Back in 2007, in the first installment of BioShock, Levine created a world based on Ayn Rand's individualist philosophy and let it play out. This time, Levine has turned a game into an Aristotelian tragedy and used the model of great tragic heroes.I couldn't give a shit about video games, but apparently at some point the Bad Guys in this one are revealed to be racists, which prompts this arrgh-blaargh from The Virginian:
NPR broadcast an article today about a developer of a violent video game in which the bad guys were Christians who revered the Constitution and were blatant racists. Of course with a theme like that it's obviously comparable to one of the great tragedies of literature...
To NPR this is just like Hamlet or Oedipus. This is an NPR employee's dream of all that's wrong with America; America's founders, the religious heritage, and,of course the racism of everyone who's not part of the NPR family.Like I said, I don't care about gaming and the NPR story doesn't mention it, but are the Founding Fathers really in BioShock Infinite? Because that would great to use in history classes. It speaks to the kids!
But The Virginian's a piker -- the aargh ain't blaarghy till Jeff Goldstein gets at it:
It’s out in the open now. There’s no longer any real pretense of objectivity. Each time the progressive media “report” favorably on something they characterize like this (fairly or not) — and no switch comes down to sting their hands — they grow ever more emboldened...
They are the ones they’ve been waiting for, they were told. And it invigorates them. It gives them a sense of purpose and momentum. Because through the heart of every leftist runs the blood of totalitarianism, of confirmation bias, of rank bigotry and a mob’s lust for violence, for punishment, for blood, for inflicting suffering on those who dare oppose their designs...Gasp! Not confirmation bias!
I don’t care who rolls their fucking eyes at my saying this. Circumstances have taught me that in several years, when the political winds allow them to do so, those very same people on “my” side will be saying the very same things I’m writing on now, pretending there wasn’t a time they rolled their fucking eyes at the True Believers, the embarrassing Hobbits who were preventing them from wooing the moderates.To paraphrase LBJ's analogy, he's outside the tent, pissing himself.
I eagerly await Bill Whittle's take.
UPDATE. This story seems to have been covered previously by Big Breitbart and by Mytheos Holt, whose culture war training has got him thinking correctly about how to cover a game stoners play when they're bored:
Naturally, the creators denied any intent to specifically attack Rand, arguing instead that their general intent was to criticize extremism of all stripes. And considering that the first game treats Andrew Ryan (who isn’t even the main villain of the original Bioshock) with far more sympathy than it treats the all-but-explicitly communist villain of Bioshock 2, Sofia Lamb, who willingly traumatizes her own daughter and leaves a trail of corpses behind her in her pursuit of a utopian society, one could argue that the series had been comparatively right-leaning up until Infinite.After much study of the struggle of competing Tendencies in this video game series ("In other words, the Leftist mass movement could come off mildly more sympathetic, though not much"), Holt finally feels he can answer the question, "Was the game created by Marxists/atheists?" The answer may surprise you!
Coming soon: Which pornographic Tumblrs are consonant with free enterprise? (Trick question! Only pay sites embody the robot Founders' vision.)
UPDATE 2. Commenter Gromet informs us that "Breakout was the last truly God-fearing and patriotic game" because "your job was to destroy a band of rainbow colors." Wait, what about the Hunger Games?
Jeez. I listened to that NPR piece last night while making dinner, and all I could think was, "Who did that guy Levine have to fuck, to get such a long, tedious, detailed, endless, un-newsworthy story on All Tech Considered?"
ReplyDeleteI guess it's just more proof that, no matter how much I want to be Jeff Goldstein when I grow up, it ain't gonna happen.
Hahaha, just a brilliant lack of self-awareness on Goldstein's part. "[T]hrough the heart of every leftist runs... a mob's lust for violence, for punishment... for inflicting suffering on those who dare oppose their designs," he intones, in the same freaking paragraph where he says that the problem is that no one is beating these reporters for expressing their opinions.
ReplyDeleteI'm only partway through, but yes, there are killer George Washington robots. This is because the crazy in-game people literally worship the Founders; Jesus is not mentioned as far as I remember.
