Game 3 – Page 3 – Interactive Digital Narratives

A Black Box in A Dark Room

In his chapter on videogames as “allegories of control,” Alexander Galloway reflects on one way that videogames and film diverge: where film hides and sublimates political allegories, games “flaunt” them by pulling the player into the governing algorithms and demanding that the player “know the system” in order to succeed in the game (91). He goes … Continue reading A Black Box in A Dark Room →

In his chapter on videogames as “allegories of control,” Alexander Galloway reflects on one way that videogames and film diverge: where film hides and sublimates political allegories, games “flaunt” them by pulling the player into the governing algorithms and demanding that the player “know the system” in order to succeed in the game (91). He goes on to argue that if Sid Meier’s Civilization is “about anything, it is about information society … about knowing the system and knowing the code.” (91).

Bringing Galloway’s argument into conversation with the time I’ve spent playing browser game A Dark Room, it seems that this game’s own algorithmic allegory is less about learning the intricacies of and working within a system but rather coming to terms with a scarcity of knowledge about that system. In A Dark Room, I know preciously little about the short-term or long-term consequences of any of my actions. A Dark Room takes the core clicker-game gameplay loop of “spend resources so that you can generate more resources” but fastens narrative weight to your actions with a slowly unfolding storyline, wherein you (with “you” being another unknown variable) guide and grow a struggling village in an unforgiving environment.

In most other clicker games, haphazardly spending all of my resources on random purchases is a harmless if sub-optimal strategy, since I’m bound to regain the cookies/points/$$$ I spent within minutes. In A Dark Room, I can’t afford to be so careless. Spending all of my wood on animal traps will net me plenty of meat and fur, but it won’t get me any closer to my goal of developing the village and shining more light onto the narrative.

Shallow knowledge of the algorithm, through informative tips like these, is still more useful and empowering than none at all.

Civilization advises the player to “fortify units… defend them against barbarians.” A Dark Room dispenses no such hints. I can spend a huge amount of my stores to build a smokehouse, but I have no clue if it’s a worthwhile purchase, or moreover, what that smokehouse even does. Similarly, when I turn down the nomad who enters my village begging for lumber (only because I had none to give!), I have no idea if my “decision” will come back to haunt me later, immediately, or at all.

I’m guessing that A Dark Room’s refusal to illuminate players with much knowledge about the its systems is more an attempt to induce an atmosphere of helplessness and desperation than to make a point about our (lack of) knowledge regarding algorithms. Still, the net effect aligns well with Galloway’s argument that Civilization and many other games are “about knowing the system,” and with a later point on how games (and modern software generally) prize “flexibility” – the ability to accept, aggregate, and process any kind of input data. (100).

Visiting virtually any website or using any piece of software today means submitting to and contributing to an algorithm whose “flexible” inner workings are largely hidden from us. When algorithmic illiteracy is the norm, a game like A Dark Room can spin its own secrecy as a plot device rather than an overt commentary on how technologies erect a wall between their processes and the user. Sure, it may be more comfortable to read A Dark Room’s algorithmic mystery as just a mood-setting tactic. But given the present scarcity of games that invite critical thought about the dangers of “flexibility” as a software paradigm or its implications for user autonomy and privacy, maybe A Dark Room can illuminate the path.

Cited

Galloway, Alexander. “Allegories of Control.” Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Sid Meier’s Civilization. DOS. Developed by MPS Labs. MicroPros, 1991.

Perception Is Not Reality in Broken Age

In Broken Age, an indie point-and-click videogame developed and published by Double Fine Productions, the player plays as two teenage characters, a girl named Vella and a boy named Shay. While both stories eventually intertwine, each has a different starting … Continue reading →

In Broken Age, an indie point-and-click videogame developed and published by Double Fine Productions, the player plays as two teenage characters, a girl named Vella and a boy named Shay. While both stories eventually intertwine, each has a different starting point and follows a different narrative path. Both stories, however, have a similar theme unifying them before the stories intersect: perception is not always reality.

