Tuesday 26 February 2008

"No gods or kings. Only man."

nogodsorkings-thumb Don't be surprised if your video-game playing teenager starts to pick up Ayn Rand books: the makers of popular video game 'Bioshock' have made Rand's Objectivism -- or at least, the makers' version thereof -- into a "central theme" of the game.

Story here at a gaming site, including a largely sympathetic interview with the Ayn Rand Institute's Yaron Brook.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

have you even played part of the game??
it's a dystopia!

Berend de Boer said...

Maybe you should play it pc, or remove this post in a hurry :-)

It's a good game, but not if you want them to start to appreciate objectivity.

Anonymous said...

The game is very, very unsympathetic towards Randian objectivism PC - it is centred around an underwater dystopia created in an 'Atlas Shrugged' type manoeuvre by a John Galt-analogue.

Awesome game from the snippets I've managed to play though - a friend of mine has it and the visuals, sound, and gameplay are all top notch.

DenMT

Peter Cresswell said...

I assure don't intend to play the thing -- I'm hardly the target market, although it's evidently more popular than I'd realised -- but perhaps you've overlooked those four important words: "the makers' version thereof."

Read the linked article to see what that means, including Yaron's comments, which are less dismissive than you might think.

Anonymous said...

"maker's version thereof..."
since there's no authoritative magisterium of Rand-thought 2K Games version is as valid as anyones, maybe better because it made them a profit.

Seriously though, you concluded that teenagers would be 'picking up Rand' on merit of the game which means you think the 'version' is attractive. As berend says: "play it".

if you think little girls running around the game sucking stem cell material ("Adam") from deceased citizens is a positive ad then...well
...moreover the disposition of the surviving citizens is "narcissistic cannibal".
Well, I guess any publicity is is good publicity.

spooky cool game nonetheless.
they won't be picking up Rand, they'll be picking up Call of Duty 4.