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Ubik

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Ubik

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#1  Edited By Ubik
@yoshimitz707 said:
" @craigbo180
@Enigma777 said:
" If anything it shows us how much the gaming industry had developed and how complex games are nowadays.  "
Mortal Kombat 9 comes out tomorrow.
Just like in movies, music, and books you can have games that are just plain fun as well as more serious things. "
An old English teacher of mine had a theory that for every serious dramatic film you watch you should balance it out with at least one full viewing of Top Gun (or something similar) just to keep from taking yourself too seriously.  He was a wise man.
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Ubik

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#2  Edited By Ubik
@Enigma777: Have you ever read Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell? If you're interested at all in reading some in-depth analyses of popular games (GTAIV, Far Cry 2, BioShock, among others) it's definitely worth picking up.  The author kinda goes off on a tear about his heroine addiction late into the book (around the time he gets really into GTAIV, ironically), but that's my only real criticism of this book.  I wish there was more written on the subject. 
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Ubik

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#3  Edited By Ubik
@KaosAngel: Do you mean the bio pic about Ayn Rand's life?  I think it's on my Netflix queue, but I haven't watched it yet.  Any good?
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Ubik

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#4  Edited By Ubik
@benjaebe: Actually, this blog started off as a wiki edit for the BioShock page here on GB, but it got rejected.  I can understand why; it reads like a college essay, but I still enjoyed writing it so I copied and pasted it into my blog.

Also, I hate Ayn Rand, too.  One of my best friends used to read and reread Atlas Shrugged until he could spout off long strings of her bullshit on command.  God, am I ever glad he got over that phase in his life.  
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Ubik

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#5  Edited By Ubik
@Video_Game_King: Thanks for reading it.  I admit the tone is a bit dry, but then there's only so much you can do to spice up Ayn Rand's economic and social philosophies--unless you count this:
No Caption Provided
Poor Alan Greenspan.  I bet his safety word was "rational self-interest".
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Ubik

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#6  Edited By Ubik

BioShock is not only inspired by the theory of Objectivism that Ayn Rand developed and championed in her written works--and famously fictionalized in her novel Atlas Shrugged--but the game's narrative also functions chiefly as a frightening critique of a society shaped in the image of her political and economic beliefs.  Andrew Ryan’s underwater city of Rapture (the name itself used as a double-entendre for both the height of pleasure and the biblical apocalypse) offers the player a visceral demonstration of the pitfalls of what Rand called “rational self-interest” merged with a dystopian alternate history science fiction epic.  

According to Rand:


My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

  1. Reality exists as an objectiveabsolute —facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
  2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
  3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moralpurpose of his life.
  4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and  no man may initiate the use of physical force against others . The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

  (Source: The Ayn Rand Institute, from a short description of Objectivism given in 1962.  All preceding hyperlinks link back to the Ayn Rand Institute’s site.)

In a nutshell, Rand believed that no human being “owed” any other human being in the world anything, save to be free from the threat of violence from each other, and that every man and woman should be allowed to pursue their own happiness and economic interests without regard to anyone else.   Her theories hold many diverse implications for politics and economics, as well as religion, but the creators of BioShock primarily use the game to explore a single question that Rand takes for granted in her fiction and in her philosophy: “What would a society look like if everyone were really only in it for themselves and owed no allegiance to anyone but themselves?”

The Downside of Hands-Off Capitalism: Rand’s Blindside and Ryan’s All- Too-Human Lust for Power

BioShock succeeds as a serious social critique, rather than just an extremely well-designed video game, largely because of its willingness to tackle the main tenets of Objectivism head-on; not by lengthy diatribes delivered through main characters (even if Andrew Ryan’s famous mid-game speech provides a griping visual reminder that arguments over free will still loom large in our modern cultural consciousness), but by dropping the player into a world where Ayn Rand’s ideas have been allowed to take hold and endure until their logical—and, some might argue, inevitable—conclusion.

