Abstract
The critically and commercially successful first-person shooter Bioshock is widely considered to be one of the greatest digital games of all time. This article traces its canonization by critically examining its marketing and popular reception as a blockbuster “prestige game” that demonstrates the aesthetic potential of games as a medium. In particular, far-reaching discussions of the relationship between narrative and gameplay mechanics in Bioshock have reinforced its canonical status as required playing among critics and scholars. The article concludes by comparing the reception of Bioshock and its “spiritual successor” Bioshock Infinite, showing how popular, critical, and industrial attitudes toward big-budget prestige titles have shifted in recent years.
The digital game industry has grown from a niche entrepreneurial pursuit into a multibillion dollar commercial enterprise and a central player in the conglomerated and convergent contemporary media industry. Along with this growth has come increasing visibility and social acceptance of gaming as a pastime, resulting in a diversification of its market and products (Juul, 2012, pp. 7–8). Spectacular action blockbusters stand alongside more modest digitally distributed titles, massively multiplayer online games, family-oriented party games, as well as “casual” web and mobile games in the carefully synergized portfolios of corporations like Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Activision Blizzard, and Ubisoft. In spite of this expansion of the market, however, the industry’s blockbuster offerings still dominate mainstream gaming discourse. These so-called AAA (“triple-A”) titles are expected to have the highest production values and provide the most exciting experiences on the market. As such, AAA games are developed by teams of hundreds with massive production and marketing budgets and rely heavily on established genre and gameplay formulas, “presold” series and franchise properties, and emulation of previous successes to ensure maximum returns. Explicitly aimed at the lucrative “core gamer” demographic, AAA franchises like Call of Duty (Activision, 2003-present), Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft, 2007-present), and Grand Theft Auto (ASC Games, 1997-present) are the economic tentpoles of the game industry (Keogh, 2015). In this article, I will critically examine the cultural reception of Bioshock (2K Games, 2007), a popular and critically acclaimed AAA game that is widely understood to transcend mere entertainment and has been granted special status as an exemplar of the medium of digital games. As John Vanderhoef (2012) has argued, canon formation is under-examined in game studies. How and why are certain games elevated above others and enshrined in popular canon as works of art? How do certain texts come to dominate popular, critical, and scholarly discourse? Adapting a concept from film studies, I contend that Bioshock is an archetypal prestige game: a special class of AAA game that is expected to excel commercially but has distinction from other popular favorites and best sellers by grace of its supposed artistic quality and canonical status.
Hollywood prestige pictures are popularly understood to represent the best the mainstream film industry has to offer. Distinct from festival-oriented art films putatively made outside the confines of the industry, prestige pictures play in multiplexes and win Oscars, elevating the production and consumption of Hollywood’s products through their prestigious status while operating fully within its forms and conventions (Baumann, 2007, p. 66). Likewise, Bioshock has been heralded as: the definitive step of mainstream games toward the artistic and expressive capacities of media like cinema, [and] one of the most significant examples of what the mainstream game industry understands as a game that pushes the boundaries of game design expression, targeting mature computer game players. (Sicart, 2009, p. 152)
Historically, according to Western paradigms, legitimate art is supposed to be produced at a distance from the corrupting logic of the marketplace, and artists are supposed to seek symbolic, not economic, capital (Baumann, 2007, p. 86). Of course, this has never really been true, and art has always been bound up in other systems of value than the “pure” disinterested aesthetic (Bourdieu, 1984). Moreover, the recognition of Hollywood films, pop music, and the products of other culture industries as aesthetically valuable in spite of their primary commercial function would seem to have overturned this paradigm (Carroll, 1998). Nevertheless, the conditions of commercial media production are still seen to be less amenable to cultural and aesthetic legitimation than more autonomous or independent modes of production (Baumann, 2007, p. 9). Commercial, popular, and “mass” art occupies an uncomfortable position in relation to dominant conceptions of art, and to seek aesthetic legitimacy within this context is an ongoing process of negotiation. While independent “artgames” can afford (at least discursively) to disavow commercial success (F. Parker, 2013), a prestige game like Bioshock needs to turn a substantial profit and so must attempt to reconcile art and commerce in order to generate both economic and cultural capital.
Method
In order to explain how prestige games achieve canonical status and become important sites for the broader cultural and aesthetic legitimation of digital games, this article presents a metacommentary on Bioshock’s cultural reception. Bioshock has been taken up so extensively by critics and scholars that people writing about the game frequently make self-deprecating or ironic remarks about just how incessantly the game is discussed (Anderson, 2009). My critical discourse analysis of Bioshock and its cultural reception thus includes a diverse array of sources, ranging from official paratextual materials, such as marketing, press releases, “behind the scenes” features, and interviews, to popular discourse in the form of journalism and reviews, to more self-reflexively intellectual essayistic criticism and academic writing. 1 Rather than treating these modes of discourse separately, my analysis and metacommentary moves freely between them in order to paint a full picture of Bioshock’s canonization. This is a deliberate critical gesture intended to foreground the distributed nature of canon formation processes. As Jonathan Lupo (2011) suggests, “the ‘power’ in determining canonical texts is diffuse; critics, academics, and even the public all have a ‘say’” (p. 20). In the case of Bioshock, clear connections can be drawn between its marketing hype and mainstream popularity, its widespread discussion in the emergent “critical blogosphere” (Abraham, 2013, p. 2), and the vast quantities of scholarship on the game—indeed, academics often reassert the same ideas and interpretations as journalists and critics within more rigorous theoretical frameworks. Whatever other functions academic writing on art and culture is intended to serve, it also participates in processes of canon formation and cultural distinction (Staiger, 1985).