This screenshot shows the opening of Broken Age, where the player can choose to play as either Vella (left) or Shay (right), though the player must play as both to complete the game

Vella’s story begins in her hometown of Sugar Bunting. Sugar Bunting is a town in a large area of land terrorized by creatures known as mogs. Every 14 years a mog visits these lands during an event known as the Maiden’s Feast. Each town selects various young girls for the privilege of being maidens in the feast—sacrificial lambs who satiate the mog’s hunger in exchange for the mogs not destroying their village.

Sugar Bunting’s Maiden’s Feast is shown here, with each of the 5 girls awaiting the mog’s arrival

While everyone believes the mogs’ visits are great blessings and being selected as a maiden is a great privilege, when Vella is selected, she sees it as the opposite. Vella sees the mogs as dangerous enemies who should be fought against rather than creatures to be appeased. Through the player (and Vella’s) actions, Vella eventually escapes the Maiden’s Feast and begins her quest to kill the mogs.

In this quest, Vella eventually learns that the mogs aren’t creatures but “spaceships” piloted by citizens of a planet known as Loruna, like Shay. Shay was under the assumption that he was the sole human inhabitant of his ship the Bossa Nostra. Shay believes his only companions are two computers programmed to believe they are his mother and father. Though, his parents keep him occupied with repetitive fake missions involving robotic friends, Shay eventually meets a stowaway named Merrick, who offers to let him take control of the ship and undertake “real,” threatening missions to rescue innocent creatures from dangerous forces.

Once his path crosses with Vella’s, Shay eventually learns that the helpless creatures he has been saving are the maidens from the various Maiden’s Feasts. He also realizes that his computerized parents are humans who have been so occupied keeping him and the ship safe that they could only appear to him through computer projections. Finally, Shay realizes that he has not been in space at all, but on the planet containing Vella’s town of Sugar Bunting.

As Shay and Vella continue to solve the mysteries and search for answers regarding their strange predicaments, they encounter even more situations containing falsehoods. Throughout the game it is apparent that not everything is as it seems, reinforcing the player’s take-away that perception is not always reality.

Image Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Age
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doublefine.dfa

Tending the Fire: How “A Dark Room” Rekindles the Idle-Clicker Genre

If you want to make a quick buck in game development today, your best bet might be to make what Wikipedia calls a “clicker” or “incremental” or “idle” game. Really, a better name for this genre would be something like “idle-clicker,” since that term captures both of the genre’s defining traits: first, a growth process running “idle” without … Continue reading Tending the Fire: How “A Dark Room” Rekindles the Idle-Clicker Genre →

If you want to make a quick buck in game development today, your best bet might be to make what Wikipedia calls a “clicker” or “incremental” or “idle” game. Really, a better name for this genre would be something like “idle-clicker,” since that term captures both of the genre’s defining traits: first, a growth process running “idle” without prompting from the player, and second, a player-performed action – usually clicking or tapping on buttons or objects – that speeds up and/or automates said process.

If that description doesn’t click (pun absolutely intended), I invite you to check out a forefather of the genre, Cookie Clicker. Report back when you’ve crossed that boundary from feeling proud of your absurdly high CPS (cookies-per-second) to wondering where the last ten hours of your life have gone, and whether or not you actually had any fun wasting them. A monitor screen shiny enough to reflect your hopeless expression helps to elicit this effect (or so I’ve heard).

Cookie Clicker: Your gateway drug into idle-clicker games

I recently started playing an idle-clicker game called “A Dark Room” for my final trilogy of game logs. “A Dark Room” eschews the polished artwork and juicy UX of many of its brethren in favor of a text-heavy presentation that resembles a Twine creation. The narrative (so far) is that of a struggling village in a harsh and desolate environment, and your clicks are spent building new structures and gathering materials for the community.

After my first play session, I don’t feel disillusioned or cynical, as I did when I finally tore myself away from Cookie Clicker last year, but I am very confused, mildly frustrated, and absolutely hooked. Most clicker games hook new players with early exponential growth, boosting the player from lowly villager to almighty deity in ten minutes/clicks/taps or fewer. With thirty minutes sunk into “A Dark Room,” I think I may actually be in a worse place than where I started. I’ve attracted dozens of travelers to my hearth, but I’ve also (inadvertently) killed nearly as many. Just before I suspended my game, a forest fire decimated my village huts and took out every last resident. “A Dark Room’s” clever blending of text-adventure storytelling with clicker game mechanics is no doubt worthy of praise and attention, but I especially appreciate that it introduces loss – and accordingly, gameplay decisions that minimize and avert said loss – to a genre typically obsessed with mindless increase.