[B]y filling a city with ambitious experts, trained geniuses, and breakthrough artists, Ryan set up a top-heavy class system with most Rapture citizens feeling that essential jobs such as food processing, cleaning, simple maintenance, etc. were beneath them, and thus were often ignored (as Frank Fontaine put it: "Someone had to scrub the toilets."). This led to widespread dissatisfaction when these jobs were neglected and an eventual economic collapse throughout Rapture. The social conditions resulting from the economic collapse allowed Frank Fontaine to establish the influential but undermining Fontaine's Home for the Poor and also allowed Atlas to rise to political power and openly challenge Andrew Ryan's leadership...Furthermore, in order to keep Rapture safely hidden from the parasites, Ryan strictly forbade contact with the surface, inadvertently creating a market for smuggled goods, which in turn led to the rise of Frank Fontaine's criminal enterprises. At Rapture's outset, Ryan intended this law to be Rapture's only one, but in the end, it proved to lay the groundwork for Rapture's decline and then divisive civil war."

  (Source: BioShock Wikia article on Andrew Ryan . All hyperlinks in the preceding paragraph link back to BioShock WIkia pages.) 

The city of Rapture, itself the most damning condemnation of Ayn Rand’s ideas, also functions as the ironic twist of the entire tragedy. By establishing a colony outside the confines of “normal” society and rejecting any principles but his own, Ryan laid the groundwork for his, and Rapture’s, eventual doom. The major flaw in Rand’s theory of Objectivism—and the one which the creators of BioShock seize upon most effectively in their narrative—is that it attempts to deny in ourselves a desire to nurture and empathize with other human beings by placing ourselves at the center of our own interests, to the exclusion of everyone else in our larger society.   The downfall of Rapture was a direct result of Ryan’s attempts to forbid contact with the surface, which was itself a result of Ryan’s effort to install pride as the chief virtue of his city, and deny the corrosive effect of vice and corruption that flourish in the absence of the concept of the collective good.   When the player is dramatically thrust into the heart of this dying city and gradually sees the truth of his, and Rapture’s, situation unfold around him, it’s a potent, immersive reminder that the one trait shared by all dreams of a perfect society is their habit of ignoring the insurmountable flaws in our human nature, often at their own peril.

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Ubik

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#7  Edited By Ubik
@project343 said:
" So, I've been playing through Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga. It's a janky-ass jank game that feels like it's from a small, Northern European studio. It's contrived, it's bizarre, and boy, does it try hard to leave an ugly first impression. And it's a remake of the utterly broken Divinity II: Ego Draconis--a second chance. 
I'm curious: what felt janky about Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga to you?  I've been playing--and genuinely enjoying--that game on and off for a few weeks now; in fact, the only reason I haven't finished it is because I got sidetracked when Dragon Age 2 came out (so many dragons, so little time, you know how it goes).  Honestly, I'd say The Dragon Knight Saga is as polished and stable a game as I've seen in the past few years.  Post Script: I never played Ego Draconis, which I understand to be totally broken.

As far as Morrowind goes, I sunk 40+ into that game and gave up when I lost all concept of what the hell I was doing wandering around that world.  Also, first-person melee combat has never been engaging for me.  Both factors have kept me from trying Oblivion.

Lastly, I don't know if RPG's are an acquired taste, but I'd suspect that there's definitely an accepted level of interface/system bullshit that most RPG players take for granted that perhaps other people might not be willing to put up with in a game.  The fact that most RPG players are willing to "grind" in what's supposed to be a fun way to pass the time must say something about us.  It's a good question, though.  I wonder what particular pleasure centers in my brain RPG's latch onto that keep me coming back for more?

  
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Ubik

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#8  Edited By Ubik

Has anyone here ever played Radiant Historia?  I might pick that up.

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Ubik

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#9  Edited By Ubik
@example1013: Yeah, I remember feeling that way too at 19.  I agree that on its face pride doesn't seem nearly as bad as some of the other cardinal sins, but the problem is that it's a sneaky fucker and you never suspect that it might reach up and bite you until it's too late.  When I was 22, I very nearly went to prison for some shit I didn't do and I learned real fast that pride can be your own worst enemy if you're not careful.  I know this makes me sound old, but take it from those of us who've been there, man: humility is definitely something to strive for.
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Ubik

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#10  Edited By Ubik
@Axxol said:
" What are the benefits of employing King Ackbar? "
The ability to launch an assault on the second Death Star?  

Seriously, though, I've been waiting for GDS to drop in price before I scoop it up (because I'm just that cheap), but I'm on vacation this week and this thread is not helping my self-control one bit.  This sounds like an awesome game.

 I must not succumb to the allure of the app store!