4/9/2023 0 Comments Bioshock infinite concept art![]() To Levine, games are more like theme park rides than movies. And the one that's going to happen in a second. “Wow, what would have happened if I married so and so, or took that job in San Diego.” But you rarely think that each and every second that goes by is one of those moments. We always think of the road not taken, of something in the past. It makes us think we have a life, versus a continuum of choices. He explained this concept to the Guardian in 2014: In short, Levine is obsessed with the idea of choice in both games and reality. ![]() To really understand Bioshock, you have to understand a little bit about its creator, Ken Levine, a populist game-design auteur who also helped create the critically acclaimed System Shock 2 in the late 1990s. Like most first-person shooter games, Bioshock gives players an abundance of choices The game’s legendary status is more than a little bit ironic, however, because the game itself serves as a critique of both video games and the people who play them, and an interactive disquisition on the limitations of video games as narrative art. To this day, Bioshock - which was rereleased in September via a “remastered” edition, along with its two sequels - remains a milestone, often referenced by critics, creators, and fans as one of the best and most influential games ever made. It was a huge commercial success as well, selling more than 2 million copies, and it spawned two sequels, which sold even better. It quickly became the best-reviewed game for the then relatively new Xbox 360 console, garnering a 96 rating on Metacritic. Thus, the goal of Bioshock is to get through the city, fending off attacks from zombie-esque gene-mod addicts called splicers while encountering some of its crazed and colorful denizens.Īt the time of its original release, Bioshock was immediately hailed by critics for its immersive design as well as for its engagement with political themes, with Lanchester writing in the London Review of Books that the game was “visually striking, verging on intermittently beautiful, also violent, dark, sleep-troubling, and perhaps, to some of its intended audience, thought-provoking.” But by the time you discover the place, it has deteriorated into chaos following genetic modification run amok. Rapture was constructed as part of the majestic vision of a man named Andrew Ryan Ryan, who speaks to the player mostly via radio transmissions, was a monologue-prone capitalist who bore more than a little resemblance to the heroes of novelist Ayn Rand, Ryan’s quasi-namesake.Īs Ryan explains in an introductory monologue, Rapture was created as a radical haven for inventors and artists, where individuals could pursue their visions without interference from government or social scorn. Released in August 2007, the game was a first-person shooter set in Rapture, a grandly imagined but decaying underwater city built in an ostentatious art deco style. ![]() One of the games that helped solidify this consensus was Bioshock. ![]() Even Ebert seemed to come around, sort of, admitting in 2010 that his position had been foolish given his personal disinterest in playing most games. A robust critical community has arisen around gaming, with a multitude of writers taking on the social and theoretical aspects of games. In the years since, however, the debate has mostly been resolved in favor of video games as art. And in another piece on the subject, he wrote that when viewing his favorite pieces of art, his “empathy was engaged,” a reaction that he found video games were unlikely to elicit. “Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices,” Ebert added. If you change it, you become the artist,” Ebert wrote in a response to horror novelist and filmmaker Clive Barker, who had argued in favor of games as a way of creating an array experiences and emotional journeys tailored to individual player preferences. ![]() Perhaps most famously, Roger Ebert weighed in multiple times to the contrary, asserting not only that games were not yet art but that they could never be art, because they relinquished ultimate control to the player. John Lanchester addressed the topic in the London Review of Books in a bluntly titled essay, “Is it art?” In Esquire, Chuck Klosterman argued in favor of taking games seriously as a pop culture phenomenon but wondered why they had not yet produced great criticism. About a decade ago, as the last generation of video game consoles hit the market, a debate, or at least a question, proliferated among pop culture critics: Are video games really art? Could they ever be? ![]()
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