Dystopic Themes In Ken Levine's 'Bioshock Infinite'

Bioshock Infinite is a 2013 first-person shooter developed by Irrational Games, under the creative direction of Ken Levine, and published by 2K Games. It is the third and presumably final game in the dystopian Bioshock series, since the downsizing and rebranding of Irrational Games (now Ghost Story Games) following Bioshock Infinite. The main story is set in 1912 and begins with the playable character, Booker DeWitt, being rowed to a lighthouse off the coast of Maine by two unknown characters, a woman and a man. The pair give DeWitt a picture of a girl named Elizabeth and task him with going to Columbia retrieve her for them, incentivized by his debt being cleared: “Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt,” (Lighthouse, Bioshock Infinite).
According to Buinicki, Infinite highlights the dystopic qualities within the history of the U.S. to in its depiction of Columbia. One of the most apparent themes of Infinite is racism against all minority groups in an attempt to uphold white as being the superior race. Columbia seems like a paradise floating in the clouds when DeWitt first arrives and explores the city. This illusion shatters at the 1912 Raffle. DeWitt stands in front of the raffle drawing stage when a young woman approaches him with a basket full of baseballs with numbers painted on them. He picks a ball, number seventy-seven, and waits for the winner to be announced. The announcer, Fink, picks number seventy-seven as the winner of the first throw, and an interracial couple, a black woman and a white man, are revealed on stage. They are tied to a prop depicting a jungle with a caricature of a monkey as a wedding officiant and monkey guests, as seen in figure 1 below. As the couple begs for their lives, Fink jokes, “Come on, are you gonna throw it…or are you taking your coffee black these days?” (Bioshock Infinite). The player is given the choice to do nothing, throw the ball at the couple, or throw the ball at Fink. (Despite the choice you make, an officer will grab your hand before you do anything.) This instance is the first glimpse of
Developers, in addition to making an enjoyable game to play, may take certain themes and ideas and relate them through a games plot or gameplay to critically engage the player. The Bioshock series has masterfully used its platform to engage the player in topics such as free will and morality, physical augmentation and eugenics, racism and classism, religion and government control, and quantum mechanics and multiple realities. I know many people do not appreciate when developers go into certain sensitive topics, especially race and religion, but I think that games can allow people to see how extreme we can get as a society. Bioshock Infinite engages the player to look back at U.S. history, albeit a radical/extremist amalgamation of it. It provides a way to experience racism, religious zealots, and extreme nationalism, among other things, and to see their faults and effects on society. It is easy for citizens of the U.S. to get ourselves stuck in our own bubble and not consider other peoples’ points of view. For example, Comstock constantly manipulates Christianity in ways that would legitimize his immoral ideas and treatment of minorities. I think video games like Bioshock Infinite will be an important way to expose the younger generations to other viewpoints and history that they may otherwise not otherwise experience