After providing a short overview of the game, I will outline the features most commonly praised in Bioshock reviews and criticism, leading into a discussion of how the game’s ambitious narrative and thematic concerns help position it as a central text in critical debates. I will conclude by situating the canonization of Bioshock historically, in relation to changes in the game industry and gaming culture since 2007.
Bioshock Overview
Developed by Irrational Games beginning around 2002 (Irrational Games Admin, 2010), Bioshock was first pitched to major publisher Take-Two Interactive’s 2K Games branch in 2005, which subsequently acquired Irrational and funded the game’s substantial development costs (Murdoch, 2007). This lengthy and expensive production process as well as a 5.5 million dollar marketing and promotion campaign “designed to help it overcome a lack of previous brand awareness” (Aldred & Greenspan, 2011, p. 485) resulted in a high degree of prerelease hype, especially after the first in-game footage was shown at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and it began making the rounds on the game industry convention circuit (Gamespot, 2006). Bioshock was initially released in August 2007 as a 1-year “timed exclusive” for Microsoft’s high-end Xbox 360 console and Windows PCs (Aldred & Greenspan, 2011, p. 485) and was later ported to Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Mac OS. Since its release, it has sold over 4 million units (Take-Two Interactive, 2010). The game was met with rave reviews, and in spite of occasional complaints about the game’s low difficulty level compared to its predecessors, bugs and technical glitches, and its abrupt ending, the game was almost universally acclaimed in the mainstream gaming press. It received numerous 9/10 and 10/10 scores, stamps of approval in the form of “Editor’s Choice” and “Game of the Year” awards on various websites, and high rankings on best of 2007 lists. The game was also cited in many responses to film critic Roger Ebert’s notorious and much-derided assertion in 2010 that “video games can never be art.” More recently, Bioshock has been included in a number of institutional exhibitions of historically or culturally important games, including The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s much-publicized touring show The Art of Video Games.
Bioshock is built on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine (a popular software toolkit for developing 3D games) and combines first-person shooter (FPS) gameplay with some role-playing game (RPG) elements, including a variety of customizable weapons and magic-like special powers called “plasmids” purchased with collectible genetic material called “Adam.” The game is set in 1960, and the player takes the role and perspective of Jack, who is stranded by a plane crash in Rapture, a crumbling, leaky underwater city at the bottom of the Atlantic. Founded and built in the 1940s by a disillusioned titan of industry named Andrew Ryan, Rapture was intended to be a free-market capitalist utopia for the best and brightest in the world but has fallen from grace after a civil war precipitated by Ryan’s business rival Frank Fontaine. The city is now primarily populated by violent, genetically modified junkies called “splicers,” creepy young girls called “little sisters” who are tasked (for convoluted narrative reasons) with harvesting Adam from corpses, and “big daddies,” hulking mechanically and genetically enhanced guards who protect the little sisters. Over the course of the game, the player must navigate the shadowy, retro-futuristic Art Deco halls of Rapture, fending off various types of splicers, defeating big daddies, and choosing whether to “harvest” or “save” the little sisters. This choice involves either killing the little sisters in exchange for a large amount of Adam or freeing them for a small amount of Adam and the promise of future rewards.
The player gradually uncovers what happened to Rapture in the course of exploring the game world’s “embedded narrative” (Jenkins, 2004), through radio communication from other characters and collectible audio diaries that both reveal important plot information and flesh out the history of the city and its inhabitants. Guided via radio by an apparent ally named Atlas, in the first act, the player must fight through the ruins in hopes of rescuing Atlas’ family and escaping to the surface. In the second act, with any hope of escape squashed by Ryan’s murder of Atlas’ family, the player becomes an agent of revenge, until it is revealed in a twist that Atlas is in fact Ryan’s arch-rival Frank Fontaine and Jack has been genetically engineered from Ryan’s DNA and brainwashed to obey Fontaine’s commands. Jack’s whole life and all of his memories and decisions thus far have been an illusion designed to compel him to assassinate Ryan. In a final, suicidal act of defiance, Ryan forces Jack to murder him in a noninteractive sequence, and in the third and final act of the game, the player must overcome Fontaine’s mind control and finally destroy him. The game concludes with a brief epilogue that reveals one of three possible fates for Jack, depending on how the player has chosen to treat the little sisters.
