Video Games add another layer to storytelling. It’s not only audiovisual anymore, but also interactive. Interestingly, that quite obvious seeming fact was a long time overlooked. Only as Clint Hocking in his critique of Bioshock in 2007 pointed out what he coined “ludonarrative dissonance”, attention seems to have shifted on how the gameplay reflects the story being told.
Basically, the interaction or the gameplay refers to how the player can affect the game world and how the “word a.k.a. the game’s system is reacting to the player’s input.
The systems
In Bioshock the player interacts like with most games, with violence, killing everyone that’s in the way. The world is rewarding us players with resources and new weapons to reinforce the violence.
That is one system. Another are the Little Sisters. They carry a very rare and powerful resource with them and are protected by the Big Daddys. After killing a Big Daddy – because he was in the way – the player is left with the choice to harvest the Little Sister or to save them. Harvesting provides a lot of the rare resource, but kills the Little Sisters, while saving let’s them live, but gets the player relatively less of the resource. (Practically it doesn’t work that well, since the difference is too small and gets weighed up by the gifts one receives from the saved girls. But for here, let’s talk about the underlying idea.) Narratively, the choice has a consequence as well. If we save more girls than we harvest, we get a good ending, and a bad one, the other way around.
The narrative
Although maybe not intended when they started, Bioshock ended up being an exploration and critique of Randian objectivism – an ideology that embraces the maximization of self-interest with no regards of compromise or morality.
Rapture, the underwater city, where this game takes place in, is the project of one Andrew Ryan. Ryan is a devote believer in objectivism and wished for Rapture to be the place where everyone could pursue their self-interest with no restriction. By the time the game starts, this dream has long gone out of hand, for several reasons which are explored in the game.
The most important of those reasons is Frank Fontaine. He abused Ryan’s dream ruthlessly with criminal endeavours, while creating the illusion to be the helper of the weak, that are losing in Ryan’s system. Eventually Fontaine under the pseudonym of Atlas started a civil war and Rapture’s downfall accelerated.
The important thing to note here is, that the player has no choice in with whom they want to side. Ryan or Fontaine? As soon as we land in Rapture, a kid man named Atlas asks us for favours with which we comply as the game provides no alternative. Later in the game it is revealed that Atlas was Fontaine all along and that the character we play was brainwashed in his childhood to follow the phrase “Would you kindly”, which is why we followed Fontaine’s orders and killed Ryan.
Dissonance
This is where Clint Hocking sees the problem. He reads Bioshock as being about subscribing to objectivism and is disappointed that the system does not let him choose, since he understands the ideology being about free choice. While the question of choice is another huge topic in game design, I don’t think this is where the dissonance is found.
I disagree with this reading, but still think that there is some ludonarrative dissonance. The way I read it is that genuine compassion exists and therefore Rand’s whole ideology, which is mocking the supposed hypocrisy of helping institutions, is built on false grounds. However, with this read, the most prevalent system – killing enemies – speaks directly against that argument.
To be fair to Ken Levine, the director of Bioshock, I got to point out that originally, the game was not intended to have two endings, and he wanted to write one, more nuanced, more grey ending than a good and a bad one. But still then, the shooting seems to me like the default mechanic of gaming, on top of which Levine and his team built a story. The gameplay is not involved in telling the story. It’s just something the player gets to do between the story beats.
Harmony
Ken Levine seems to have put some thought in the criticism of dissonance. In Bioshock Infinite, his second game in the series, systems and narrative seem to be in great harmony with each other.
The playable character Booker de Witt is a gunslinging muscle to hire. Just like the protagonist in Bioshock, he lets the player interact with the world by killing everyone in his way. Only this time there is a narrative purpose to it.
Infinite is a tale of two Americas. The villain, Zachary Comstock represents the religious and exceptionalist tendencies of the U.S., while Booker represents the militaristic and cynically pragmatic side to it. At first glance both of them appear as saviours, albeit different kinds of saviours. Comstock claims to save society from depravity, Booker aims to save a girl named Elizabeth from a cult. Looking closer both of them act questionably. While Comstock rules tyrannically and oppresses dissent, Booker brings destruction and death wherever he goes.
Learning in a twist that Comstock and Booker are the same person speaks to the conflicting duality that the USA somehow makes work. The simple system of a First Person Shooter – thoughtless killing – is used to great effect to involve the player. We players think we are the hero of the story, until the villain draws attention to our actions. Eventually we learn that our thoughtless actions are just one side of the same coin, and we are part of the problem.