ReplyDelete... the bad guys were Christians who revered the Constitution and were blatant racists.
ReplyDeleteWell, they were highly-selective militant Christians who revered convenient portions of the Constitution, before such unconscionable amendments as the 13th-17th, and were blatant racists. And also believed that having a bunch of money gave them the moral right to make all of society's rules. And were nutso about firearms. And covered it all over with a frosting of "American exceptionalism." All of that does vaguely ring a bell.
Oh, that's right, crazed Founder worship that pays no attention to most of what the Founders actually said or did. That, too.
ReplyDeleteBecause through the heart of every leftist runs the blood of
ReplyDeletetotalitarianism, of confirmation bias, of rank bigotry and a mob’s lust
for violence, for punishment, for blood, for inflicting suffering on
those who dare oppose their designs...
Yeah, yeah. That's why we're always going on about guns and watering the Tree of Liberty and such as.
*rolls eyes at Godlstein*
~
I couldn't give a shit about video games,
ReplyDeleteOh, now it is on. Dwarven flintlock pistols at dawn, sir. You pick the PvP server.
All I could think was "April fools" but it sounds like not so much.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess the Constitution-worshipping Christian-fundamentalist reaction to a crappy report on a video game is 3/5 right.
ReplyDeleteSo, we have here a mentally ill man with a towering persecution complex, with a large side serving of paranoia, and a large gun collection. Oh, good. If I'm his neighbour, I'm outfitting my family with flak everything. Flak jacket, flak pants, flak underwear, flak shoes. JG's snapping is a matter of when, not if.
ReplyDeleteWell you know who else throbbed with the blood of confirmation bias . . .
ReplyDeleteSomewhere deep down in Jeff's cerebral cortex is a bundle of neurons responsible for life-and-death decisions, survival crises, that sort of thing. Trust me, his self-awareness was the first thing thrown out of the lifeboat.
ReplyDeleteare the Founding Fathers really in BioShock Infinite?
ReplyDeleteWhy yes! Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson specifically. Given how mythologized the Founding Fathers already are in American discourse, the only embellishment the game really adds to this is the people literally praying to them.
In addition to racism, the game portrays worker exploitation, wealth inequality, and what have you. So naturally many right-wingers are going to froth about the game being "liberal," but the game takes place in 1912. If it's liberal to point out that these things happened in 1912, well, I guess Colbert was right about reality.
Jesus isn't mentioned, but God is. The developers wanted to avoid making Comstock and his followers explicitly Christian*, but they do have a lot of the trappings of colonial Puritanism.
ReplyDelete*Damned if you do, damned if you don't, of course. If they had made them explicitly Christian, the rightbloggers would have whined about how they would never have dared portray Muslims this way and blah blah yawn yawn. But they won't give him any credit for treating Christianity with kid gloves the way they're always demanding.
Build a flak house!
ReplyDeleteBecause through the heart of every leftist runs the blood of
ReplyDeletetotalitarianism, of confirmation bias, of rank bigotry and a mob’s lust
for violence, for punishment, for blood, for inflicting suffering on
those who dare oppose their designs...
♫ One of these things is not like the others
One of these things just doesn't belong
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song? ♫
It's safe to say that if Jeff isn't with us, he's against us.
ReplyDeleteWhat the heck, build the whole tower.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gdrecon.co.uk/images/general/FLAKT2.JPG
~
Ooh, an update on the Virginian:
ReplyDeleteSome people have commented that I have mischaracterized the actual game. That’s not the point. I have not mischaracterized the NPR story.
And then there's some ARGLE BARGLE from Goldstein, but never mind that. It appears as if our noble crusaders are merely using the vidja games as a feint to attack the Dreaded MSM. That's something I noticed in the recent Girls-a-thon, too - Many of the attacks were not directed towards the show or even Dunham, but towards anyone associated with the Dreaded MSM who liked it.