Constructing Bioshock as Art
Discussing Hollywood films, Shyon Baumann (2007) notes that a certain set of aesthetic criteria are commonly associated with prestige texts, including formal and stylistic beauty (with a particular emphasis on the visual), innovating, combining, or perfecting established conventions, and the expression of meaningful messages or a unique vision (p. 66). Unsurprisingly, much of the overwhelmingly positive reception of Bioshock posits it as an all-encompassing work of art, successful in all its aspects. The game is praised for its distinctive style and setting, innovative gameplay, and complex narrative and themes. Leading up to its release, Bioshock was framed first and foremost as an innovative, “kick-ass shooter.” Journalist Julian Murdoch (2007) wryly observes, after a visit to Irrational’s studio, that “BioShock is (as both [creative director Ken] Levine, the PR people, and the designers reminded me every 20 minutes), a first person shooter.” As noted above, the concept of innovation is central to prestige game production and reception; but given the commercial imperatives of the industry, innovation is necessarily grounded in previously successful formulas; and according to Murdoch, 2K wanted Bioshock to be strongly identified as an FPS to avoid potentially risky ambiguity about the game’s genre in its marketing and promotion.
Bioshock is often situated as part of a particular strain in the history of first-person game design, with its origins in influential studio Looking Glass’ Ultima Underworld (Origin Systems, 1992) and System Shock (Origin Systems, 1994), pointing to their similarly hostile dystopian settings, the incorporation of RPG-style upgrades in the form of physical or biomechanical augmentation, and the use of a silent protagonist and diegetic audio recordings for storytelling (Weise, 2008, pp. 152–153). The fact that Bioshock writer and creative director Ken Levine worked for Looking Glass on Thief: The Dark Project (1998) before founding Irrational Games with two other former Looking Glass developers further reinforces these connections (Weise, 2008, p. 153). Both Thief and Irrational’s first game System Shock 2 (Electronic Arts, 1999) are widely considered to be cult classics that defined the stealth/action hybrid genre as a more sophisticated, intelligent, and strategic alternative to action-oriented shooters (The Making Of: System Shock 2, 2012), and Bioshock is commonly understood to be part of this lineage (Dyer-Witheford & De Peuter, 2009, p. 194). In particular, it is identified in both official paratexts and popular discourse as the “spiritual successor” to System Shock 2 (Bioshock—Making Of, 2007; Murdoch, 2007; Park, 2004). Bioshock is thus framed as the apotheosis of a long and distinguished tradition, using established conventions in new and interesting ways.
In the “Making Of” featurettes included with the Bioshock collector’s edition, Levine talks about streamlining the design throughout the long development process to focus on “the heart of the shooter” and trim away unnecessary distractions (Bioshock—Making Of, 2007). Elsewhere, he boldly claims that Bioshock will “redefine what it means to be a first-person shooter” and “put a stake in the heart of all those [FPS game] clichés” (BioShock: Developer Commentary, 2006), highlighting the game’s elaborate artificial intelligence ecology and possibilities for emergent gameplay (Park, 2004). System Shock 2, though a cult hit, had only modest sales, and so it is unsurprising that Bioshock—a risky project, given its large budget and lack of franchise affiliation (Aldred & Greenspan, 2011, p. 485)—is discursively distanced from its predecessor’s less accessible RPG mechanics. Reviewers and critics have enthusiastically taken up the game’s careful categorization, assuring consumers that regardless of what else Bioshock might be, it fulfils the exacting demands of the “hardcore gamer” for an “intelligent” and “inventive” FPS (GameTrailers, 2007; Graduate School Gamer, 2008; Reed, 2007). This has been crucial to Bioshock’s commercial and critical success, presenting it as a layered work that doesn’t compromise on entertainment value and hardcore gamer credibility (Gerstmann, 2007).
Ewan Kirkland (2010) argues that discussions of audiovisual style in mainstream games function to align them with more established art forms by highlighting “cinematic” atmosphere or “painterly” style, thus enabling direct aesthetic comparisons (p. 320). In spite of the above focus on gameplay, Bioshock’s “gloss and glorious attention to detail” (Reed, 2007) in excess of the core is equally important to its canonical status. Members of the development team discuss the importance of making the game environments ostentatious and rich, rather than purely utilitarian, to reflect the lofty ambitions of the underwater society (Bioshock—Making Of, 2007). The resulting “steampunk” pastiche of Art Deco architecture, film noir tropes, and American pop culture of the 1930s to 1950s is repeatedly used to elevate the game above less stylish FPS games that strive for “mere” photorealism (DeAngelus, 2007; Sands, 2007) and into the realm of art (Onyett, 2007; Tavinor, 2009, p. 92). The sound and music in Bioshock is given much more attention than is common in popular discourse about games, with critics praising the audio design for adding depth and atmosphere to the murky environments (DeAngelus, 2007; Gibbons, 2011; Reed, 2007).
Bioshock cuts across several genres, but it draws significant inspiration from “survival horror” series such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and its predecessors in the System Shock series. Its horror elements are taken up enthusiastically by critics, who link the game’s horrific impact to its evocative world building (Murdoch, 2007; Pliskin, 2008a; Reyes, 2007). Survival horror is something of a privileged genre in digital games (Kirkland, 2010), but Bioshock is doubly privileged by critics who position its particular brand of horror as restrained and psychological, over and against the “cheap” gore and startle scares of lesser horror games (Barratt, 2007). In film and other media, psychological “horror from within” is understood to represent a more sophisticated and aesthetically worthy form of horror (McKibbin, 2006, p. 51). Leigh Alexander (2007a) writes that “The sense of deep dread one experiences playing the game, the revulsion, the strange blend of pity and disgust arises from the humiliation and the fear we feel at seeing our own selves advanced to this eventuality”—this is not ordinary fear but a profound existential horror reserved for serious art.
