Game Theory: On Bioshock, violence, Potempkin and propaganda

Feature by Harvard L.

This is a long-form essay covering the three Bioshock games in the lens of art criticism. Spoilers abound. And, also, the focus on art criticism means there will be little assessment of how well the games are made or how fun they are to play, there is the review to look at for those opinions.

People familiar with film criticism might be familiar with Battleship Potemkin. It’s a 1925 silent propaganda movie directed by Sergei Eisenstein which depicts several episodes of Russian history in an attempt to stir up national identity and glorify revolutionary acts of violence. The director pioneered a variety of filmmaking techniques that persist in film theory to this day in order to ensure that the audience loved one side of the conflict and hated the other. Watching it today, it’s still possible to feel the impact. It’s violent, but in a shocking way; its scenes are stitched together with purpose, and it’s so carefully choreographed to elicit feeling. It’s a film which obsesses over what the audience feels at any given second – which is not something which can be said of modern filmmaking most of the time.

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