Bioshock

Miscellaneous General
1

I’ve had the game for quite a while and have just now completed the first part (the introduction). I am finding it rather difficult to get into this game. While I am no objectivist by any stretch of the imagination, I can recognize an amateurish attack against the philosophy and it is quite irritating. I don’t see the “complex” ideas that were touted in most reviews, but only the childish flogging of straw men that could have been avoided had the developers read anything other than the cliffs notes to Atlas Shrugged. Anyway, I’m wondering if the game gets any better, or if it is more of the same. Is it worth playing all the way through the end, or will it just irritate me to no end? I’d like to hear your experiences.

Oh, and I know the game has been out for two years and this isn’t a very timely post. But the sequel is coming soon and you can discuss that in this thread also if you wish.

2

I just got Modern Warfare 2 and I notice the overt militarist agenda and neoconservative war trumpets. It really depends on your ability to tolerate ridiculous political theories. It’s a fun game if you don’t get involved in the politics of it. Some people do though, they take it a little too far.

3

Philosophically speaking, no. It is based on the idea that anarchy leads to chaos, period. Otherwise, I think it is pretty fun blowing up the monsters.

4

I feel that it is easier to get into games with overt military themes that aren’t pretending to be making an intellectual statement. A game like Bioshock seems like it’s trying to hard, and falls flat on its face when you actually think about what it is saying.

5

Such is our curse. We know the truth when others do not. This is the year of sequel’s for games. You got:

  • Mass Effect 2

  • Bioshock 2

  • Army of Two

  • Bad Company 2

  • Just Cause 2

  • Crysis 2

  • Starcraft 2

  • Star Wars Force Unleashed 2

Really I think Mass Effect is going to be game of the year, easily. Crysis is going to be good, Alan Wake is going to be good, Prince of Persia is coming out, Max Payne 3, Halo: Reach. It will be a good year for games.

6

Lol well as you can see by my name, I think that I rather liked it.

I consider the game’s playing style to be ok on the lower difficulties but I enjoyed how much of a survival horror it really becomes on the highest difficulty survivor. However I considered the best aspect of the game to be Andrew Ryan, I thought that his monolouges were extremly impressive in their elegance and their ideas. Quite frankly I don’t think that the game was really attempting to attack objectivism per se, because the arguments against it were quite primitive, what happened in Rapture would have happened to any society, indeed any society other than a libertarin one it would have happened much faster, but really it was just the argument for appocolypse.

Indeed had there been a more powerful state say, one run by socialists, there almost certianly have been a power struggle surrounding ADAM and the newly evolved plasmid industry. Indeed the things that Ryan strived for, and indeed did at first, are things that we all value. He admired wealth, achievmet, the ability of somone to go from nothing to everything, and the wonder of the free market system.

Where Ryan failed was in his seeing as those who do not achieve great hieghts as inherintly inferior to others (brings memories of Eugenics and Niezche’s super man) and at the end of the day truly standing up for his beliefs by not letting free imagration in and out of Rapture and eventually becoming facist.

However Ryan was a great believer in individuality, property rights, and achievment. At the beggining of Rapture’s history he indeed embodied all of these things and created an almost fully free market civilization of wealth and prosperity until the monopoly of the state, and the attack on his ideals, corrupted him.

The game gets better though, it has one whopper of a plot twist and gets more strategic… But yeah this is about as intellectual as games get. Metal Gear Solid comes close some times but it never really goes into very moral issues, just the side effects of war and so on. Most other moral decisions in video games are just kind of stupid because its just a matter of how much of an asshole that you want to/can stand like being to some fake characters in a digital world.

Also I think Bioshock 2 is probably going to be more intellectual because other ideologies are being thrown into the mix.

7

I’m kind of worried about how they are going to portray the “lawless” society that Shepard visits in Mass Effect 2 (IIRC from the trailer), but I’m otherwise looking forward to the game.

8

Well what is nice about the first mass effect is that there isn’t really any economic fallacies. I mean there is a galactic council but big whoop, no game is really based on an anarchist society that is a plausible representation. I like games that engage in morality and character development. I mean I tried to be a renegade in Mass Effect, but I’m too nice. [:P]

9

Actually the writer for Bioshock is a libertarian. It is a critique of objectivism’s flaws as you will see if you go further along. There is a major twist in your understanding of what happened to the city of Rapture.