This info feed sits at the left side of the screen in "A Dark Room" — This info feed sits at the left side of the screen in “A Dark Room”

Furthermore, the game’s constantly updating ‘feed’ of information (shown above) has helped me to realize into how idle-clicker games, despite their apparent simplicity and pointlessness – can transfix players for hours on end. In an age where an incoming text, Facebook like, or email notification marks a “+1” to our internalized scores of self-worth, idle-clicker games scratch our itch for a constant influx of positive information. But “A Dark Room” dispenses bad news as often as good news, and thus complicates the masturbatory feedback loop that most idle-clicker games lean upon. I want to keep playing “A Dark Room” not to see my WGPS (wood-gathered-per-second, a totally made-up term) skyrocket, but to see if I can keep twelve villagers alive for more than a few minutes at a time, and what might happen if I do.

Assassin’s Creed: The Movie Based on the Game Based on History

As I alluded to in my preceding game log, an Assassin’s Creed movie is actually being made. Ubisoft, who fought movie publishing houses to retain creative control over their franchise, started developing the project in 2012. The film stars Oscar-nominated Michael Fassbender (a producer on the project) and Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard and is directed by … Continue reading “Assassin’s Creed: The Movie Based on the Game Based on History”

As I alluded to in my preceding game log, an Assassin’s Creed movie is actually being made. Ubisoft, who fought movie publishing houses to retain creative control over their franchise, started developing the project in 2012. The film stars Oscar-nominated Michael Fassbender (a producer on the project) and Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard and is directed by Justin Kerzel, who directed the most recent Macbeth film adaptation with Fassbender and Cotillard (Armitage). The plot is basically lifted from the games’ main protagonist, Desmond Miles, as a new character is captured by the sinister Abstergo Industries and becomes an assassin through exploring the memory of his ancestors (through DNA, technology, and whatever). But, that transplanted plot isn’t really important. What is important is that yet another video game movie is actually being released but this time during Christmas. Yes, Ubisoft seriously thinks a video game movie can actually compete with both a Star Wars and a Harry Potter spin-off during the holiday season.

Perhaps, I should slow down on my knee-jerk skepticism. Not all movies adapted from video games have been flops. The Tomb Raider and Resident Evil movie franchises have each made hundreds of millions of dollars, about $400 million and about $500 million respectively (Hillier). Critics hailed the moderately successful Prince of Persia movie as “far from perfect, but fun to watch” and “a movie that knows exactly how dumb it is” (Rotten Tomatoes). However, these three movies deviated a great deal from their respective franchises. The Resident Evil created a new character for Milla Jovivich to play and storylines that had stuff very loosely relating to Raccoon City and somewhat referencing the games’ characters. According to game blogger Brenna Hillier, a video game movie wants “to wring a pretty penny out of a gaming property you need to shuck off most of the trappings of established narrative and personalities and focus instead on a few core takeaways” (Hillier). Video game movies cannot rely on video games for a good story because video game narratives are: 1.) much longer than a movie narrator (8-10 hours for a typical FPS story v. 1.5-2 hours for a typical action movie); 2.) reliant on the opposite of the necessary passive watching required for movies: interactivity.

Video games are meant to be played. Now, it didn’t take me the whole semester to discover this truth, but that statement needs to be emphasized here. Put another way, video game narratives are meant to be played, acted upon by a player who guides the actions in the digital world and fill the identity of a typically empty protagonist (like the sort-of British Lara Croft or completely silent Gordon Freeman) in action games. The game’s journey isn’t so much for the protagonist but for the player. The whole experience is designed for the player to move around, observe, and perform certain actions through an avatar. Movies take an audience member through a guided, pre-set series of events for a diegetic protagonist that the viewer cannot affect nor control. That is why videogames should not be made into movies, or if they are, the movie only resembles the game in name. A movie should never borrow a game’s narrative just because movie execs think the game’s brand is strong enough for them to plug mindlessly into a three-act plot structure without any extraordinary critical thought. That leaves us with abominations like the Super Mario Bros. movie or the Alone in the Dark movie that has a 1% score on Rotten Tomatoes (Rotten Tomatoes).

