*MAJOR SPOILERS FOR BIOSHOCK INFINITE. IF YOU DON'T PLAY IT AT LEAST ONCE BEFORE READING THIS, I WILL PURSUE LITIGATION AGAINST YOU*
Over Christmas, I chose to write an essay for my American Film and Visual Culture module on the topic of video games. The realisation I could even do that made me do a double take. When one of the games we were told to compare was Bioshock Infinite, I clapped and flailed and debased myself in complete joy. I had already played the game three times and the notion of putting my fan boy gushings on paper for educational merit was a concept that left me squirming in anticipation. Once research time had started, I started trawling the internet for other's thoughts on the game. The only reviews of it I found that were in writing utterly despised Bioshock Infinite. After this shocking discovery, I stepped away from my laptop and once again observed the painful ritual of realising that not everyone agrees with me, as any who dwell online must do every so often. Over the next few weeks I continued to see backlash against the game. One particular series of tweets by Wired editor Laura Hudson forced me out of my cushy world of tolerance. As each new tweet was met by increasing levels of my own derision, I was reminded of the Lutece twins. Bioshock Infinite was a coin. Hudson saw 'heads', a game that is obnoxious, racially insensitive and
unengaging. I was looking at 'tails', a scintillating and narratively complex game that pushed me to feverish excitement in all of my play throughs even if I had only played it for banal enjoyment. The more I considered our opinions differences, the more I
realised they were very much similar. The only way to reconcile these views is through criticism that goes beyond both mine and Hudson's initial responses. Luckily, taking on different perspectives is what Bioshock Infinite is all about.
Sticking to the rules/Breaking the rules
Heads: Hudson saying that Bioshock Infinite 'wants to be a movie' because of how unneccesary the gameplay is.
Tails: In essence, all games are episodic movies that you fight your way through. In FPSs, the story is usually put on hold every so often to allow the player to shoot stuff. The fact not everyone instantly realises this is because you're supposed to be immersed in the shooter's perspective and experience the action sequences as developing organically from the game's world. In Bioshock Infinite, Booker has to deal personally with all the chaotic fight sequences throughout the game. After the smoke has cleared after a gun vs mini-gun-wielding-George Washington-robot battle, you head to the locked door that'll allow progression through the story. Elizabeth, the time/space manipulating 'sidekick' of the game, simply pops it open with her hairpin lockpick. With the exception he needs to fill an archetypal requirement of gameplay, zany gun battles, Booker's role is mostly ineffectual, as, if the game allowed it Elizabeth could have unlocked the door and the gun battle could have been avoided completley.
A departure from film is present in that Booker, in effect producing not much more than the camera's view, is still a part of the game. Although he serves little more than to provide the action sections and deliver exposition, Booker's presence is essential in providing the important distinguishment games take from film; the effect an outside perspective has on events. Booker frees Elizabeth, allowing the story to take place and his involvement, like the player's, is essential to making the story progress. Without Booker and the player, the game would not happen. Film does not require this kind of involvement.
All the same, Bioshock Infinite utilises film language to show that it is actually
Elizabeth who is the central character. As she gets the majority of
close ups and is in centre frame from her introduction onwards in comparison to the other characters in the game,
she gains the player's empathy. The fact she questions the morality of Booker's actions and mirrors player's reaction to events, such as wondering who giving guns to a revolutionary underclass will actually help, she is much more engaging and sympathetic than the nihilistic Booker. Even if the story is being told from Booker's perspective, you'd still prefer to be seeing it from Elizabeth's.
Here, Bioshock Infinite activley tells the player to take a different perspective than the one the FPS format gives you. Hudson's focus on the perspective of Booker is probably what made the game so unpalletable, since his ever altering mental state distances the player from his understanding of reality. Focusing on immersion as the deliverer of enjoyment makes the game unsatisfying, as it makes clear the gap between gameplay and story most games try to disguise, the impetus behind the repeated image of Booker reaching out but not being able to touch Elizabeth. Lacking any kind of conventional understandings of how games work left me in a state that could only provide enjoyment, helped all the more by my intense want to do so, not picking up on the departures from game convention Hudson took issue with. Reconciling these opposing opinions is based in recognising how games work and how this architecture can be subverted producing quality, not just enjoyability.
Enjoyability/Quality
Heads: Not only is the game unenjoyable, the story is flat and, in some places, racist as it assimilates ethnic minority characters into faceless 'bad guys'. It is thus a bad game.
Tails: Just because something isn't enjoyable doesn't make it bad. 2001: A Space Odyssey isn't a fun fair for all the family, but it is still one of the greatest movies ever made. With it's slow, weary pacing converting the hopeful magesty of the sci fi genre into cynicism and disillusionment makes the movie disturbing and, as a result, compelling. In attempting this same kind of generic subversion, Bioshock Infinite carries over the amended perspective it asks for from it's gameplay to it's story.
