Bioshock 3 an Anarchy Game?

[bleh]

http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/irrational/bioshockinfinite/Vox%20Populi.jpg

“This group starts out as a confederation of like-minded people,” Levine says. “As it becomes more serious and more organized, there becomes a need to enforce an ideology, an order, and a hierarchy. As the group becomes more organized over time, it also becomes more brutal. There becomes a line to toe. Different leaders emerge and some leaders aren’t as successful as other leaders, and you can imagine what happens to them. They get pushed aside and a unified ideology comes into place.”
:D
http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/09/12/columbia-a-city-divided.aspx?PostPageIndex=2

[Kuppo Shakur]

Anarchists? In mah rapture?
Good Lawd!

[The Vegan Marxist]

Well Bioshock always had the anti-capitalist orientation to it. Especially the first one.

[Tablo]

I thought Bioshock had some kinda libertarian trend to it. :confused:

[The Vegan Marxist]

I thought Bioshock had some kinda libertarian trend to it. :confused:

Libertarian's embrace deregulated capitalism. That's what the main villain was trying to achieve through Rapture. To create a world where no gods, masters, or government could tell people what to do & how to run their businesses. A true free-market system, anarcho-capitalism if you will. Which of course, as the game reveals, was a terrible mistake.

[Tablo]

Libertarian's embrace deregulated capitalism. That's what the main villain was trying to achieve through Rapture. To create a world where no gods, masters, or government could tell people what to do & how to run their businesses. A true free-market system, anarcho-capitalism if you will. Which of course, as the game reveals, was a terrible mistake.
Oh, okay. I've never played so I just made an assumption based on an old thread about Bioshock.

[Red Commissar]

Bioshock picks up on messages and themes that they bury in their works.

Bioshock 1 rooted itself in an Objectivist-influenced society. It's a capitalist utopia that tears itself apart as the lower elements of its society were increasingly marginalized and kept down for the benefit of Ryan and his "champions" of industry to benefit. There was discontent from the masses. Fontaine exploits the underclasses in his personal war against Ryan. Though people like Fontaine probably would have not gotten anywhere had Ryan's society not created a desperate and angry underclass so that he could live out his fantasies with his fellow businessmen and professionals.

Andrew Ryan is also similar sounding to Ayn Rand. Aside from the name, both are emigres from Russia as it became the Soviet Union, upheld America before FDR as perfect, and proclaimed everything after that bad. We could see it as a condemnation of objectivism and the individualism it preaches.

Bioshock 2 took a look at the other end, using a new villain, Lamb, who leads some cult-type group that focuses on collectivism and destroying the "self". The developers wanted to present themselves as the ever popular middle-ground between the dangers of the kind of individualism of Objectivism and other ancap things, and the collectivism of radical ideologies.

Bioshock 3, like the other two, takes cues from real life. Columbia and everything involved in it takes cues from 1800s America, notably the bad things. Like many cities in America it appeared great and wonderful on the outside (the grandeur that American exceptionalism encouraged), but had issues beneath the surface.

Saltonstall's views are like the views that were common among many politicians in late 1800s America- heavilly nationalistic, jingoistic, and xenophobic to the extreme. The Vax Populi is a gathering of people opposed to the grasp that Saltonstall and his small clique have and want to make more Columbia more fair and open to all. They represent the social reformers and radicals of the late 1800s, which included socialists of all stripes but wasn't exclusive to them.

However I wouldn't think that because the newspaper says "Anarchists" it means they are such. Anarchism was, and still is, used as a pejorative towards subversive elements of society regardless of their actual political views. Look up any news article from those days and you'll see them going on and on about the dangers of "anarchists", it was used in much the same way we use "terrorist" today.

Probably reading too deep into this, but I guess what I'm saying is that don't expect Bioshock to be cheering for us. It seems so far the series has had some element of extremist beliefs gone bad, anywhere.

[Comrade_Stalin]

However I wouldn't think that because the newspaper says "Anarchists" it means they are such. Anarchism was, and still is, used as a pejorative towards subversive elements of society regardless of their actual political views. Look up any news article from those days and you'll see them going on and on about the dangers of "anarchists", it was used in much the same way we use "terrorist" today.


Very ture, this is why for so long, anarchists have been placed on the left of the left–right political spectrum