A Commentary On Violence, Race, And Choice In ‘BioShock Infinite’

On Choice

We get very few clear opportunities to make choices in Infinite, where the game holds up a sign and says “pick one.” Probably the most controversial is one that brings both of these ideas together: the interracial couple on the stage, where the player can choose to chuck the ball at the couple or at the announcer on stage. The situation presents a complex moral and practical choice to the player: throw the ball at the couple and be a racist but hopefully preserve your cover, or throw the ball at the announcer and do the “right” thing but be exposed. One of the comments in the Golding article mentions a third option: do neither. Just wait and make no choice whatsoever. It isn’t an obvious choice, but it is there. This idea of the third option is so integral to the game that Infinite ends on it: be baptized, don’t be baptized, or solve the whole problem by drowning in the water. It’s there just as clearly (and opaquely) as the choice not to play the game is there–the active choice of passivity, of engaging in the action of inaction.

This brings me full-circle to the idea of player agency and the meaningfulness of choice in BioShock Infinite and, indeed, gaming writ large. We have a choice as to whether we expose ourselves to these ideas or not, and whether we make ourselves complicit in them or not. By choosing to play a game, we are in some way choosing to endorse the ideas in that game. How can we decry racism when we choose to play racist games? How can we decry violence in gaming when we choose to play games that are violent? When we’re called out on our hypocrisy, how can we have the nerve to say that it isn’t our choice when violent, subtly racist games are the ones selling millions upon millions of copies and getting the most exposure and press? Infinite isn’t just a reflection on past American culture, but a severe challenge to the present culture in gaming and how we choose to spend our time, energy, and money.

Of all the articles I’ve read and perspectives I’ve seen, the purest and clearest of all of them seems to come from Plante’s wife. She was exposed to the content, found it repulsive, and so (it’s implied) she chose not to engage with it. This simple action is foreign to most of us raised with games, who (starting with Mortal Kombat and moving upwards and onwards from there) have been exposed to gore, violence, and unspeakably vile actions and behaviors for decades and have simply accepted them as an inevitability in our medium, if we haven’t outright sought them out. The fact is, by engaging with these games, and spending our hard-earned money on them, we’re complicit with their content. Infinite exists to tell you, at the end of all, no matter how many times its been done before and repeated and seemingly built into the very fabric of us, that you have a choice.

All that said. the next person to tell me that video games can’t be art gets a hook to the face.