Gameplay Journal #7: Bioshock

First off, I don’t like to talk about politics. I realize that politics is not necessarily bad to talk about but, I’ve always been a little bit uncomfortable discussing them. I’m the kind of person that likes to keep my thoughts and opinions to myself unless I’m involved in a conversation with my small circle of friends (or writing about them on a class assignment). However, I do enjoy seeing politics in video games especially when they’re done right. Bioshock is a great game that does it right.

I’ve actually played Bioshock for the first time back in April of last year during quarantine through the Bioshock Collection on PS4. I’ve missed out on it’s original release back in 2007 as I didn’t own an Xbox 360 at the time. As I grew older and started appreciating narratives in video games a lot more, I got recommended Bioshock. I didn’t really know what to expect other than I remembered the game received a lot of praise back in the day. I was too young and Xbox 360-less at the time to take a look, but when the pandemic hit full-swing and I was stuck in home for a long period of time, I finally gave it a shot.

Bioshock has objectivism rooted in it’s narrative, which Andrew Ryan based his city, Rapture, on. Objectivism is the idea of having things like scientific advancement be first instead of focusing on faith (Biddle) as well as following your own self-interests and making a profit out of your abilities & ambitions while not being bothered by other people (Bioshock Wiki). It’s presented as a failure through gameplay when you discover and explore the city as it is in ruins to which the saying goes: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I enjoyed my playthrough of Bioshock, it’s one of the best games and one of the best narratives I’ve ever played. I wish that I could’ve played it back in the day to share the hype with everyone else who were playing it as well, discovering and unraveling the narrative much like how I love to do with today’s games like The Last of Us and it’s sequel. And much like The Last of Us, Bioshock’s narrative was super memorable, and that’s how it should be when you involve politics in video games. I like it when video game developers and writers share their artistic and social expressions because it allows me to see different viewpoints through a character in a game (or any media) and I always keep an open mind about new and different things. As Ian Bogost explains, “videogames are increasingly becoming a forum for artistic expression and, more importantly for the present discussion, social expression” (Bogost). Bioshock’s use of objectivism for it’s narrative paints a picture of a dream society doomed to fail and when the writing can back it up along with great gameplay, it’ll always have a spot in my game collection.

This week’s Let’s Play video:

Works Cited

Biddle, Craig. What is Objectivism? 05 Feb. 2014. www.theobjectivestandard.com/what-is-objectivism/. Accessed 02 Mar. 2021.

Bioshock Cultural References. Bioshock Wiki, n.d., www.bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/BioShock_Cultural_References#Historical_References. Accessed 02 Mar. 2021.

Bogost, Ian. Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy. 2006.