That would explain why no one involved seems concerned about actually understanding the game they're ripping up. I haven't touched this one, but if it tracks with the other Bioshock games then they're using the American symbols as a bit of camp iconography rather than to make a serious point. But it doesn't matter, the game is inconsequential. Anything to give them an excuse to engorge their outrage glands. At this rate, they're going to be ARGLE BARGLEing over products that haven't been conceived yet.
but if it tracks with the other Bioshock games then they're using the
ReplyDeleteAmerican symbols as a bit of camp iconography rather than to make a
serious point
Pretty much. You should play it, though, it's fantastic.
Sean Hannity?
ReplyDeleteIs this the "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer" thread?
ReplyDeleteBecause through the heart of every leftist runs the blood of totalitarianism, of confirmation bias, of rank bigotry and a mob’s lust for violence, for punishment, for blood, for inflicting suffering on those who dare oppose their designs...
ReplyDeleteDoes he still pretend he can whip people with his cock? Because that would be really really funny. And I hate having the blood of totalitarianism running through my veins, I'd rather have my cells spontaneously clot whenever they felt like it. And yes, we are RAMMING GAY MARRIAGE DOWN YOUR THROAT YOU MISERABLE SHUT-IN. Suffer that, you mentally ill psycho.
If it's liberal to point out that these things happened in 1912,
ReplyDeleteIt's liberal to imply that they were bad things.
Does he still pretend he can whip people with his cock?
ReplyDeleteWould you believe that's one of the optional weapons in Bioshock: Infinite? Actually using it in combat is considered a dick move, though.
there are killer George Washington robots.
ReplyDeleteI seriously hope they fuck the shit out of bears and kick you apart.
Oooh!
ReplyDeleteHe'll save children, but not the moocher children.
Since ironically there is actually a video game produced and promoted by Christians in which Christians - who are the putative good guys kill Jews and non-believers in the name of God in order to purify the earth I wouldn't think either Goldstein or the Virginian should have a problem with a game in which totebaggers are tortured by righteous Teabaggers if it gets their message across while proving a little release of tension, if one did actually exist. However, in the Orwellian world of our addled friends on the right such a game is perfectly acceptable, while by contrast an NPR piece which misstates the backstory of a video game is a sign that violent government oppression against flag-loving Constitutionalists is just around the corner. You just can't make this shit up.
ReplyDeleteNeither do I, so I'll be his second.
ReplyDeleteChristians who revered the Constitution and were blatant racists
ReplyDeleteIn 1912? I assume Woodrow Wilson is in the game, no?
The LB game is awful, and it does display a lot of misogyny and other shitty fundamentalist values, but it doesn't actually require/encourage/reward the murder of non-Christians. That claim got started by some sensationalistic blog before the game came out and got picked up and propagated with the blogosphere's usual level of careful fact-checking and intellectual rigor (ie: none).
ReplyDeleteI don't feel good about defending the LB game on any level, but at least let it try and fail on its own merits (or lack thereof).
To demonize the constitutionalists is to demonize the Constitution. And to demonize the Constitution is to ready us for its obviation.
ReplyDeleteOh, chill. We just want to do away with the Second Amendment, and to change the Fourteenth so that it reads "The enumeration of the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people EXCEPT JEFF GOLDSTEIN NO BACKSIES."
Come to think of it, why can't we bring back duels as a way of settling disputes, and just do the whole thing on Xbox Live?
ReplyDeleteI knew that this dark day would come eventually, but the Virginian somehow makes it worse with the opening line: "Before your read this story keep in mind that the killer at Sandy Hook was addicted to violent video games." Right, because Wayne LaPierre proffered that fact as the whipping boy for the massacre. And Jeff Goldstein reveals the horrifying propaganda aim of the socislamobamaists:
ReplyDeleteHere, today, the narrative from the neo-Stalinist progressives is that constitutionalists are racial supremacists and paranoid freaks; the Founding Fathers are their false idols; and the founding documents are their fetish. Religion is both their opiate and their cocaine, the thing that simultaneously dulls them into an intellectual stupor and turns them into evangelical zealots bent on demanding obeisance. Taken together, this toxic blend of hateful ignorance makes these slack-jawed clingers to their guns and their religion exceedingly dangerous to “sensible” people who want to live in a “community” wherein “common sense” laws — not the hoary edicts of dead white patriarchal slave owners — hold sway. Rational, cultured, intellectual people want to live in a land that looks forward, to progress, not backward, to a time of tri-cornered hats and oppression of the Other.