Although his name is not printed above Bioshock’s title, Ken Levine is an inescapable, structuring presence throughout the game’s official and unofficial paratexts, presented and received as the primary author responsible for Bioshock’s successes (and failures). Although Irrational Games had an established fanbase, in the course of the development, promotion, and reception of Bioshock, Levine is made into an identifiable auteur in the mainstream game industry. Auteur creators in this commercial context are figures of compromise, and so Levine is constructed simultaneously as a visionary writer (Bissell, 2013), a clever game designer (Park, 2004), a thoughtful critic (Gillen, 2007b), a nerdy fanboy (Lahti, 2012), and a savvy businessman (Murdoch, 2007). Bioshock is framed by its paratexts as Levine’s “magnum opus” (Eurogamer, 2008; Murdoch, 2007) and a work of “genuine talent and vision” on his part (Reed, 2007). Critic Tom Bissell (2011), an ardent supporter of the game, claims it as “a great work of art” and attributes this to the fact that it was created by a strong individual (p. 35), and elsewhere compares Levine to the archetypal Hollywood auteur, Citizen Kane director Orson Welles (Bissell, 2013). Authorship as a legitimation strategy is well established in other media industries (Baumann, 2007, p. 59; Beaty, 2012, p. 84), and the critical discourse around Bioshock firmly positions Levine within this tradition.
A Game With “Something to Say”
Bioshock’s narrative and thematic content contributes directly to its high cultural status compared to other AAA games, and as noted above, Levine’s auteur persona hinges in part on his image as a visionary storyteller. Promotional materials stress the game’s thematic depth, which the developers argue “had no real precedent” in games (Bioshock—Making Of, 2007), and reviewers are forthcoming with praise for its “compelling” and “brilliantly measured” story (Linde, 2007), which stands “leagues above the current competition” (Barratt, 2007). This distinction has also been a key factor in calls for sustained academic engagement with the game and its sequels (Lizardi, 2014). Part of what sets Bioshock apart is the perception that it is more than just a gripping adventure (Turner, 2007) and has something to say about serious topics like dystopian literature, Randian objectivism, and Art Deco (Sicart, 2009, p. 161) as well as “story, philosophy, politics, literature and the nature of being human” (Murdoch, 2007). According to critics and scholars, Bioshock asks difficult questions and encourages players to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions (Gillen, 2007a; Pfister, 2007), rewarding deep investment and reflection (Barratt, 2007; Tavinor, 2009), thus offering a philosophical experience “beyond teenage power-gaming and simplistic propaganda” (Konzack, 2009, p. 44). Animated in critical discourse, Bioshock’s thematic concerns make it a game that matters and thus a game “worth talking about” (Gillen, 2007a; Lizardi, 2014).
One of the features strongly associated with art in popular culture is the emotional resonance of its themes and the ability of a work to produce an affective response. Promotional materials for Bioshock discuss the importance of making this kind of impact by giving the in-game characters believable emotions and putting the player in difficult situations (Bioshock—Making Of, 2007). Alexander (2007b), attempting to explain the extensive critical attention given to the game, argues that Bioshock is exemplary of “the way games affect us emotionally, what they say about us as humans.” The relationship between the little sisters and big daddies in particular, carefully designed by Irrational to encourage sympathy (Bioshock—Making Of, 2007), is a frequently cited source of pathos (Sands, 2007). Critics adopt a particularly affective language to describe this aspect of the game, juxtaposing its violence and sadness: “the weird whispery banter between a red-eyed Little Sister and her hulking, shadowy Big Daddy guardian gives the entire bloodbath that’s about to follow a melancholic, emotive twinge” (Reyes, 2007). One reviewer admits that he wept during the ending, invoking an oft-cited (and much derided) popular criterion for games as art (Molloby, 2007).
Playing Bioshock, then, is understood to be an intellectual, emotional experience for mature and thoughtful (but also hardcore) players. “Beautiful, isolating, and desolate,” the Smithsonian Art of Video Games catalogue book enthuses, “BioShock manages to deliver an action game that forces the player into uncomfortable situations and requires him or her to think about the implications of one’s actions” (Melissinos & O’Rourke, 2013, p. 162). Of course, it has also been purchased and played by millions of people, and this popular success has enabled (rather than hindered) Bioshock in quickly becoming a critical touchstone, easily invoked as the game that finally proves games are “growing up” (Sofge, 2007). Bissell (2010) writes in this vein, “BioShock was the first game that made me stop and say, […] there’s not even a trace amount of shame for all the time I’m spending with this.” It is clear that a prestige game with something to say like Bioshock is a point of pride for fans, critics, and scholars invested in mainstream gaming culture, and its canonization also bestows prestige on those who consider themselves sophisticated enough to appreciate and discuss it on this level.