The rebellion of the Vox Populi, the repressed underclass of blacks and Irish in Columbia, is where the story is manipulated most. As you are turned against the Vox after bringing the guns they need to start their revolution through an inter-dimensional 'tear', they begin dressing up in devil hoods. This merges them with the propaganda used against them by the white supremacist population of Columbia in the fair at the start of the game. Here, false representations take over to make for gameplay convenience; they're no longer downtrodden revolutionaries, just faceless demons who need killing. As Booker readily accepts this turn of events, we, not tied to his perspective, are encouraged to question it and notice the irony taking place as Booker must now quell a revolution he helped begin.
In another purposeful manipulation of representation, Daisy Fitzroy, the
leader of the Vox is corrupted by power before being stabbed in the
back by Elizabeth. Since this encounter seperates Booker and Fitzroy
with a wall of glass reminiscent of a cinema screen , the focus on
representation against reality is pushed all the more. Taking on the
ironic perspective we are told to have on these events, we see that
Elizabeth actually saves Daisy from becoming assimilated into the games
purposefully superficial presentation of violent revolution. Stabbing
her in the back, Elizabeth betrays Fitzroy's development into a false
representation and ends the suggestion that revolutionaries are as power
hungry as the tyrants they fight.
The revolution chapter of the game is where Bioshock Infinite launches it's critique of escapist fantasy. Having spent the first half of the game slaughtering white supremacists in order to rescue Elizabeth and 'escape' Columbia, going through the tear that gives the Vox their guns puts you in the position of a white supremacist. The notion that, unless they are oppressed, other ethnicities will slaughter white people is a white supremacist fantasy, one that will surely appeal to the under represented Neo-Nazi demographic. In killing the socially oppressed to further your own needs, Booker to escape Columbia and for the player to be immersed in the game, two conflicting viewpoints need to be taken. If killing one group is justified and killing the other is not, this motivates reflection on the player's part as to how this can be so. If both are justified, you agree with Booker, who, as shown later in the game, has a completley warped and unreliable conception of reality. The ideal, again, is Elizabeth's perspective, who realises that neither is justified. This shows that, to appreciate Bioshock Infinite, enjoyment is not really the goal.
In order to gain this perspective, it is neccesary to follow the game's subtle directives. This cannot be done reacting on the level that only serves to tell you whether something is enjoyable or not. To assess the quality of a piece of media, one must question the perspective that it takes on events as much as the events themselves. This requires moving beyond your own assumptions or desire for simple escapism. Assuming purpose to unconventional (and in some cases offensive) representations can determine whether they are genuine or subversive. Consistency between these subversions are what points to the quality of the media.
Opinion/Fact
Heads: Finally, Hudson linked to a negative review of Bioshock Infinite and said it was 'the only review you need to read'
Tails: If this review was the only thing that needed to be read to understand, appreciate or enjoy the game, it would be fact. That can't be true, because, having analysed the game myself, I've come up with a positive reaction to it. The idea is then that one of us has to be right, the other has to be wrong. Not only does this completley discount interpretation, it assumes there are only two ways of seeing something.
Bioshock Infinite appeals to me because it represents a convention shift from what I expect from videogames; features Elizabeth, a nuanced woman protagonist who I identified with as a result of this same convention change; and comments on the duality of American interventionism. Booker's struggle to accomodate alternate reality versions of himself into the single perspective format of the game is representative of American revisionist approaches to history, which make them the hero and villain of their own story, as is shown by the revelation at the end of the game that Booker is also Father Comstock. These are things I subjectivley value. The reviewer may not value these things, or may not have thought about them in his interpretation. While both interpretations are entirely valid, neither of them craft fact, but opinion.
Here, as much as it may seem like it, I am not using the 'it's just my opinion' defence. Saying something only comes down to opinion devalues your own ability to discern appealing features of a piece of media and reduces criticism to turgid, pointless strife where no-one can be more or less discerning as another and where Roger Ebert is a glorified message board poster on moviepoopshoot.com. The aim of criticism, in that it cannot capture fact, is to have the most consistent, concise and insightful opinion as possible. In reducing Bioshock Infinite to it's representation of race and unengaging gameplay without taking into account textual reasons for these features, Hudson has produced an opinion inconsistent with the broader context of the game. To gain a better opinion, it is neccesary to challenge your own initial thinking as to why these representations are the way they are, not just how. The worth of an opinion is how many different perspectives it takes into account and the interpretations produced from them. There are infinite perspectives to consider, just like there are infinite derivations of the story of Bioshock Infinite as shown by the metaphysical subtext of the game and in the ending, seeing different Bookers and Elizabeths walking between the never ending sea of lighthouses.
Having come up against Hudson's different perspective and being able to defend my own, I find I love Bioshock Infinite even more. This shows the value and neccesity of criticism.
Further reading: How I learned about the value of opinions: http://badassdigest.com/2013/07/03/film-crit-hulk-man-of-steel/
How I learned that disagreeing with a media's politics doesn't make it bad: http://chezapocalypse.com/roger-ebert-ted-rall-and-the-act-of-reviewing/?fb_comment_id=fbc_129375233931309_63946_129740240561475#fe51a73c
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