3 posts tagged “bioshock”

When everything is stripped away, all hobbies are about emotion. People indulge in hobbies to entertain themselves, and they find entertainment in different ways. Sports players enjoy the adrenaline of physical exertion, AirFix modellers enjoy the relaxation and product of hard work. Gamers enjoy the positive rush of achievement.

Games are traditionally about achievement. Pong was an adversarial game. Space Invaders and the rest of the 80s arcade era focused on high scores. Today, we finish games to see the story through to the end. Sometimes we play online in order to conquer others. Regardless of the other participants or other emotions we might feel along the way, we're always struggling to achieve.

We all remember the times when we felt something other than triumph when gaming, because those times are so very rare. The guilt from Shadow of the Colossus, the betrayl of Bioshock and, of course, Aerith. Therse seems to be a growing voice, requesting that we feel more from our games. Some believe that in order to ever be a true art form, gaming will have to evolve to a reflect a greater spectrum of emotions. Will it ever be possible to combine blockbuster hits with emotional upset; a skill Speilberg has refined in the cinema medium?

I am not sure it can happen in any real interactive form. Yes, we can tell narratives, and bring the player along with us. However, we can't make the player perform an action they don't want to. That's the very crux of the interactive medium. As soon as the hand is forced, the deep emotional resonance is gone, supplanted by being told a story. We cannot ask players to actively commit atrocities in the same way that we request they passively experience it on the silver screen. We can't make the player experience negative emotions if they can choose to avoid them. The best we can do is place the player in the role of the victim, such as Darfur Is Dying. This is a worthwhile and honorable goal, but the motivations of the militias performing the horrible acts remain mysterious to us. Games could offer an opportunity to begin to understand why people, whom we think are inherently good, can commit evil deeds.

The interactive medium is about choice. Games are hurtling at a breakneck speed towards giving players more and more choices. I hope that I'm shown to be wrong, and someone discovers a way to help gamers make choices that truly matter.

The hype bubble finally bursted on Bioshock after it's release, the Internet awash with those who have fallen by the wayside. "I don't get it" they say, "this is an average game with a lot atmosphere." They are right. There are five or so enemy designs. The weapons vary from useless to generic, and no gameplay options, plasmids or otherwise, truly affect your game experience.

And yet you could forgive all these things if 2K Boston achieved what they promised, and executed the base-instinct moral reaction when faced with the Little Sister choice; a first for gaming. Sadly, they fell short. Every Little Sister has the same character model. Every Little Sister is oblivious to your presence after the Big Daddy's death. Every Little Sister stands and cries when alone. If this wasn't enough to frame the Little Sister as being an artificial video game construct, approaching them results in huge, screen-wide dialog, asking "PRESS X TO RESCUE AND Y TO HARVEST".

Perhaps a flashing neon sign with "THIS IS A VIDEO GAME OBJECT WHICH YOU NEED FEEL NO EMPATHY FOR BECAUSE IT DOESN'T EXIST" would have served their intentions better.

The Bioshock publicity wagon continues in earnest, this time a podcast chat with Ken Levine (Irrational) appears on the Cult of Rapture site. As is the case with much of the publicity surrounding Bioshock, the podcast discusses the much-vaunted "Little Sisters", small girls who you may either leave alone, or kill in order to harvest the large amounts of Adam within them, which you otherwise must find in more difficult ways.

It was largely indicated by Irrational during previous publicity spots that the Little Sisters would represent a significant moral choice, by attempting to seriously replicate the actions of a little girl. Her facial expressions, words and actions were all designed to make her death heart-wrenching and emotionally difficult to come to terms with. It was hoped that many players would simply not be able to kill her on moral grounds, rather than the practical reasoning that often comes with video games.

However, the latest podcast threw the whole concept of this moral choice in doubt.

Now, I think we have a responsibility to do [the moral choice] tastefully, to not exploit the elements of the moral choice that don’t matter. For example, in BioShock, you cannot harm the little Sister in any way… you cannot use your weapons against a Little sister, or set her on fire, or send your swarm of insects after her like you can the other AIs in the world.

As one forum post said, It's no longer life and death: they may as well be crates full of first aid kits.

Levine quickly retraced his steps and elaborated in the 2K Forums.

My goal has always been to make the game impactful and disturbing but not exploitative...There was a bug [in the E3 demo] and a Little Sister got caught in the crossfire. From where I’m sitting. It wasn’t impactful. It wasn’t shocking. It wasn’t anything. The action was unintentional, at a distance, and made an emotional impression of zero.

He then points to the actual action of harvesting, which can now only be achieved when the Little Sister is defenseless.

Levine's goal is commendable, and he appears to be very strongly focused on getting the balance right. Virtual worlds are moving ever closer to telling the player a story, while allowing the player a very loose-reign on the proceedings, and allowing them to create their own narrative. Players want to feel triumphant, powerful and skilled, and it is going to prove ever more difficult for developers to find a way of instilling other emotional reactions in gamers.