I’m getting a lot of hits on the compliation post I wrote about the influence of Ayn Rand on the great new game BioShock and some controversy, too. The disagreement isn’t about the total kick-assed-ness of the game, which isn’t in dispute. It’s philosophical, sort of
One commenter, Tom, left the following fairly odd comment.
The creator of the game, Ken Levine, has called it an “Objectivistshooter,†and said he based it on “Atlas Shrugged.†You’re giving outfalse and incorrect information when you claim differently–and when theinformation can be verified through basic websearches.
Huh? What false and incorrect information am I giving, exactly? The bulk of my orginal post is quotes from various other sources written before the game’s official release. I don’t even know what the hell an ‘Objectivist shooter’ is - unless it means a shooter style game where the story line is based in part on the work of Ayn Rand - which is exactly what my post said. It just sounds like a clever turn of phrase on Levine’s part.
I’m not just writing idly about this stuff. I was heavily involved with the Objectist movement about twenty-five years ago. I was at Ayn Rand’s funeral, I did the audio recording on one of Leonard Peikoff’s lecture series, I was student #2 at the first Objectivist run high school where well known Objectvist author Andrew Bernstein was my teacher, friend and dorm director. I know and understand the philosophy very well; I just don’t agree with large chunks of it any more and further,I think the cult that grew up and still exists around Ayn Rand is a very bad thing. Tom’s accusations remind me of that cultishness.
BioShock creator Ken Levine isn’t a spokesman for Objectivism, just someone influenced in part by the ideas and fiction of Ayn Rand. He changed the philosophy to suit his needs in the game. I’ll try to follow up in a future post with some specifics where the philosophy of Andrew Ryan shown in the game is Objectivist in some aspects, but clearly not at all Objectivist in others.
More importantly, Levine isn’t an Objectivist purist. A little simple internet research shows that. Here’s a quote from Ken Levine, in an email exchange with Andrew Russell from The Objectvist Center.
You mention that: “she was, in the strictest sense of the word, an empiricist”. It is where Rand is not an empiricist is where she starts to lose me. In the book of interviews with Rand , when any facts contradict her philosophy (the treatment by western expansionist of native americans, for example) she dismisses some pretty empirical facts as “leftist propaganda”. It’s when she abandons logic for slavish and unquestioning adherence to ideology is when I remember why Galt was a fictional character and Ayn Rand was flesh and blood.
Re: BioShock: Ayn Rand influences computer gaming - The Atlas Society Forums
That’s someone who agrees with some of Rand’s ideas and not with others, without an ideological agenda. In other words, freedom = good, killing Indians = bad. I’d call Levine an individualist - not an Objectivist - and I can think of no higher compliment.
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