Dystopia and Politics
Unsurprisingly, many scholars and critics discuss Bioshock in the dystopian tradition of inventing fictional societies for satire or other forms of sociopolitical critique. For Jessica Aldred and Brian Greenspan (2011), it is part of a “dystopian turn” in contemporary art and popular culture, in which zombies, societal collapse, and postapocalyptic wastelands are dominant tropes (p. 480). This kind of alternate-history fiction is worthy of serious attention, they suggest, because it engages real-world history and politics to encourage player contemplation (see also Lizardi, 2014). Similarly, Lars Schmeink (2009) argues the game opens the possibility for radical change by demonstrating that things could have been otherwise save for the actions and choices of individuals. The game is frequently compared to canonical dystopian novels like Animal Farm, 1984 (Dougherty, 2013; Melissinos & O’Rourke, 2013), and the novel and film versions of Logan’s Run, which Levine often cites as a primary inspiration for his work (Chalk, 2013; Minkley, 2007). In aligning Bioshock with these well-regarded texts, critics and scholars build it up into a work of social relevance and meaning beyond itself, worthy of a specialized kind of analysis and interpretation. Part of what is notable about Bioshock’s reception is that it is not read as a text that symptomatically encodes or reflects contemporary politics but rather as an intentional political statement. 2 According to critics and scholars, the game raises ethical questions and asks the player to consider their actions, rather than passively and uncritically reflecting the dominant ideology (Konzack, 2009, p. 40).
Unlike “serious games,” “games for change,” and other kinds of games that are intended to make specific social or political arguments, Bioshock is neutral enough in its politics to be widely marketable. As Aldred and Greenspan argue, the game is politically ambivalent, sometimes interrogating and sometimes celebrating the ideology it engages (p. 480). Levine takes care to distance his work from more explicitly political games, which are implied to be overbearing and pretentious. “You don’t elevate the discussion by saying ‘listen to me!’” he argues, “You get it by saying ‘look this is awesome [FPS], oh and by the way we’re also talking about being a human being. We’re also talking about power’” (Ryckert, 2012). Attractive, marketable gameplay is seen as a kind of delivery mechanism for the game’s highfalutin subject matter, and in this sense, the prestige game purports to be both more entertaining and more effective than other “message” games.
Although questions about how to interpret the game come up frequently in interviews, Levine avoids imposing specific political messages on Bioshock, saying he is uncomfortable with the idea of making any particular statement (Dougherty, 2013), beyond encouraging people to think for themselves (Sinclair, 2007) and to be skeptical of all absolute truths and totalizing ideologies: If they’re about anything they’re about not buying into a single point of view. About having a lack of confidence in anything. They’re not ever an attack on a single idea. It’s a bit of a plague on all your houses. (Lahti, 2012)
Nick Dyer-Witheford and Grieg de Peuter (2009), in their influential political economy of digital games, include Bioshock in a handful of examples of popular shooter games that seek to subvert or critique the dominant ideology from within, though they remain somewhat skeptical of the possibilities for radical art within the mainstream game industry (p. 194). Bioshock is specifically praised for its critique of capitalist hubris, which they find notable for its avoidance of the more familiar and “safe” trope of the pseudo-socialist/Soviet dystopia, and they suggest that in spite of its 1960s setting, it is concerned with contemporary neoliberalism (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009, p. 196). John Lanchester (2009) echoes this point in the London Review of Books (not a common venue for game reviews, which speaks to Bioshock’s prestige status), arguing that the game presents a timely critique of Randian objectivism, free-market capitalism, and individualism in an era when these ideologies are not often subject to scrutiny. Furthermore, this philosophical and political critique—worthy subject matter for serious art in any medium—are supposedly “made vastly more complex and nuanced, by the way it is embedded within its ludic mechanisms” (Tulloch, 2009). As the subsequent sections will demonstrate, the intertwining of Bioshock’s message and its gameplay mechanics is of particular significance to its critical reception and canonization.
Moral Choice and Ludonarrative Dissonance
The most widely discussed aspects of Bioshock are its moral choice mechanics, in the context of broader discussions of how morality and ethics are simulated in digital games (Sicart, 2009, p. 152). Around the time of Bioshock’s release, offering players different moral “pathways” was becoming a major marketing feature and technical goal for games as well as an appropriately medium-specific way of demonstrating the supposed aesthetic value of games. Although this was not a new idea, having been a feature of acclaimed RPGs like Baldur’s Gate (Interplay, 1998) and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (LucasArts, 2003), between 2006 and 2008, a slew of commercially and critically successful titles were released, including Bioshock, Mass Effect (Microsoft Game Studios, 2007), Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks, 2008), Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games, 2008), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision, 2009), that renewed interest in the idea (Pliskin, 2008b) and brought it to the foreground of gaming culture (Parker, 2009). These games, and Bioshock in particular, catalyzed a far-reaching debate about the implications of morality mechanics in games.
Alongside “kick-ass” gameplay and its evocative fictional world, moral quandaries (and in particular the choice of whether to kill or save the little sisters) is central to Bioshock’s promotional discourse, which refers repeatedly to “meaningful and mature choices” (Bioshock—Hunting the Big Daddy Video, 2007). Levine states that Rapture is a complex, realistic world made up of moral gray areas, in which “nobody’s perfect” and everyone is “substantially flawed,” leaving it up to the player to decide whom to trust (Bioshock—Making Of, 2007). This appeal to moral complexity as a kind of realism is analogous to what David Bordwell (2009) observes in art cinema (p. 722), emphasizing subjectivity and ambiguity and echoing Levine’s comments about the game’s politics. By purporting that digital games can animate moral and ethical quandaries and consequences in a realistic, nuanced, and most importantly interactive way (Sicart, 2009, p. 154; Travis, 2010, p. 97), critics and scholars set Bioshock up as an exemplar of the medium’s most lofty aspirations.
