BioShocked

Lots of video game reviewers are touting the just-released FPS (first-person shooter) BioShock for game of the year honors for it’s trippy, original, eye-popping graphics and immersive underwater experience. Some of those reviewers are also commenting on how disturbing the game can be to play.

Wired Magazine’s Chris Kohler said this in his review (as quoted over at PluggedInOnline.com):

In my career as a gamer, I've racked up quite a virtual body count. And I've just taken down one more: Big Daddy, a hulking monster with a giant drill bit for an arm. I had to unload all my armor-piercing rounds into his body suit, and I barely escaped with my life. And now for my reward: a bioenhanced substance that will give me more superhuman powers. To claim it, all I've got to do is kill the thing the monster was protecting: a tiny little girl, known as a Little Sister, staring up at me with tear-filled eyes. Can I do it? Could you do it? She's not real. It's just a videogame. But that doesn't matter: I put her down and let her go free, forgoing my power upgrade so she can scamper away. It'll be that much harder to take down the next monster, but I feel better about myself.

As much as I admire his moral choice about not blasting away at an innocent-looking little girl, it raises all kinds of other questions for me about living by some kind of moral code in games like BioShock. If it “feels better” not to kill her, how about other unarmed humans in video games? How about intelligent alien/monster non-combatants? How about “bad” characters who have not (yet) attacked you? Does it make sense to draw those kinds of lines in the world of FPS games? Does a Christian worldview have any place when you suit up as a character in an unreal world?

I’m not much of a gamer these days, but it seems like a tricky issue to navigate. If you spend much time behind a control pad, I’d be curious to know what you think.