If "constitutionalists" are the rebranded Tea Partiers, well, then, yes, this is all pretty true and verifiable. (The reactions to Obama's "cling[ing] to guns or religion" speech, made when he was still relatively new to national politics and therefore in danger of saying what he really thought, showed that he was exactly right.) The anger which Goldstein shows at the idea that this is now becoming a plausible narrative (and, not hidden very well behind the anger, the fear that, contrary to his "neo-Stalinist" babbling, it's the product not of some government propaganda mill but of just another company trying to make a buck; in other words, that it's not just plausible, but commercially viable) is like unto the squirming of worms when you turn over a rock. It's not especially pleasant for the rock-turner, but it's agony for the worms to be exposed to the light.
Also, too, the Bioshock games are great, although YMMV and whatnot. If the idea of fighting some freak encased in a huge diving suit with a drill for an arm by injecting yourself with a potion that allows you to shoot bees out of your arm intrigues you, you might want to at least give the first one a shot.
ReplyDeleteBreakout was the last truly God-fearing and patriotic game. Remember Breakout? Where your job was to destroy a band of rainbow colors?
ReplyDeleteWhy not succubi? It'll be a sexy duel. [/zappbrannigan]
ReplyDeleteWait till these guys find out that there are WW2 games where the Commie Russians are on the good side!
ReplyDeleteWell, I stand corrected...sort of. I haven't played it myself but my understanding from the game's own Wiki site is that you are encouraged to win the game by praying for non-Christians to be saved - but you absolutely can mow them down with bullets if you want to; you'll just end up paying a "spirit penalty" that can be easily reversed with a little praying (thanks God!)
ReplyDeleteAnd further, the game is based on the book in which, let's face it, anybody who isn't an evangelical Christian is considered the enemy of God and a child of evil. The book depicts these individuals - be they secularists, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Taoists, or what have you - joining forces with the Anti-Christ to wage war on all the "good people" and being violently killed and destroyed en masse by the forces of God at the end of the story for their impudence. While the game may have softened the tone of the story a bit in order to broaden its sales appeal, there's no mistaking the message: liberals and furriners are imbued with absolute evil because they believe the wrong things.
Can you imagine the right-wing response to a video game in which liberals were encouraged to "raise the consciousness" of Teabaggers - and allowed to kill them for fun with only a minor penalty? Goldstein would have taken hostages and barricaded himself in his house by now.
I assume that he goes on to argue that none of that is true?
ReplyDeleteAre you kidding? He's already labeled it as commie propaganda, claims that it's aimed at "we the people", and of course: "To demonize the constitutionalists is to demonize the Constitution. And to demonize the Constitution is to ready us for its obviation." Did you catch that? They're "constitutionalists" because they're made of 100% pure Constitution!
ReplyDeleteYep, that's a pretty accurate summation. When you put it that way it does sound kinda bad...
ReplyDeleteLevine's been around for a long time, and he's been quite successful making shooters which are aesthetically distinctive and somewhat more thoughtfully written than the average game. I don't think it's unreasonable to profile him, although I wish Warren Spector had gotten that kind of love circa 2001.
ReplyDeleteAnd at least it isn't another fawning profile of Jonathan Blow.
To demonize the constitutionalists is to demonize the Constitution.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, to demonize people who get secret radio transmissions through their fillings is to demonize dentistry.
....wasn't that going for about five bucks a hit in the early eighties?
ReplyDeleteEh, just change Stalin's name and make him a fundamentalist Christian, and they'll accept that he's one of the good guys. It's not like they'd disapprove of his methods.
ReplyDeleteI would like to acquaint this comment with non-heart parts of my body through which the blood of confirmation bias and totalitarianism is currently flowing.
