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Political Ideology in BioShock
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jun 05, 2007 08:32 AM
from the hey-little-sister-what-have-you-done dept.
from the hey-little-sister-what-have-you-done dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Murdoch at the usually-excellent Gamers With Jobs has a preview of BioShock up today. Far from being a normal piece on the game's graphics and gameplay, it delves deep into designer Ken Levine's attempts to include some extremely complex and controversial political ideologies as the baseline for the title: 'The point of BioShock, the raison d'etre, is really the story, and the messages and intellectual content that Levine tries to deliver as a payload. "Look at Lord of the Rings," he challenges. "Why is Lord of the Rings more interesting than random RPG story number 507? They're exactly the same thing. They have orcs and goblins and demons and trolls. But Lord of the Rings is a meditation on power. And it's really interesting because of that. It's what gives it it's heart." And with undenied hubris, Levine's trying to do the same thing with BioShock.'"
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Ken Levine On The Background of Bioshock 23 comments
GameSpy has up an interview with Ken Levine of Irrational Games. While Levine has spoken previously about Bioshock's ideology, this piece discusses a number of the elements that went into creating the game. He touches again on objectivism, but expands on the title's connection to its spiritual predecessor System Shock 2 and the process of actual developing the game. "Sterling: Segueing away from storyline a little, what sorts of hardware limits did the team encounter from pre-production leading up to this point of near-completion? Ken Levine: As a credit to my programming team, honestly, I didn't hear much about them. There was some hesitation on the part of some of programming team in pushing a level of physical simulation in the world, in part because they knew how much work that was. To their credit, I'll say, not only did they do it, they knocked it out of the park, because I've never seen this level of simulation ever in a shooter."
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The Shock That Almost Wasn't 57 comments
According to a senior designer on the 2K Boston (formerly Irrational) game Bioshock a number of publishers turned them down when the company brought the title to their doorstep. "Ken (Levine) spent years pitching the game to publishers but no one was interested, incredible as that seems now. I joined Irrational in December 2004 and my first job was to get a publishing deal for the game (I worked as the Business Development Director for the first six months). I remember pitching the game to one publisher who later told a friend of mine that it was 'just another f-ing PC FPS that's going to sell 250,000 units." Just in case you didn't catch it over the weekend, there's a demo for the game up on Xbox Live. PC owners hold tight: a PC demo is coming, and hopefully before the game launches on the 21st.
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PC Bioshock Demo Now Available 96 comments
Dr. Eggman writes "Valve announced today that their digital distribution system, Steam, is now hosting Irrational Games-turned-2K Boston's soon to be released title, Bioshock. The game will appear on Steam and the US August 21st and in Europe on the 24th. If you don't enjoy pipes, perhaps you'd like to utilize the tubes at 3DDownloads, Worthplaying, FilePlanet, or Gamer's Hell."
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Political gaming? (Score:3, Funny)
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Come on, this is slashdot here. You should at least get the difference between little girl-like aliens and little girl-like mutants right.
Who will get offended (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who will get offended (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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Well lets be fair. half of the masses love the summer romantic comedies, the other half love the action/sci-fi/fantasy extravaganzas. Or is saying somebody who loves Harry Potter is just like the masses not fit into your attack.
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Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not everything has to have some deep political meaning just because some things do, sometimes they're just fun, and both republicans and democrats alike are allowed to have fun.
But why interject politics into a game when you risk alienating nearly 50% of the market? I guess that number is way too high - there's a lot more slashdotters who pay attention to politics than the average teenage gameplayer, who doesn't even know the name of the president.
Bu
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American History X overall message was put forward in an Abraham Lincoln quote, 'We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.'
But the movie doesn't try to bullshit you that there aren't reasons for hating
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Well, the mark of a good game - of any good piece of storytelling really - is that it can be appreciated on more than one level. Those who just want a "kick-ass shooter" will play it as such and hopefully have a good time. Those who like a bit of brain candy with their mindless violence will pick up on the politics
And yeah, some of them will probably take offence. If no-one is offended, then Levine will have had noth
Obligatory (Score:2)
Anyway, I have been following the development of this game...it looks like it should be quite interesting, especially if the gameplay videos that were released on LIVE are indicative of the general direction of gameplay...yes, it was just a demo and is of footage that is not nearly complete, but still....I think Bioshock will be one of "the games to play" in 2007.
I also predict that it will become another Okami. Beautiful, fantastic, unknown.
hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be, but Tolkien hated allegory, and any comparison of lotr to ww2, ww1 or Europe at the time of the writing would come up seriously lacking. In fact, he writes about broader, more applicable things, power, nature vs destruction, hobbits, but politics? If lotr was about politics, it wouldn't have been made into movies nearly 45 years after it was published in complete form. The crucible was about politics, but instead of movies, they read it in highschool to explain McCarthyism and to explain why paranoia is bad.
Summary Recap: LOTR was not about politics, it was not an allegory. Anyone who says different should read the introduction to the book, written by Tolkien himself.
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I don't think many people directly take their opinions on WWII from the Lord of the Rings, nor are the books a primer for a broader understanding of the war. At the same time, it's hard not to notice a certain correlation with the World Wars, just as it's h
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First of all, you can't trust everything everyone says/writes. They can be deluding themselves. Even highly intelligent people engage in this particularly self-destructive behavior.
Second, it might not have been about a particular event, but being written when it was it seems highly likely that real-world events motivated Tolkien, and even influ
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Tolkien may not think that there is allegory in Lord of the Rings but he has yet to convince me that there isn't.
Parent
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Re:hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Highly anticipated by me at least (Score:4, Interesting)
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Let me get this straight. (Score:3, Interesting)
I found this really funny:
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Unreal 3 supports DirectX 10, so turning everything up to 11 is likely to max out any current box. More optimistically the engine also supports Linux (any word on BioShock?) and is likely to still give great graphics on more modest hardware.