitebanjo@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Big Daddies were owned by Fontaine, not by Ryan. Fontaine and Ryan were literally opposing faction leaders in the Rapture civil war.

        I even mentioned how Big Daddies do NOTHING to stop the hordes of cannibals because they're not there to enforce any laws.

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  • maxwells_daemon@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, I hate when underwater Randism with injectable superpowers.

    It’s a fictional universe.

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  • Hackworth@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    No Gods or Kings or Mans.

    Only Dinosaur.

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    • blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Open the door.

      Get on the floor.

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    • samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nae King! Nae Quin! Nae Laird!

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      • MOCVD@mander.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Ach wheel

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      • chuymatt@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Wee free men?!

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      • ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        We won’t be fooled again?

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    • lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      No Gods, No Kings…

      Only Bus

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    • Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Return to monke

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  • steeznson@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Philosophy fiction

      Like the way science fiction isn’t science, but less cool.

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      • steeznson@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Yes, I suppose it’s similar to Herman Hesse or maybe Borges… except those two are quite cool

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    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      And her main contribution is that unextended phenomina can override physical reality (!?!?!)

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  • insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I’ve already depicted you as the Sander Cohen and myself as the Atlas.

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  • ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    For everyone interested: there is actually a book about the creation and downfall of rapture.

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    • Luffy879@lemmy.ml ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Was that before they Retconned Sofia Lamb and Socialists or after?

      Either way, I’ll read it

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