We can see these points as being contributory to the city’s downfall:

Prohibition on trade with the outside world - Andrew Ryan fears that governments and religion will interfere with his city, so he cut off the city from the outside world completely. This created a black market for surface goods, a big invitation for criminal types.

Intellectual property in Gene Splicing - The Gene Splicing creates a psychological and physical need for itself, similar to some of the more dangerous drugs we know of today. The benefits deprived from splicing seem to outweigh the dependency issue, which is only discovered later. The “owner of the idea” of gene splicing is aware of its detriments and uses them to his advantage. Competition to improve the safety of splicing was not allowed.

Freedom of movement:Labor Market restricted - Those invited to Rapture are all academic, industrial, and creative leaders. Like Ayn Rand, Andrew Ryan was obsessed with the idea of “Great Men”. Of course, in any division of labor there are many vital tasks that aren’t at the top of the scale. Many found themselves going from comfortable livings in the state controlled world to scrubbing toilets for a living on the bottom of the sea. Their livings were decent, but many weren’t willing to adapt to the demands of Rapture’s isolated market. They had unrealistic expectations, and when they found that they had no ability to leave, just flat out refused to work, and then rebelled.

As we can see, it was the areas where the city was NOT libertarian that inevitably caused conflicts. Conflicts that could easily be exploited by any person interested in control. Keep playing and you will have much to think about. =]

10

In Bioshock 2 the city is supposedly under the control of a spiritualist-socialist lady.

11

Okay, this makes me want to give the game another shot. Thanks.

12

I don’t much like political messages in video games/movies/tv shows.The most recent example I think of is 30 rock. I’ve been trying to get into it, and I’m not finding it funny and it’s way to liberal.

As to Masseffect, I wouldn’t mind if they threw in a political message. Bioware does a amazing job at keeping me entertained. That said, I probably wouldn’t notice a political message.

13

I know, its a crying shame that Ryan’s not around to have a siezure at seeing what has become of his city

14

I hail Bioshock the greatest non-sequitur to Atlas Shrugged to date; a game chock full of obscure references, and MAG style plot (better know as “Bill Gates will start a camapign of Alexandrian conquest in an ancap society because we said so” story telling) We have the city Rapture (dystopic version of Galt’s Gulch) which was founded by Andrew Carnegie. Andrew is known for his longwinded speeches of bravado (take that John Galt!). Rapture has gone to hell because everyone started shooting up on heroin; coincidentelly, produced by the evil capitalists (Carnegie and a con artist). Andrew was not a principled man, and ended up becoming a dictator, driven to the brink by evil competion (IICR: civil war between the two industries). So what can we make of this? Self-interest and Capitalism are concepts of misguided creatures because the writers learned how to play around with symbolism? If superficial critiques through amateurish methods are what is considered complex story telling, then the “video games are lolart” crowd are shooting themselves in the foot.

As for the sequel, I’ve read that Big Sister is a child napping collectivist.

15

The creator of bioshock stated that it wasn’t really as much about the philosophy of objectivism as trying to capture ayn rand’s “intensity”

Mass effect sucked though. It was like a jock-rpg, linear, generic character development and uninspired gear.

optionA) Sure, I’ll help you with your problem!
optionB) Sure, I’ll help you with your problem but then you have to tell me more about the main plot!
optionC) You are a douchebag and I hate you but I’ll help you with your problem anyway!

Graphics weren’t terrible though… Played it on PC. Noticed eckzbawkz version caught lag. lol

16

Well it wasn’t like Deus Ex but it is certainly better then most these days.

17

CoD: MW2 FTW!!!

18

I’m looking forward to Bioshock 2, first one was great though. Since, I was a fascist/neocon back in the day and had no clue what the Austrian school was (due to my age and thinking Rush Limbaugh was the eighth world wonder), the story fascinates me that much more now.

Anyone here have Dragon Age: Origins?

19

QFT. Could never understand the hype associated with it.

20

Lol. Somone once told me that the mises forums were full of nerds… What a silly person [A]