Writers are divided on whether moral choice mechanics in mainstream games are effective or successful, and Bioshock has played a central role in this debate. Pseudonymous essayist Iroquois Pliskin (2008b) points out that art is generally expected to challenge people’s sense of morality but feels that in most cases, moral choice mechanics in games are superficial. Numerous critics decry Bioshock’s perceived lack of follow-through on its premise, arguing that the almost equal long-term rewards for saving or murdering the little sisters render the moral dimension of the choice moot because it doesn’t represent a meaningful sacrifice for the player (Clarkson, 2009a). This supposedly “neuters” the mechanic (Riley, 2007), which Sicart (2009) calls a “nonchoice” that serves only to “taunt” the player’s values but has minimal impact on the rest of the game (p. 160). Others defend the game, however, arguing that it makes an unequivocal moral statement, contra Levine’s insistence that it is open ended (Koo, 2007). Influential critic Kieron Gillen (2007a) is emphatic on this point: “Where [other games] have teased the idea of good and evil options, pandering to your tastes, BioShock just glares at you. You killed some kids? What Kind Of Person Are You?”
The real controversy, however, centers on the narrative twist about two thirds of the way through Bioshock, in which the protagonist Jack is revealed to be a vat-grown sleeper agent with implanted memories and has been mind controlled into blindly obeying Atlas/Fontaine’s orders, just as the player has blindly obeyed the instructions given (seemingly in good faith) by the game. To drive the point home, the game temporarily takes control away from the player, who is forced to watch through Jack’s eyes as he is forced to brutally murder Andrew Ryan. This sequence has been almost universally praised as a memorable, defining moment in gaming history and has in no small part helped secure Bioshock’s place in the popular canon.
Critics and scholars find resonance between the twist sequence and the themes of morality, freedom, and control that pervade the game’s setting and narrative (Koo, 2007; Tavinor, 2009, p. 102). According to Bissell (2011) and others, the game deliberately throws these themes “back into the gamer’s face” (p. 80), challenging the player’s sense of agency and the misguided values driving their previous actions (Cathode Tan, 2007; Sicart, 2009, pp. 155–157). Game scholar and classicist Roger Travis invokes Plato’s allegory of the cave, suggesting that Andrew Ryan’s harrowing last words, “a man chooses; a slave obeys,” in fact obfuscate the true ethical problem posed by the game, which is “the dangerous illusion of choice” in liberal subjectivity (Travis, 2010, p. 99). As Travis’ Plato example suggests, twist endings, unreliable narrators, and using new information to reframe previous events in a narrative is well established in other cultural forms, in particular in tragedy, melodrama, and the thriller (Tavinor, 2009, p. 92), and critics use the sequence to align Bioshock with these traditions. Going one step further, philosopher Grant Tavinor (2009) and critic Aevee Bee (2009) both suggest that Bioshock uses its twist to produce emotions that are difficult or perhaps impossible to achieve in other media, such as guilt and regret.
In spite of its mostly positive reception, Bioshock’s twist sequence precipitated a debate that was already simmering in game criticism (and game studies) about the relationship between narrative and gameplay and the role of storytelling in games (Cathode Tan, 2007). The touchstone in this debate is game designer Clint Hocking’s lengthy 2007 blog post, “Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock.” Hocking critiques key elements of the game and argues that Bioshock breaks a tacit contract with the player who has willingly suspended disbelief in order to enjoy the game: The “twist” in the plot is a deus ex machina built upon the very weaknesses of game stories that we—as players—agree to accept in order to have some sort of narrative framework to flavor our fiddling about with mechanics. (Hocking, 2007)
The most common counter to Hocking’s argument is to read Bioshock’s twist, and the dissonance it produces, as a self-reflexive, critical metacommentary on the artifice of gaming conventions. In this reading, the dissonance “is fundamentally constitutive of the game’s meaning and effect” (Travis, 2010, p. 97) and a way for the game to comment on its own “game-ness” (Bissell, 2011, pp. 153–154). Dissonance is seen to be crucial to Bioshock’s artistic achievement (Tavinor, 2009, p. 101), offering players the kind of (post)modernist reflexivity typically associated with a medium or art form’s evolution to maturity (Cathode Tan, 2007; Pfister, 2007). The notion that Bioshock is a deliberate, brilliant subversion the player’s agency—and thus the supposed interactivity of games in general—is discussed by numerous writers (Bee, 2009; Tulloch, 2009) but is summed up nicely by Pliskin (2008c): I see all this as a parable about gaming. [ … ] Games are an interactive medium, but in a real sense the designer of the game is the one who makes all the choices because they are the one who creates all the rules. The genius of Bioshock lies in the fact that it investigates this paradox in the context of the game itself.