ReplyDeleteThere a short video of the game here - skip ahead five minutes for the actual gameplay (oh, and it is an "angry review," so be prepared for cutaway gags and tons of swearing). It's an RTS, meaning you need a huge force to complete most missions, so killing people instead of converting them is not a "minor penalty." It means you might not be able to win. This is fairly common in games featuring a moral choice system - the evil path is easy, but the good path gives you greater rewards over the long term.
ReplyDeleteLook, the LB game is awful - as are the books, as are the movies. That means it's really not necessary to misrepresent them to make them look worse.
A few weeks ago Levine scored a big interview spot with Kurt Andersen on Studio 360, a more obscure public radio show. But one that the producers of ATC almost certainly listen to.
ReplyDeleteI would like to be slapped with this hot, throbbing comment.
ReplyDeleteVaguely resembles Scary Sarah's latest architectural effort, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteI used to work with a wingnut who had a cartoonish cardboard cut-out of Washington's portrait on his office wall; it looked like the sort of thing someone would hang in a first-grade classroom for the purposes of illustrating the story of Washington cutting down the cherry tree.
ReplyDeleteWhen I laughed at it he got real quiet and in a low, threatening voice said "Washington was the greatest human who has ever lived on this planet".
VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES! *Shakes fist*
ReplyDeleteI never realized until now just how much that one phrase has been the leitmotif of my whole damn life. Buried somewhere in this house, I have a raggedy old gaming magazine, published when I was about six, with an article about Joseph Lieberman's first crusade against the VVGs. Ever since, these campaigns have been on a cycle that intertwines perfectly with milestones in my life. Everything important that's ever happened to me has had a refrain of "VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES! *Shakes fist*" in the background. Hearing it just makes me laugh now. I think I've been conditioned to associate it with pleasant memories.
Between that and the Raymond Raines shit that Tony Perkins and David Barton are still going on about, it seems that conservatives haven't changed that much since I was a kid.
What? No!
ReplyDelete... The freak wasn't usually wearing a diving suit.
Or David Cage.
ReplyDeleteI'm betting that this is just the warm-up for another Godlstein bleg pledge drive for the money to buy more guns and weaponized knick-knacks. Jeffy's not ever going to have enough firepower to stave off the voices in his head, so this is a neverending procurement process.
ReplyDeleteHe's like the Pentagon that way.
I thought that idiot had died in a cock slapping incident or something.
ReplyDeleteWell I'm certainly not intending to misrepresent the game and I see the quibble is over the use of the word "minor," so I concede the point: the game allows you to kill people like you and I - or rather defend yourself against the murderous attacks of people like you and I using lethal force (because hey, let's admit: we evil people started it!) - but frames such a choice as an ineffective strategy and instead encourages the player to defeat their enemies through prayer.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that fact exonerates its status as an intentional vehicle of conservative Christian propaganda meant to convey the message that the majority of humans are evil and utterly depraved and that one day "good Christians" will be forced into "physical and spiritual" warfare against them, according to the game's own promotional materials:
Conduct physical & spiritual warfare : using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world...
Command your forces through intense battles across a breathtaking, authentic depiction of New York City.
Control more than 30 units types - from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks!
Enjoy a robust single player experience across dozens of New York City maps in Story Mode – fighting in China Town , SoHo , Uptown and more!"
In a game providing you with special forces and battle tanks as part of your arsenal to fight the evil forces of diversity, progress and the Enlightenment so typified in the denizens of that modern-day Gomorrah, New York City, the fact that killing libs is a legitimate strategy but perhaps not the best strategy if you want to win seems a little beside the point to me. If the message is so spiritual and righteous why have tanks and guns in the game at all?
They're more difficult to operate in the cold.
ReplyDeleteAnd somewhere, Saint Paul and Ronald Reagan wept.
ReplyDeleteWould you like me to wrap up your internet, or will sir or madam be eating it here?
ReplyDeleteThis is fairly common in games featuring a moral choice system - the
ReplyDeleteevil path is easy, but the good path gives you greater rewards over the
long term.
