Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock
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Beyond the sea: navigating BioShock Author(s) Parker, Felan; Aldred, Jessica Imprint McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018 ISBN 9780773554979, 077355498X, 9780773554986, 9780773555556, 0773555552 Permalink https://books.scholarsportal.info/en/read?id=/ ebooks/ebooks3/ upress/2018-12-13/1/9780773555556 Pages 18 to 39 Downloaded from Scholars Portal Books on 2019-05-01 Téléchargé de Scholars Portal Books sur 2019-05-01 There’s Always an Introduction Felan Parker and Jessica Aldred The fall 2016 release of Bioshock: The Collection – a deluxe anthology of Bioshock (Irrational, 2007), Bioshock 2 (2k Marin, 2010), and Bioshock Infinite (Irrational, 2013) along with each game’s downloadable content (dlc) episodes and supplemental material, remastered for current gener- ation game consoles – marks an almost decade-long span in which the Bioshock series has been at the forefront of scholarly, critical, and popular discourse about digital games. Yet, unsurprisingly, the collection itself did not engage with or even acknowledge the myriad debates and discussions the series has inspired over the years, or attempt to situate it in any larger sociocultural context. Instead it prioritized the consumer logic of the game industry, with glossy packaging and marketing, a shiny coat of audiovisual polish on the earlier games, as well as the insertion of a series of collectible “golden film reels” that allow players of the original game to unlock be- hind-the-scenes interviews with Bioshock and Infinite creative director Ken Levine and lead artist Shawn Robertson. Although Levine was not in- volved in the anthology release (which was outsourced to a third party company), these paratextual materials reinscribe his well-established au- thorial presence. The videos give Levine a platform to reiterate for the umpteenth time the series’ much-touted creative aspirations, influences, and narrative/mechanical innovations, among other things. The flurry of mainstream media coverage and enthusiast press reviews surrounding The Collection’s release primarily focused on whether the additional content and superficial updates were “worth it” for owners of the earlier versions, 4 Felan Parker and Jessica Aldred and bemoaned the absence of anything particularly new or interesting in the reissue, as well as the general lack of any more substantial, self-aware, or thought-provoking reflection on the series and what it has meant to a diverse range of players over the years.1 As a very different kind of collection focused on the Bioshock franchise, this book strives to do what a consumer object like The Collection cannot: to critically examine Bioshock and the significant impact it has had on the way we approach, appreciate, make, and study digital games. As a nebulous academic field, game studies has run a parallel course to the Bioshock series. Game studies made its initial bids for legitimacy in the same historical moment that the series’ progenitors, in particular the System Shock and Thief games,2 established the contours of a new sub-genre of “intelligent” stealth-oriented action games or “immersive sims” that set themselves apart from the supposedly more “mindless” shoot ’em ups that came be- fore.3 By the time the original, much-lauded Bioshock arrived, game studies had become a more visible and accepted area of inquiry; but in order to justify its own existence, and reinforce its still-precarious position at the intersection of several disciplines, game studies was hungry for games that would appear self-evidently worthy of study to those outside the field. Bioshock became enshrined in the burgeoning field’s canon and has been the subject of numerous papers, articles, and book chapters (as evidenced by this collection’s bibliography). In the subsequent decade, alongside Bioshock’s multiversal expansion across two subsequent titles (which saw similarly high degrees of engagement from scholars employing new meth- ods and modalities of game studies), game studies has evolved, fragmented, re-constituted, and diversified itself. With these parallel histories in mind, the goal of this book is to push beyond the habitual repackaging of well- established accounts and interpretations of the series in order to provide a much-needed renewal of critical perspectives on Bioshock. This volume is more than a retrospective account of a game series that was extensively written about during its heyday. Sustained and multifaceted reflection on a specific foundational game series creates the opportunity for game scholars to have a productive interdisciplinary conversation. The chapters collected here illustrate how seemingly disparate approaches to studying games can complement one another and provoke new insights (or, in some cases, compellingly incommensurable interpretations). The There’s Always an Introduction 5 thematic structure of Beyond the Sea enriches our understanding of the same ludic and representational elements by integrating a multiplicity of theoretical and methodological vantage points. To help frame this inter- disciplinary conversation about the Bioshock series in its various contexts, we begin by tracing in broad strokes the series’ history, forms and conven- tions, narrative arcs, industrial context, and cultural reception. Following this overview, we delve more deeply into the evolving relationship between Bioshock and game studies, and its ongoing significance to the field. We conclude with an outline of the book’s thematic sections. Taken as a whole, this introduction is your compass for navigating Beyond the Sea. Bioshock’s Past, Present, and Future So, what’s the big deal about Bioshock? How did this idiosyncratic series come to occupy such a central place in popular and critical discourse on digital games? And what role has Bioshock played in the formation and evolution of game studies as a field? The original Bioshock is a science-fiction/horror first-person shooter (fps) with role-playing game (rpg) elements. It is set in Rapture, a dys - topian underwater city, circa an alternate history 1960. The game draws a number of genres and influences – ranging from the Objectivist political philosophy of Ayn Rand, to the anxious visions of postwar science fiction films, to the claustrophobic traverses of survival horror games, to steam- punk meets Art Deco architecture and graphic design – together into a sur- prisingly cohesive, stylish package.4 In Bioshock, the underwater city of Rapture was created by a disgruntled industrialist named Andrew Ryan. Ryan built it to be a free-market capi- talist haven, dedicated to the principle of rational self-interest and unhin- dered by the machinations of the state, religion, and petty morality. The player is Jack, a mysterious figure who discovers the sunken city after his plane crashes in the Atlantic Ocean – only to find that a perfect storm of corruption, civil war, and genetic manipulation has caused the city to col- lapse. Using a variety of upgradable weapons and pseudo-magical genetic powers, Jack must fight his way through the leaking corridors of Rapture, under constant threat of its violently insane, horribly mutated inhabitants, the Splicers. 6 Felan Parker and Jessica Aldred Even more dangerous are the roving teams of Little Sisters and Big Daddies, grotesque behaviour-modified little girls and their hulking cyborg protectors, tasked with harvesting valuable genetic material from the dead. The player chooses whether to “harvest” this material from the Little Sis- ters, which kills them, or “save” them in exchange for in-kind rewards from their creator and surrogate mother, Dr Brigid Tenenbaum. In the course of the game, Jack is guided through a series of tasks and challenges by the seemingly friendly leader of the resistance, Atlas – who is in fact an alter ego of Ryan’s business rival Frank Fontaine. It is eventually revealed that Jack is a brainwashed clone based on Ryan’s dna, manipulated by Fontaine into assassinating Ryan using the code phrase “would you kindly.” In a now-infamous twist, an embittered Ryan forces Jack (and by extension the player) to murder him in a jarring non-interactive sequence. Rescued by Tenenbaum, Jack frees his mind and rebuilds his body with Big Daddy technology. Jack faces off against Fontaine, killing him with the help of the Little Sisters. The game ends with Jack as the new ruler of Rapture, benevolent or tyrannical depending on whether the player har- vested all, some, or none of the Little Sisters. Developed by Irrational Games starting in 2002, Bioshock was first pitched to major gaming publisher/distributor Take-Two Interactive’s 2k Games division in 2005.5 Take-Two (corporate umbrella to such flagship aaa franchises as Grand Theft Auto, Borderlands, and the popular 2K Sports imprint) subsequently acquired Irrational and funded the game’s allegedly very substantial development costs.6 This lengthy, expensive pro- duction process – as well as a massive marketing and promotion campaign designed to help the untested franchise gain traction7 – resulted in tremen- dous hype in the wake of a series of successful previews at major game industry conventions. Bioshock was released in 2007 and was met with almost universal rave reviews. It was praised in particular for its subversion of player expectations about choice and agency, despite some complaints about its occasionally clunky gameplay, as well as a lacklustre final boss battle and ending, which contrasted sharply with the game’s otherwise complex themes and rich character development. The game received multiple perfect and near-perfect