Bioshock is the archetypal example of this kind of dissonance in games, but similar twists feature in a wide range of critically acclaimed games, including prestige games like Shadow of the Colossus (Sony Computer Entertainment, 2005) and Spec Ops: The Line (2K Games, 2012) as well as indie artgames like Braid (Microsoft Game Studios, 2009). These games have also been the focus of extensive critical discourse (both positive and negative) and have been widely interpreted as meta-commentary on the internal logics and politics of popular games (Hamilton, 2012; Keogh, 2012; Vadkul, 2009). 3 The recurrence of narrative twists in games with high cultural status can in part be attributed to the way the twist sequence “inspires a retroactive horror” and invites players to look back on the game and rethink it in a new light, even to the point of playing it again (Bee, 2009). In this sense, Bioshock is designed from the ground up to invite sustained reflection, debate, and criticism, as evidenced by the countless forum discussions, blog posts, essays, articles, chapters, theses, and even academic monographs (Jackson, 2014) it has produced. This is not just a game with something to say, but a game worth saying something about—a game that justifies the whole enterprise of game criticism and scholarship.
Bioshock as Exemplar
Bioshock has won numerous awards, including the Spike TV Video Game Awards Game of the Year (Dobson, 2007) and Best Game at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Video Game Awards, one of the few institutions that recognizes games alongside other media (Sliwinski, 2007). It is habitually ranked near the top of “best-games-of-all-time” lists (to give but two of many examples, Empire ranked it 26th out of 100, Empire Online, 2009; and GamesRadar ranked it 6th out of 100, GamesRader, 2013). Prestige texts of this kind are designed to appeal to both art and commerce and are purported to elevate the whole industry and enthusiast culture from which they emerge. In this sense, they serve an exemplifying function. Critics and scholars are hyperbolic in their praise for Bioshock, proclaiming it “a beacon of hope amid a sea of mediocrity” (Reed, 2007), a “benchmark against which games for years to come will, and indeed must, be measured” (Onyett, 2007), “the masterpiece of recent gaming” (Tavinor, 2009, p. 91), and “a standard bearer for next generation gaming” (Eurogamer, 2007). According to the discourse on Bioshock, its greatness drags the medium up out of the gutter, much as the “great chain” of society is lifted up by visionary individualists (at least according to the game’s arch-capitalist Andrew Ryan).
At the same time, Bioshock seems to do more than just exemplify what is possible for the game industry, with other accounts suggesting that it transcends its lowly commercial origins entirely, leaving the rest of the dreck far below—a “once-in-a-lifetime” game (Alex, 2008) and “much, much more” than “just” a shooter (Gerstmann, 2007). True to form, Bissell (2011) writes, “Among the games of this era, BioShock has Himalayan stature [ … ] it is a work of anomalous and distinctive excellence” unlikely to be repeated (p. 151). Onyett (2007) sees the game as a “monolithic” symbol of what is lacking in the mainstream industry, calling for gaming enthusiasts to demand “something more from publishers and developers, more than all those derivative sequels forced down our throats year after year with only minor tweaks in their formulas.” Others lament that it will be a long time before any other game achieves the same level of excellence (Reed, 2007; Reyes, 2007), as if it is a fragile, fleeting thing that needs to be clung to, for fear of losing it before its full potential is realized: “Please don’t let this game become that forgotten, one-of-a-kind masterpiece” (Barratt, 2007). Bioshock is elevated as a beacon to shine on those outside of gaming culture, including its harshest critics: it is supposedly “the perfect counterpoint” to those who claim digital games are not legitimate art (Molloby, 2007).
The few writers who dissent from Bioshock’s overwhelmingly positive reception and see it as a compromised success or missed opportunity nevertheless still affirm its artistic and historical importance as a sign of progress and promise (Edge Staff, 2007; Lanchester, 2009; Riley, 2007). Hocking (2007) concludes his critique of the game optimistically:
BioShock is not our Citizen Kane. But it does—more than any game I have ever played—show us how close we are to achieving that milestone. BioShock reaches for it, and slips. But we leave our deepest footprints when we pick ourselves up from a fall.
Infinite and Beyond
In 2013, a hotly anticipated spiritual successor to Bioshock was released with much fanfare. Bioshock Infinite (2K Games, 2013) moved the series’ setting to the hyperpatriotic, openly racist flying city of Columbia, and marked Irrational Games’ return to the series after the popular but less critically successful direct sequel Bioshock 2 (2K Games, 2010) (which was released in 2012 by the same publisher but developed by a different studio without Irrational’s involvement). Like its predecessors, Infinite has sold millions of copies and has been met with hyberbolic reviews, 9- and 10-out-of-10s, Game of the Year awards, and so on. Fans and journalists alike have been quick to declare it one of the best games of all time. 4 Reviewers praise the game in much the same terms as Bioshock: for its robust fictional world and emotional impact, for its thrilling action sequences, and for the depth of its message, in this case its exploration of the idea of parallel universes and commentary on American nationalism and racism. Infinite seems poised to inherit the popular canonical status of Bioshock—so far, so prestigious.
