this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
162 points (85.5% liked)

Games

32521 readers
1315 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
162
Why People Don’t Catch The Politics In Their Favorite Games (aftermath.site)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
95 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's actually very possible to miss the message of Bioshock. Andrew Ryan built the perfect city and Atlas ruined it. Andrew Ryan cast him out, but Atlas brought the player character as his final ultimate weapon. You eventually rebel, saving the capitalist Utopia.

I have seen people who abided by this interpretation. Any art with any level of subtlety can be misinterpreted. It's inherently subjective and depends on the viewer's personal biases.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Capitalist utopia? Isn't the whole point that it's a Libertarian utopia?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Are you unfamiliar with capitalism as a theory? Or Ayn Rand? Yes, capitalist utopia. That's the entire libertarian ethos. Libertarianism is a political framework for governance, pure capitalism is its economic policy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Don't get me wrong, the only Libertarianism I've ever known is intertwined with Capitalism. But they aren't the same thing, and I always read BioShock as being a take on Libertarianism specifically.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Bioshock is most specifically about Randian objectivism, which promotes a version of extreme laissez-faire capitalism, not libertarianism in general.

And I think that’s the most economic philosophy buzzwords I’ve put in a sentence before.