Choice is perhaps the greatest element that distinguishes videogames from film and other media: the choice to move backward or forward, to jump or dodge, to ignore or interact with objects. From customizing an avatar to responding to timed stimulus, a player necessarily chooses how to interact with a game. The choice architecture within games like Braid and Problem Attic is more or less limited to gameplay mechanics and has little effect on the overall narrative.
Bioshock, however, requires players to make explicit decisions that determine the game’s ending. Moments of choice often incentivize contrary pathways for progression; for example, a player must choose whether to rescue or kill Little Sisters, genetically modified children living in the city of Rapture. Rescuing a child has no immediate benefit, whereas killing her allows players to harvest her ADAM (a substance that can rewrite genetic material) for personal advantage. Discordant strings in an unstable crescendo underscore the situational trauma and trouble the player, who is meant to feel the ethical weight of this decision. Harvesting the Little Sister’s ADAM results in a sudden silence followed by a dark musical gesture and a horrified question from Dr. Tenenbaum: “How can you do this thing to a child?”
The comment section of IGN's Youtube video showing a player harvesting the Little Sister is surprisingly insightful. Top comments reveal a voyeuristic desire to witness the violent option sans culpability: “Can’t do this to a child in game, so we come here to watch” (TheVeR01); “Someone has to do this little dirty job to satisfy our curiosities” (Anh Quan Chu). Some users were horrified: “I would never be able to hurt a child, especially one who's already terrified. This made me sick” (Nordic Five); “I could never, NEVER, do that. To a child? I could never forgive myself” (Scoot Games).
Others range from remorseful—“the first time i harvested the little sister was the last time, i felt really bad for doing it” (sonny RDR2); “I harvested a little sister one time and every night for a week I hear the screams from a little sister” (Jane)—to sadistic—“I wanna see sister's flesh and blood!” (Drunken Dovahkiin); “I know this sounds crazy but I love killing them“ (bmkbbk123).
Some pragmatically defend the harvest of Little Sisters: “I killed them… Because they aren't girls. They are 1s and 0s. I feel no empathy for non-living entities” (Joe Schmoe); “if i was in that situation of being stuck in an underwater city full of insane spliced-up killer maniacs…i would've harvested those girls as well. not for evil's sake of course but for simply staying alive” (Queefreak). One user even offers insight regarding choice-making itself, praising “games like this that explore ideas of freedom in a format in which players blindly follow instruction … If you rescue the girls, you are ... embracing your own humanity” (Nicole I).
That last comment raises fundamental humanistic questions regarding gameplay ethics and player agency. Of course, technically simpler games like Braid, Problem Attic, or Super Mario Bros. do handle some of these issues, yet remain at a safe aesthetic distance: it’s easy to dissociate a pixel-art character from our own lived “reality.” But games with photorealistic textures, lighting, physics, meticulously-mastered sound, and three-dimensionally interactive environments reduce the gap between software and imagination. Fully rendered characters who look, sound, and react like children—who tremble and cry in fear—evoke something more visceral in a player. This sort of aesthetic realism has the power to transform entertainment into an experiential preoccupation with heavy decisions—such as whether or not to kill a child for personal gain.
Bioshock’s harvest-or-rescue moment allows players to avoid an act of violence, but inevitable violence elsewhere in the game prompts three critical questions:
(1) Are players ethically exempt from actions required for game progression?
(2) If so, is player action defensible because the game is virtual?
(3) Again, if so, does this presuppose that ethicality is determined only by non-virtual action and that mere imagination of heinous behavior is independent of ethics?
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