Since the game’s release, however, a critical discourse has emerged that directly counters Infinite’s enshrinement in canon, with a comparatively small but significant number of critics and scholars expressing ambivalence and disappointment in the game’s attempts to address serious issues like racism and violence from within the confines of the mainstream commercial FPS (for a useful overview, see Kunzelman, 2013; Suellentrop, 2013). Whereas Hocking’s critique of the first Bioshock ultimately praises its grand ambition, one critic goes so far as to dub Infinite “the worst game of the year [ … ] for its lack of humanity, for its fake guilt, for its flat boring gameplay, for its 100 million dollar cost, for its cleverness, for its cowardice,” making the game a symbol of everything wrong with the mainstream game industry (Thompson, 2013). Some found the game’s treatment of its “companion” character Elizabeth problematic (Walker, 2013), while others questioned whether the game really needed to be a violent shooter (Hamilton, 2013). In particular, numerous commentators have angrily and rigorously critiqued Infinite’s simplistic equivocation between the systemic violence of racism and antiracist resistance, which seems to suggest that to take up arms against oppression is “just as bad” as oppression itself (Kunzler, 2013; Starburp, 2013). This comfortable liberal centrism (presented entirely from the perspective of white characters) is, for critics, little more than a reification of the inequitable status quo (Stanton, 2013), made all the worse by Infinite’s framing as a prestige text and its popular reception as a serious, sophisticated political commentary (Kareem, 2013).
Ironically, this is precisely the kind of intellectual-enthusiast game criticism (and in some cases, the same critics, such as Leigh Alexander) that in 2007 worked to elevate and canonize Bioshock. Nevertheless, I would argue that the critique of Infinite is a logical extension of what came before, and an intensification of, rather than a radical break from, the critical conversations catalyzed by Bioshock in 2007. The relationship between gameplay and narrative is still a focal point in critiques of Infinite, as it is frequently criticized for the ludonarrative dissonance produced by its combination of extremely violent gameplay with attempts at emotional investment and intelligent social commentary (Golding, 2013; Hamilton, 2013). Likewise, the game has been criticized for its reliance on linear storytelling conventions, which are framed as a betrayal of the medium specificity of games (Kunzler, 2013) and further proof of its failure and the failure of the mainstream game industry as a whole (Thompson, 2013).
Much of this commentary suggests that things have not progressed enough since 2007 and that the promise of Bioshock has not been fulfilled (Alexander, 2013; Golding, 2013)—as Keogh puts it, “Bioshock Infinite’s biggest problem is that it is not 2007 anymore” (2013). Soha Kareem (2013) describes her excitement at the prospect of a thoughtful critique of racism from the makers of Bioshock and her bitter disappointment in the game’s execution, which motivated her turn to self-representation rather than waiting for the game industry to make more nuanced games about women of color. Other critics argue that the promise of Bioshock was false to begin with, retroactively reassessing the original game’s legacy and finding it equally ideologically problematic (Brice, 2013), or simply an overrated, “ham-fisted” slog, built around a “one-bit moral klaxon” (Bogost, 2013). There is a prevailing sense here that the widely accepted vision of “maturity” and artistic achievement represented by Bioshock Infinite and other recent prestige games like The Last of Us is fundamentally flawed and that the teleological notion that gaming culture is slowly but surely growing up is not accurate or sustainable (porpentine, 2013; Thompson, 2013). In the wake of much publicized incidents of sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia in the game industry and gaming culture, a growing number of critics and scholars are no longer willing to accept the kind of compromises big-budget commercial titles are supposedly required to make. This disconnect is reflected in the concurrent emergence of new sites for the production of cultural and aesthetic value in digital games. Many critics and scholars now look to a diverse range of games beyond the AAA mainstream to find works of cultural and artistic value, from polished commercial indie games to more explicitly oppositional and experimental DIY (do-it-yourself) game-making practices (Keogh, 2015).
Conclusion
In spite of shifting terrain of gaming culture, for many people, AAA prestige games continue to represent the apotheosis of the medium and the promise of cultural and aesthetic legitimacy. Bioshock’s careful discursive positioning as an innovative and entertaining AAA shooter that also has something worthwhile to say, and the ongoing critical and scholarly attention to its nuances has secured its canonical status for now, having been firmly established as a work of artistic and historical importance and “required playing” for those invested in gaming as a cultural form. This is, after all, the purpose of prestige texts: to attempt to reconcile lofty artistic ambitions with mass market success. In this sense, Bioshock might well be the Citizen Kane of games not because of its inherent aesthetic value or enduring greatness but because of its place in the gaming canon as enduring popular “proof” that important works of art can be achieved in the confines of the industry.
However, this status is contingent. The prestige game model exemplified by Bioshock has thrived in a particular historical moment but may not be sustainable. As evidenced by the divided reception of Bioshock: Infinite, there is an increasingly vocal sector of the gaming public that feels the limitations of AAA development are no longer acceptable and that the mainstream game industry can no longer (or never could) support the production of culturally or aesthetically valuable games. At the same time, in March 2014, Take-Two Interactive and 2K Games closed Irrational Games and fired most of its employees, amidst numerous reports that in spite of Infinite’s resounding popular success, its commercial performance could not justify its astronomical budget and lengthy production time (Alexander, 2014; Plante, 2014). Industry commentators have begun to publish articles warning that “meaty, single-player narrative games” with prestigious artistic aspirations are increasingly seen to be an unnecessary economic risk in the industry and may not be supported by major publishers in the future (Bissell, 2013; Statt, 2013). Given this uncertainty, it remains to be seen whether the prestige game will persist in this ambitious AAA blockbuster form, and how these shifts will impact canon formation processes in post-Bioshock gaming culture.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author acknowledges the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council 752-2011-2421.