So, videogame narratives depend on player interaction over a long span of time. Movies depend on spectator compliance for around two hours at most now. Coincidentally, that’s about how much time I spent on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which insists on forcing a player to be a spectator for the first two hours of the game. So, maybe I was wrong. Maybe Assassin’s Creed will be a good movie because those games have already tried so hard to be movies.

Works Cited:

“Alone in the Dark.” Rotten Tomatoes, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/alone_in_the_dark. Accessed 27 Nov. 2016.

Armitage, Hugh and Rosie Fletcher. “Assassin’s Creed movie: Everything you need to know about Michael Fassbender and the cast, spoilers, and release date.” Digital Spy, 27 Oct. 2016, http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/feature/a672940/assassins-creed-movie-everything-you-need-to-know-about-michael-fassbender-and-the-cast-spoilers-and-release-date/. Accessed 27 Nov. 2016.

Hillier, Brenna. “Metal Gear Solid and the gaming curse.” VG 24/7, 31 Aug. 2012, http://www.vg247.com/2012/08/31/metal-gear-solid-and-the-gaming-cinema-curse/. Accessed 27 Nov. 2016.

“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.” Rotten Tomatoes, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/prince_of_persia_sands_of_time/. Accessed 27 Nov. 2016.

On Games and Theatre

“Games are a kind of theater in which the audience is an actor and takes on a role—and experiences the circumstances and consequences of that role.” (Anthropy 20) Throughout the semester, one aspect of videogames has struck me the most and really distinguishes games from any other medium: the power it gives the audience. In … Continue reading “On Games and Theatre”

“Games are a kind of theater in which the audience is an actor and takes on a role—and experiences the circumstances and consequences of that role.” (Anthropy 20)

Throughout the semester, one aspect of videogames has struck me the most and really distinguishes games from any other medium: the power it gives the audience. In other art forms like television, cinema, or painting, the audience never performs any action beyond observation, except for a certain kind of theater known as “interactive” or “immersive theatre.” It’s a type of theater that actually makes the audience participate actively in theatrical spaces. The most famous contemporary example of this theater is Sleep No More, a production of Macbeth by the UK’s Punchdrunk theater collective. This version of Shakespeare’s Scottish play takes place at New York City’s McKittrick Hotel, a six-story where audience members physically inhabit and interact with the same space the actors are in. Journalist Scott Brown writes of the audience’s involvement in Sleep No More, “Sleep allows its ‘guests’ great freedom. Presented with a bone-white Venetian beak mask (the kind favored by plague doctors in the Renaissance), you’re invited to gawk, shame-free, at whatever you see, to rifle through drawers, files, Rolodexes, and even coffins. You and your fellow voyeurs, enskulled in your morbid headgear, quickly become part of the creepy scenery. More to the point, you’re a ghost. (N.B.: This doesn’t exempt you from actor contact — in fact, you’re practically guaranteed to be interfered with at some point in the approximately three hours it takes to survey the space and absorb the long arc of the story.) Fending for yourself in the fictional “McKittrick Hotel” (a pointed Vertigo reference that dizzy or claustrophobic types should take to heart before booking), you’re given the run of six misty, intricately detailed floors, with more than 100 rooms” (Brown). These rooms include “‘situations’: a man who may or may not be Duncan, right king of Scotland, being murdered in a sheikh’s tent. A gelid blonde who may or may not be Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s Rebecca — here in loyal service to Lady Macbeth — spooning milky poison down the gullet of a soused, super-pregnant woman who very well might be Lady Macduff” (Brown). Sleep No More builds a world that immerses people fully in an expansive place, where story unfolds through exploration. The audience is no longer assembled of passive spectators but active, investigative witnesses. This type of theater engages audience members to explore and connect with an old story through a completely new environment unlike any other medium, except for videogames. This immersive theater seems (to me) to be a kin to videogames, a medium that also allows for audience members to explore, play, and connect with an environment.

