BioShock: Decision, Forced Choice and Propaganda

This is an excellent treatise but man, did it feel like the author felt the need to apologize for critiquing a video game every few pages. He makes excellent points about the role of Elizabeth as an emergent creation, the fact Bioshock can't separate itself from propaganda for all its supposed depth, and the fact much of Columbia's obvious racism hides more intelligent examples of it. The book, however, causally ignores and dismisses interesting arguments which would have enriched it. Effectively, the author takes a dismissive attitude to the Boshock critiques of Objectivism and American exceptionalism as shallow with the idea their propaganda is rather gross. Frankly, I would have enjoyed reaching that argument rather than taking it a statement of fact. I also feel Bioshock 2 deserved being analyzed as while not involving Kevin Levine, involved his partner and much of his team.

This definitely read like a graduate students' thesis. My graduate thesis was on something very similar, but I was hoping for a new take and a more digestible read. If you are looking for an academic POV of the theory behind aspects of the game, you'll enjoy this. If you are a fan hoping to get interesting insights, you'll likely just get bored.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this is a fan book glorifying the series. Its a smart, intelligent, book discussing the larger themes of the seres that also appear in society i thought it'd be dull but found it very intresting. If you want a fun fan book try 'Rapture', this is an academic perspective of thet series.

This contains some really interesting arguments about how the series models itself on the structures we build in reality. It's just a shame that the way the book is written and edited doesn't do those ideas any favours. Full of grammatical errors, repeated sentence fragments and awful paragraphing, I can only hope the printed version hasn't suffered the same fate. I found much of the book loquacious, to the point where this actually broke down the communication of ideas; unfortunately I feel like I've only managed to understand half of the book's argument as a consequence.