Art is defined as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination to be appreciated primarily for beauty or emotional power. Typically, when one thinks of traditional art forms, paintings and sculptures are the first things to come to mind. However, over time, other mediums have been accepted under the art umbrella. Music, literature, and photography have, over time, been lumped into the art category and, most recently, movies and television have joined the ranks. Now, in the 21stcentury, we have a new medium that is just as large and impactful as those previously mentioned: video games.

Compared to the other forms of art mentioned, video games are most like movies and television. They combine elements of other art forms to create a new type of art. The difference between video games and movies and television, though, is how they are consumed. The participatory nature of videogames allows consumers to take a more active role in the way they interact with this particular art form. After all, they are games, but they sometimes are much more. In this piece, I examined a specific game whose artistic qualities reach this higher plain. Today’s game is Bioshock.

WELCOME TO RAPTURE

Set in 1960, Bioshock begins when the main character, Jack, is the sole survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the North Atlantic. It is here when the player takes control of him and guides him to a nearby lighthouse, a lighthouse seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Upon entering the building, Jack finds a bathysphere that takes him to a secret, underwater city that looks like a sunken New York: Rapture.

Rapture is a dangerous place. The majority of its inhabitants have lost their minds, are hostile, and some appear to have magical abilities. As Jack, the player must inherit some of these abilities and gather whatever weapons they can in order to survive. There are many twists and turns as the game’s story unfolds with the biggest being the ‘WYK.’ For those who haven’t played the game, I won’t spoil it in case you decide to play the game or if Bioshock is adapted to television or film.

NO GODS OR KINGS, ONLY MAN

Where Bioshock shines isn’t necessarily its gameplay mechanics or its design, though both are superbly done. Bioshock is at its strongest when it presents the ideas that drive the game. There is so much more to this game than one might assume from a first impression. 

The city of Rapture was founded by former oil tycoon, Andrew Ryan. Ryan was an immigrant from Russia to the United States as a child and it was there that he struck oil. Over time, Ryan developed a loathing for ‘surface world’ society. A businessman through and through, Ryan believed firmly that a man was entitled to what he earned. He did not care for charity or taxation, believing both to be the ideas of what he liked to call “parasites.”
 
Upon descending into Rapture for the first time, the following recording of Ryan plays to all new arrivals: “Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? ‘No!’ says the man in Washington, ‘It belongs to the poor.’ ‘No!’ says the man in the Vatican, ‘It belongs to God.’ ‘No!’ says the man in Moscow, ‘It belongs to everyone.’” After the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ryan had had enough with the surface world and decided that he no longer wanted to live in a place where “parasites” ruled and where planetary destruction seemed immanent. In secret, he commissioned the construction of his own city at the bottom of the North Atlantic; a city utopia where there were no gods or kings, only man.

As he continues in the recording mentioned above: “I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose… Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.”

THE SWEAT OF YOUR BROW

The last two lines of Andrew Ryan’s introduction to Rapture encapsulate what makes Bioshock so memorable. Jack and the player soon see what such a society would be like, a society where nearly anything can be done for profit without the boundaries of censorship, morality, or the law. What would happen if that society were taken advantage of, as all societies fall victim to in some way?

What if the artist wasn’t bound by censorship and allowed to be creative however they wish? Well, in Rapture, this gets pushed to the extreme as the artist Sander Cohen starts torturing and killing people to use their corpses as art pieces. A surgeon named Doctor Steinman decides to become a “medical artist” of sorts with his scalpel and against his patients’ wishes. He mutilates their bodies while they are still alive in pursuit of finding the perfect looking person all because, “the goddess Aphrodite told him to do it.”

What happens if scientists aren’t bound by morality? Yes they may achieve amazing feats, but at what cost? Remember that magic I mentioned earlier? In the game, it was developed through scientific practice and gene manipulation. Whether or not this particular science is possible in real life isn’t the point. The point is that scientists in Rapture were able to create superpowers in syringes because they could experiment however they wished. They were able to play God and then go beyond.

But how did they get to that point and what are the side effects? What sort of experiments led them to such a discovery? What happens when these superpowers in syringes become more addictive than most drugs and slowly drive their users insane? And what if the manufacturers don’t make any changes to the product because the addictive quality drives their sales? And what if all of these practices are not only legal, but also encouraged by the ruling body? This is the case in Rapture.

What started off as an ideal utopia at its founding has become a hellish nightmare by the time Jack descends into the city. The citizens of Rapture that remain are mostly crazed, super powered, drug addicts, also known as splicers, that will attack on site. Whatever ideal society Andrew Ryan had in mind has collapsed, and it is all because he was naïve enough to think all of Rapture’s citizens were as like-minded.

There are many other ideas that Bioshock explores along these lines, some of which are even more disturbing than those listed above. As fantastical as the setting may seem, it is surprisingly grounded, anchored by its thought provoking ideas. Even the development of Rapture as a society is organic and makes logical sense for the world. The developers carefully thought out everything in Bioshock and they were not afraid to tackle uncomfortable and complicated topics. It makes the player think and stays with them long after they’ve turned off the game. This is why Bioshock IS Art.