That is, videogames could be a medium like immersive theater that engages and makes the audience active. I say this because in order for an audience member to become another actor, the audience member must have choice. In Sleep No More, the audience can choose to go whatever place they want, try to talk to whomever they want, and do whatever they want. Like the actors who are also making choices to play characters and do certain things on a “stage,” the audience unwittingly does the same thing and is forced to make purposeful choices on what to do and not to do. To relate this to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, interactive theater does not take place in it nor a lot of other videogames. The games inhibit player’s choices to conform to a linear track on which to progress. Black Flag is more like a movie than a play in a hotel.

Finally, the medium Assassin’s Creed deserves

To be sure, the player does have freedom and can take action within the world. This is still a digital play space where players can fight anyone they want (except for citizens, which prompts a fail screen), can climb buildings (except for buildings that don’t have any obvious spots you can grab on to), and can spend digital money on whatever (no exceptions). Yet, the game does not offer a lot of freedom to the player, insisting on rigid paths and linear tasks to a linear storyline. After the opening scene of fighting pirate ships that all exploded, my character swam in the water and was essentially presented a path straight to a beach. However, I wanted to swim back to the ship’s wreckage and around the ocean because I could so why not? I swam to these places but nothing really happened until I got to the beach where I was “supposed” to be. So why does the game present options of swimming around pirate ships and climbing buildings but really only rewards players for swimming to the “right” spot where the cutscene kicks in or the “right” buildings that I somehow can climb versus all the other ones? I’m not saying that every choice should be rewarded, but if you have and market a game as being an expansive game world, shouldn’t this game world include more than one set of action for actors? Can’t we choose where we want to be in this world as players instead of being forced down one path of cutscene after cutscene? I might as well watch a movie, instead of being an offered an illusion of theatrical choice. Or I’ll go to a hotel where people are putting on Macbeth, where I can do more interesting fictional things.

Works Cited:

Anthropy, Anna. Rise of the Videogame Zinesters. Seven Stories, 2012.

Brown, Scott. “Theater Review: The Freakily Immersive Experience of Sleep No More.” Vulture, 15 Apr. 2011, http://www.vulture.com/2011/04/theater_review_the_freakily_im.html. Accessed 23 Nov. 2016.

Fletcher, Rosie and Hugh Armitage. “Assassin’s Creed movie: Everything you need to know about Michael Fassbender and the cast, spoilers and release date.” Digital Spy, 27 Oct. 2016, http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/feature/a672940/assassins-creed-movie-everything-you-need-to-know-about-michael-fassbender-and-the-cast-spoilers-and-release-date/. Accessed 23 Nov. 2016.

Assassin’s Creed: Pirate Simulator

I started up this game of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and I felt unsure. I was unsure of how this game would be after a four year hiatus from the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Would I get the same product I got time and time again from this franchise: a slightly different “cool” hooded protagonist with … Continue reading “Assassin’s Creed: Pirate Simulator”

I started up this game of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and I felt unsure. I was unsure of how this game would be after a four year hiatus from the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Would I get the same product I got time and time again from this franchise: a slightly different “cool” hooded protagonist with slightly different weapons in a slightly different plot loosely grounded in somewhat historically accurate characters? Probably. I knew what I would get when I played this game; this is a series whose successes are built on slight tweaks of a recycled formula. However, the location and characters would be brand new for me to free run tall buildings, assassinate nameless guards, and take in the virtual views of an old famous city. In a way, each Assassin’s Creed game is a mod of the previous one: changed visuals with mostly unchanged game mechanics.

(top: Assassin’s Creed III; bottom: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag)

Though with Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, the game doesn’t immediately place the player in an old city or futuristic hideaway. It immediately introduces us to our protagonist, Edward Kenway, who is a pirate because he wants to be free from an oppressive class-based economy and naval structure. The designers smartly encouraged me to align with this pirate character as soon as possible. Who doesn’t want to be a rebellious pirate? Then, the game cut to a battle at sea between pirate ships. I was suddenly firing cannons at 18th century ships and steering a pirate ship. Then, the ships exploded, and I was washed up on an island chasing an assassin, who I ended up murdering. I have to commend Ubisoft for knowing what gamers want out of Black Flag: to be a pirate and assassinate people as soon as possible.

