August 27, 2007 - There's a debate going on right now as to whether video games can considered an art form. The naysayers such as Roger Ebert suggest that despite the artistic values that games can exhibit, the mere fact that they require player input to function discounts them as a legitimate art form. What if, however, a video game featured writing that was miles ahead of the generic crap that the Hollywood machine churns out? What if a game challenged not only your reflexes and skills as a player, but also your morals, your ideals, or even your idea of what is possible in video games?

Video games nowadays are at a crossroads. With the advent of high definition, near photo realistic graphics means that we are pushing the envelope on visual presentation for games. However, the video game industry is one that constantly demands innovation and originality. Since the graphical envelope is close to being pushed as far as it can go, developers are trying to find new and exciting ways to deliver a compelling game experience beyond fancy bump-mapping and particle effects. It's time for imagination and story telling to truly catch up to the technology that is already in place.

Since so much of the video game industry emulates the cinematic world, it becomes easy to compare a game like BioShock to classic film masterpieces such as Citizen Kane and Casablanca. Blasphemy you say? Consider this. When cinema was in its infancy, before the advent of sound and Technicolor, it was discounted as fluff entertainment incapable of providing an enriching and artistic experience. As the technology for sound, colour, and special effects began to emerge, the most talented artists in that industry began to utilize these tools in new ways to create something that is indisputably art. Sound familiar? Video games are following this exact pattern of development. We've gone from simple 8-bit graphics and midi-sound effects to being able to explore photo-realistic, immersive, living, breathing worlds. Now that the technology is there, the only real limit is the imagination of the game designers. All it took was a true masterpiece to come along to legitimize the entire medium. Films like Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane legitimized cinema, and now games like BioShock are doing the same for gaming. I guarantee you that in twenty years from now when the theory of video games is being taught at universities around the world much like film theory is taught today, BioShock will be one of the titles that will looked upon as a turning point for the entire medium.

But what is it about BioShock that makes it such a sublime masterpiece? A good place to start would be with the storyline. The year is 1960, and you begin the game in a seat on an airplane that is cruising over the Atlantic Ocean until something goes horribly wrong. Your plane plummets into the Ocean, and you come to amidst flaming wreckage of your former vessel. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, you see a lighthouse off in the distance that should spell salvation. Within the lighthouse you encounter a bathysphere that shoots you down to the underwater city of Rapture. While in the sphere a video starts playing in which Andrew Ryan, the man who built this city explains its reason for existing:

"Is not a man entitled to the sweat on 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.
I built Rapture with the sweat of my brow. With the sweat on your brow, Rapture can be your city as well."

In other words, Rapture's purpose was to be a place free of standard government, where the most brilliant minds and artists would be able to convene and create, having broken free from the chains of modern society. Sounds like a wonderful utopia does it not? Of course, like most cinematic utopias, something has gone terrifyingly wrong, turning the potential paradise into a dystopia of hellish proportions. It turns out that while all these brilliant minds were going about their work in this underwater city, they discovered a substance on the ocean floor called ADAM. Synthesized ADAM allows anyone who injects it to essentially rewrite their DNA to theoretically improve the human formula which took evolution millions of years to develop. The side effect to ADAM is that it causes nasty things such as insanity and death, and nearly everyone you encounter in Rapture has been completely transformed by this substance. BioShock's story is so deep and fulfilling mainly because it borrows rather liberally from classic dystrophic literature such as Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, and the like. George Orwell would be proud.