Games Aren't Numbers

The fictional city of Rapture was created as a utopia which quickly fell to ruin due to its heavily flawed legal philosophy. The real city of Rapture, the sequence of binary code stored on disks, was also idealized. It was supposed to be a fantasy world unmatched in its realism and immersion. Just like the fiction behind Rapture, this other aspect of it begins with lots of promise. I don’t share Michael Abbot’s enthusiasm for BioShock, but I’m able to completely relate to his feelings about the opening sequences. I love the game’s exposition. Its art is beautiful, its cinematic sequences brilliant, its dialog stylized. Every detail is fine tuned to deliver a distilled and profound experience. The first hour alone is an incredible achievement on the part of Irrational Games.

A videogame’s world is massively critical. It’s one of the things games can do so much better than any other medium. In a game the world can be explored freely just as the real world is. It’s no surprise that most games take place in fantasy or heavily stylized worlds, the strongest point of a medium can and should be subject to the most creativity.

Some imaginary worlds are created simply for their flavor. I like laser blasters, lightspeed spacecraft, green skinned amphibious aliens, and robots just like I like certain shades of blue. I’m thus attracted to games which feature all of these things. There’s nothing beneath the surface, and there doesn’t need to be.

BioShock is certainly beautiful on its surface, but the surface is not why we still talk about it. It explores cerebral possibilities. Its bizarre and ridiculous world connects itself to reality. This is a noble cause, but I say that it is unfortunately the weakest part of Rapture. Just as its flawed governing philosophy destroyed the city, its flawed narrative destroys the experience.

For an imaginary world to be a good world, it must be believable. I refrain from using the word realistic because it would imply that the imaginary world is just like with the world I live in. The most fantastic worlds are the ones that are nothing like my own at all. They’re the ones which, at a glance, appear to be the least believable, the most absurd. That is where the accomplishment lies, in creating a world where everything is the most opposite of our own yet it reveals itself to to be perfectly logical.

One way to accomplish this is through a birds-eye view. Dune‘s narrator chronicles the lives of its universe’s aristocracy and royalty. He describes every aspect of the system they govern and are governed by, the inner workings of the governments and businesses, and the private lives of those who control them. The characters begin in prestigious positions, descend into the tribal underclass, and then work their way back to the top. All the while their experiences are documented, and the nature of their situation analyzed. There are few details of their society which are lacking by the end of the book.

Dune isn’t a very realistic book. It’s subject is an entire planet with virtually no water or natural life, yet gigantic worms stretching across the horizon roam its sands. There is a society of witches who specialize in mind control and eugenics. And in this sci-fi world where space ships as big as cities can transport anywhere instantly, all computer technology is strictly banned by imperial law. Yet, the world is completely believable. Assuming that gigantic sand worms and witches existed, each component of Dune’s world falls into place logically. There’s a reasoning for every detail. By the end of the book it’s clear that Herbert didn’t just make up a fantasy world and invent a reasoning for it, he invented the world and used realistic logic to tie the pieces together. It all makes sense.

There’s a much more personal approach as well. Blade Runner takes place in a fantastic stylized alternate future. There’s a lot that its audience can make sense of, but there’s a lot that they can’t. The opening shot portrays a cityscape with towers belching fire. Throughout almost the entire film the city is perpetually covered in a heavy downpour. Mechanical pyramids and flying cars exist. The presence of artificial humans is explained, but only the details relevant to the plot. The science behind them is left out of the picture. From a purely analytic standpoint, it’s difficult to imagine this particular world existing.

What makes Blade Runner powerful is that it’s not about the overarching systems. It’s about the plot, the characters, and the drama. The world isn’t realistic, but the emotions expressed by the characters are. The comparison between humanity and machinery is one that has crossed the minds of a modern audience. The viewers can connect with the characters and their struggles.

These are exactly what BioShock attempts but does not do adequately, or sometimes even half-decently. The problem is not that it’s an unrealistic game, the problem is there’s nothing realistic about the game. It’s entirely full of images and words which float around and never complete a logical circuit.

There are no characters in the game to connect to. All of the narrative dialog functions to give the player directions. The emotions are insincere and simply a thin motivation for the player to continue progressing forwards. Rapture’s citizens all look the same and sound the same, quite literally. The practical limitations in creating lots of dialog and models presents itself when an entire city’s population wears the same clothes and repeats the same lines constantly with the same voice. The tape recordings explaining the backstory are just that, simple explanations of the backstory. Any time they attempt reach into any personal level they either fail due to their unrealistic characters or their formulaic patterns.

The worst offense of all is the presentation of the little sisters. They’re the worst because they’re loudly supposed to be the primary things the player is to feel sympathy and a connection towards. However like everything else in the game, they’re an array of repeated models and voices and exist only as a mechanic to be manipulated. After being rescued, each little sister will say “thank you” with the same voice all the others did and immediately run away. The people I really felt sympathy for were the hundred or so who were killed by the protagonist, some of them had personalities.

Rapture’s larger system is just as unbelievable. Plasmids simply cannot be taken seriously, they’re drugs bought from vending machines, the moment they touch your bloodstream lighting or ice or bees grow out of your left arm. This is a videogame, so certain degree of silliness has to be accepted sooner or later. But the fact that the player is meant to treat this with a completely straight face is ridiculous. The whole ecosystem surrounding the plasmids is ridiculous. Their fuel is harvested from dead bodies, which the society just freely leaves lying around on the streets. Then little girls come and use a syringe as big as themselves to suck it all out of those bodies. These little girls are brainwashed to do this because just giving them instructions doesn’t work for some reason.

In one of the tape recordings a character explains that she doesn’t understand why only girls are the ones who have this position. The reason, we all know, is because the player is supposed to feel motivated to rescue them just because they’re girls. The fact that the game’s narrative is constructed around game mechanics does earn it points, but it’s embarrassing when it becomes self-conscious and brings more attention to it by trying to cover it up. The big daddies are arguably worse. They’re humans who are under mind control and with diving suits surgically attached to their bodies. One tape recording complains that Ryan believes they’re too expensive to create. Ryan may be on to something, a bodyguard in a suit of armor and a list of instructions would have been considerably cheaper and more practical.

I write this because BioShock is frequently cited as a landmark achievement. While the exposition may be brilliant for what it is, the rest of the game is a disappointment. I want games to have great worlds because that’s one of my favorite things about games. Perhaps I could have chosen better examples than a novel and a film for comparing with a game, but they’re strong examples and I believe their strengths can carry across media boundaries. I hope more developers put serious thought into the worlds they create, and ask themselves questions like why they’re creating a world. There aren’t a whole lot of imaginary worlds, in games or other mediums, that are truly convincing to me, but I’m optimistic and believe that there’s no reason why games can’t feature the best worlds of all.