However, the new pirate pleasures do not really justify passing this game off as anything new. This begs the question of why these games keep getting made and bought? Why do people basically want a nicer version of a game they already have? I suppose it makes sense for players new to the franchise to play this game, but if I already have Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed III, why do I need this game? Why don’t I just play those games again if I really want to instead of shilling another $60 to Ubisoft? Ultimately, I was unsure about playing Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag because I had hope amidst my cynicism. I had hope that this game could be potentially something different and interesting, especially after the series abandoned Desmond Miles’s weird alien-unveiling story arc. My hope was not really met; instead, I got the same game but with pirates. Don’t get me wrong, Caribbean pirates are awesome. Yet, even that different style choice is not new or fresh. It’s a safe bet on what the popular conscience deems cool. Which is all this game series will ever be: a series of safe bets siphoning ideas from popular culture and movies, inhibiting what could be a one-of-a-kind game experience.

Images Cited:

Cloud_imperium. “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Review; ARRR !!!” Gamespot, 31 Jul. 2014, http://www.gamespot.com/assassins-creed-iv-black-flag/user-reviews/2200-12602699/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2016.

“Featured Video.” Disney, http://pirates.disney.com/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2016.

“Screen 621262.” Assassin’s Creed III Gallery, gamershell.com, 8 Apr. 2012,http://www.gamershell.com/ps3/assassin_s_creed_iii/screenshots.html?id=621262. Accessed 22 Nov. 2016.

Usher, William. “Assassin’s Creed 4 PS4 Gameplay Trailer Seeks Out Hidden Treasure.” CinemaBlend, 2013, http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Assassin-Creed-4-PS4-Gameplay-Trailer-Seeks-Out-Hidden-Treasure-57742.html. Accessed 22 Nov. 2016.

Gender Complications in Bioshock

In his article “Ruin, Gender, and Digital Games,” Evan Watts examines how post-apocalyptic games, like Bioshock, treat gender. Watts questions whether the destruction of social structures in Rapture “compliment freedom from the gendered power institutions of the culture in which both the game and the player are situated” (254). I would argue that Bioshock offers…

In his article “Ruin, Gender, and Digital Games,” Evan Watts examines how post-apocalyptic games, like Bioshock, treat gender. Watts questions whether the destruction of social structures in Rapture “compliment freedom from the gendered power institutions of the culture in which both the game and the player are situated” (254). I would argue that Bioshock offers a complicated presentation of gender.

As Watts points out, the “Little Sisters,” the main female presence in the game, exert freedom by roaming the city. They have the power in the collapsed society of Rapture. Additionally, they travel with “Big Daddies,” which Watts describes as “brandishing large phallic drills, [and] seem[ing] almost a parody of traditional masculinity” (255). Whereas female character usually get made into objects or tools in videogames, here the male characters get treated that way. The men stand as objects that must be destroyed by the player to get to the “Little Sisters.” Bioshock then argues that traditional power structures are societally caused, not natural, as the destruction of society leads to a shift in who holds power.

An image of a “Big Daddy,” with his phallic looking drill

Yet, the player must ultimately confront these female sources of power, and take it from them, either by harvesting or rescuing them. The player, who operates a male player-character, gets encouraged to violently murder them for their own personal gain, as killing them gets the player access to more abilities. Even the word “harvest” tries to downplay the act of violence. The player doesn’t have to murder them though, but the other option present equally questionable ideas, for if the player chooses to “rescue” the girls, it implies the need of a male entity to save them. Though Dr. Tenenbaum presents a female who could also save them, removing the issues, she leaves it up to a man, giving him the power to save them rather than using it herself.

The player can choose to harvest or rescue the “Little Sisters,” but either option reinforces negative gender stereotypes

As Watts posits, the “player can occupy the traditional male role of savior and protector of the female or reject this role, murder the child, and reap a greater quantitative benefit” (256). Either option is problematic, as they either end with a powerless female figure grateful to a male one for taking that power from her, or a dead female figure, killed by a powerful male one. Despite offering seemingly positive notions about gender, Bioshock ultimately reinforces negative stereotypes.

Source:
Watts, Evan. “Ruin, Gender, and Digital Games.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 39, no. 3/4 (2011): 247–65.

