SPOILER WARNING: The following dialog contains spoilers for the game BioShock. If you haven’t played BioShock yet, you’ll have no idea what’s going on anyway so either go play the game or come back next week.

Bioshock is not only a great game (but don’t take my word for it) but i feel that it is the rare example of a media object of any type that breaks the meta-textual of its medium’s boundaries in a profound way. And I’m not talking about the developer’s clever use of the implausible Randian/Objectivist ideal. This could very well break if not the new, then gently treaded ground of human/game interaction. More then the kid reading the book in The Neverending Story or the tape killing people in The Ring, the major ‘twist’ that is uncovered in the last third of the game goes beyond the characters in the involved in the story, but to the player him/herself.

This is a topic I discussed via e-mails with longtime Rider Nav (while we were both supposed to be working) who shares a similar taste in games with me and was just a few hours behind myself in his first play thought of BioShock. Upon reaching the ‘Atlas is controlling your actions’ revelation we shared this dialog concerning the nature of choice relative to video games and I thought I‘d share it with you since I found it interesting in a “freshman psych” kinda way, and because it’s my column. Enjoy:

Seth 4:10: What so clever here, is that you did the things Atlas told you to, because “you’ve” been playing games your whole life, and your ‘programmed’ to follow in-game instructions for making progress. You picked up the wrench, why? Is it because you just needed a melee weapon, or because he told you to and you can’t progress without it, not because you needed it, but because you could not progress until after doing so, since he told you to do so. The game forces you to pick it up, not because the game needs you to, but as you find out, because you are compelled to.

Nav: That is recursive logic: The game forces me to pick it up or I can’t progress. Then it tells me I picked it up because a character in the game told me to. If he didn’t tell me to, I’d have picked it up anyway so I could get on with the game. Players generally only follow in-game instructions to the letter in linear games like BioShock. In games like Oblivion, how much did you do before you did the main quest the game told you to do in the beginning? How about Grand Theft Auto 3?

Seth 4:10: So due to the dictates of the storyline and/or the game mechanic, what you’re saying is that even the choice of having a choice is an illusion. And in this case the opposite is true for the same reason, you only think you didn’t have a choice in the end but to follow Atlas’ orders, but all along you never really did anyway. But in all cases you can only do what the program allows you to do.

Nav: Yes, it is to the will of the program that choices are limited. In the case of a linear game such as a FPS, any choice is an illusion, the player still has to eventually get the key/weapon/plasmid to continue no matter how many zombies/robots/splicers he or she puts down.

Seth 4:10: Then maybe the notion explored isn’t that your character is merely a puppet in Atlas’s game as a reference for the genera in general, but more of a meta-commentary of the concept of the silent protagonist in the specific. A silent protagonist allows you, the player, to imprint on the in-game avatar, who does what you tell him, moves when you move him, kills who you pull the trigger, just as they all do in FPSs, only to find out that it’s you behind the controller that’s really been having your strings pulled? And that’s always been the case, BioShock or not?

Nav: Intent is really the key; BioShock doesn’t clearly try to pull the player’s strings as much as it tries to show that it has been pulling the character’s. The player manipulation is not as blatant (and effective) as the head games in a game like Eternal Darkness for the GameCube. BioShock’s (ultimately predictable) twist and its implications for gamers could be considered arbitrary and accidental, seen only to those who might just be looking for it.

Seth 4:10: Anyway, keep saving those sisters.

Nav: Always, I am a hero after all.

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Back of the Bus is © 2007 by Seth “4:10” Robison, used with exclusive permission by gamertransit.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.