Exception: Knights of the Old Republic. You will make way more money on the path of the Dark Side.
a breathtaking, authentic depiction of New York City
ReplyDeleteSomething notably lacking in the original novels.
Oh lord spare us all from glowing profiles of that fraud.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the KKK or perhaps Goldstein his own self
ReplyDeleteWhy does he hate Jesus so.
ReplyDeleteIsn't the hero of Bioshock a Pinkerton agent? That should please them, anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe buttons are easier to find then. Your incubi joysticks, now...
ReplyDeleteFormer. And he explicitly says he's done some union-busting in his time, not to mention his participation in the Wounded Knee massacre.
ReplyDeleteWas it thrown, or did it jump of its free will?
ReplyDelete*rolls eyes at Godlstein*
ReplyDeleteOh no you di-int!
A drill for an arm? Is this a rip off of Carl Hiassen's crazed villain who puts a weed whacker on his mutilated arm?
ReplyDeleteTruly IMAX-class projection from Mr. Goldberg there - he's *exactly* described the modern conservative movement.
ReplyDeleteWhat? Jeff stopped writing about guns and his love of them for more than 13 seconds. Must have been post-coital....after he removes the AR-15 from his bunghole, he loves to caress it. Seconds later, he thinks the gun is a dirty whore for not loving him as much as loves it. It must have been in that shame spiral that he vomited forth this paean of apocalyptic nonsense
ReplyDeleteBorderline Personality Disorder is a bitch
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when an asshole starts listening to Mark Levin
ReplyDeleteThat's what the victims of the illegal raid on Fort Duquesne always said. Of course, not every Father of a Country is also responsible for the first worldwide war, but that's 'cause he had no flaws. Ask his slaves
ReplyDeleteBreakout was a Jobs creator. Or, vice versa.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like the way conservatives actually treat the founders
ReplyDeleteIs that 'cause you're not a dick?
ReplyDeleteOoh, yeah:
ReplyDeleteBuck gets off the train in Manhattan, from there: "Buck calculated about a fifteen-mile walk to his office and another five to his apartment." The island of Manhattan is about 13 miles long and Penn Station is maybe three miles from the southern tip.
So he gets off the train at Penn Station, walks for many miles, rides a bike several more miles, then arrives in midtown Manhattan.
--Slacktivist (who else?)
I mean, I've occasionally felt that Penn Station was miles away from anything, but I don't treat it as objective truth.
He's never going to get better, is he?
ReplyDeleteDON'T YOU ROLL YOUR EYES AT HIM! DON'T YOU ROLL YOUR EYES AT HIM!
ReplyDeleteMuch as we're all sick of conservatives putting every artifact of popular culture through their ideological Play-Doh Fun Factory in an attempt to squish everything out Reagan-shaped... I do think it's a little disingenuous to discount video games as something only stoners do when they're bored. You don't play games, fine, but millions of people immerse themselves in these things. You spend a lot more time with a game than you do with a movie. Successful games make as much or more money than movies.
ReplyDeleteThis wingnut maundering is nonsense because they always make shit sausage in their attempts to puzzle out hoo-man entertainment. Not because this time they're throwing a video game in the hopper and turning the crank.
I'm sorry but how fucking dense do you have to be to miss the fact that the game series isn't exactly approving of a reactionary viewpoint- I mean the little sisters bit is there from minute 1 and the first 2 games are set in the dystopian hell-scape resulting from an Objectivist experiment gone right- there's child slavery and human experimentation-- I mean good god were they also shocked that Tarantino didn't embrace the slavocracy in Django?
ReplyDeleteJeff Goldstein is a coward and wimp He's got two sons who are going to end up at cashiers at Walmart because their miserable father couldn't be bothered to get off his ass to help earn enough money to pay for their college educations. He's rather beg his readers to help him buy a gun than earn money for his family.
ReplyDeleteOh man, I remember that dude. Not a rip-off, though, as you can see if you visit the "Anatomy Arsenal" supertrope over at TVTropes, if you have an afternoon or two free.
ReplyDelete