The Importance of Sound in Bioshock

Sound serves as a key element in Bioshock. With that in mind, I’m going to look at how Karen Collins’s article “Game Sound” applies to Bioshock, specifically in terms of diegetic sound, or sound that occurs within the character’s space. Interactive diegetic sounds are those that “occur in the character’s space, and the player’s character can directly…

Sound serves as a key element in Bioshock. With that in mind, I’m going to look at how Karen Collins’s article “Game Sound” applies to Bioshock, specifically in terms of diegetic sound, or sound that occurs within the character’s space.

Interactive diegetic sounds are those that “occur in the character’s space, and the player’s character can directly interact with them” (126). In the game, these relate specifically to the use of the radio and the audio diaries the player collects as they progress. The radio conversations with Atlas, and the occasional other character, trigger at key moments and get used to give the player goals and instructions. For example, Atlas instructs the player of what to do when they encounter one of the “Little Girls,” getting ADAM to unlock additional powers which help the player progress. The audio diaries develop the world by giving backstory on characters and events. Hence, the player can pick up multiple diaries on or by Dr. Steinman explaining his obsession with beauty and dissension into madness. A key point is the player can choose to listen to these diaries, or even whether to pick them up, so how much plot information they receive gets determined by how they play and whether they pay attention to the interactive diegetic sounds.

The player encounters audio diaries throughout the game, and can choose whether to pick them up and listen to them

Nondynamic diegetic audio “occurs in the character’s space, but the character has no direct participation in it” (126). Bioshock uses this type of sound to drive the player in the correct direction or alert them of danger. Collins describes a specific type of nondynamic diegetic audio, acousmatic sound, or “sound with no clear origin visually” which “may inspire us to look to the direction of a sound” (130). Most of the wandering Splicers operate under this type of sound. The Splicers aren’t reacting to the player, hence the nondynamic, but their noise warns the player of nearby danger, as the Splicers will attack as soon as they are within sight. This sound then gives the player time to prepare before moving forward and attacking.

Before they see and attack you, Splicers make noise, indicating their presence to the player

As the audio plays such a key role in the game, it makes it very difficult to play at times if you can’t hear clearly. For example, often while listening to diaries or the radio, the player will get attacked. The fighting sounds then block out the other sound, which can result in missing key information.

Horror, Mystery, and First-Person Perspective

I started up a new file for Bioshock, which I’ve never played before, and the first thing I noticed was how “janky” the camera movement was. I normally play third-person games, because I like being able to see the character I’m playing and what’s around them. Bioshock doesn’t give players that freedom. They’re locked into…

I started up a new file for Bioshock, which I’ve never played before, and the first thing I noticed was how “janky” the camera movement was. I normally play third-person games, because I like being able to see the character I’m playing and what’s around them. Bioshock doesn’t give players that freedom. They’re locked into a first-person perspective, which limits what they can see at any given time. This adds a new layer of challenge and intensity to the game. Intensity because as a player, you cannot see what’s lurking around every corner; you expect enemies at every turn. It adds a challenge because enemies can sneak up on you, attacking you from behind and gaining an advantage because you don’t see them coming. In a third-person game, a player generally has free movement of the camera and exists in a sort of “God-space” above the player-characters head, which makes it difficult to surprise a player if they see an attack coming. Essentially, Bioshock uses a limited perspective to heighten the horror-esque elements of the game.

In Bioshock, the player can only see directly in front of them, which makes for a more intense experience

The first-person perspective in Bioshock harkens back to horror-films. Often, these types of films will feature a shot of the villain approaching a victim, carrying a weapon that can be seen on the camera, like most standard first-person shooters. Silence of the Lambs famously uses this method as “Buffalo Bill” stalks Clarice Starling around a dark basement using night-vision goggles.

Silence of the Lambs uses a first-person (shooter) perspective to heighten the scene’s suspense

The difference is that in horror films, the first-person perspective usually comes from a “bad guy,” not the “good guy” protagonist of videogames. However, in both cases first-person perspective forces an element of mystery. For film, the mystery often comes from not knowing who the attacker is. The film then goes on to explore that mystery, with the villain reveal as the big surprise. In videogames though, the first-person perspective creates a mystery around the environment. The players must move around and explore in order to uncover the mystery. While the first-person perspective elicits horror and mystery in both media, it does so in different ways.