Article by GB Burford
Every conversation I ve ever heard about gameplay and story usually ends with gameplay winning out. When we play video games, we want good gameplay. It s a requirement. You don t need a story worthy of the Western Canon for a game like Dark Souls or Serious Sam. They re great because of their gameplay: that bundle of mechanics, feedback, and level design that sets video games apart from other media. But what happens when a game with bad or mediocre gameplay comes along and gets praised as one of the best video games ever made?
Bioshock is one such game. It s a classic. It s so well-liked that a sequel with different characters, gameplay, and setting was hugely anticipated and hyped to the moon and back. But… if you talk to most people about Bioshock today, they ll probably tell you that the gameplay wasn t that great. It wasn't what kept them playing. So why is Bioshock routinely cited as one of the greatest games of all time?
I think it s all about vulnerability. Conventional wisdom dictates that shooters are about empowerment, about players being the toughest guy in the room, but Bioshock was never a particularly good shooter, and it certainly didn t empower the player. Bioshock stuck with us because it made us vulnerable, not powerful.
Bad shootbangs
"Gameplay" can cover a lot of ground, but for Bioshock, it primarily means shooting. And when you have to use the omnipresent gun in your hand in Bioshock, the gameplay falters.
In a good shooter, enemies are diverse and fun to fight. They respond to being shot. They move around the map, encouraging you to do the same. Likewise, a good shooter has guns that sound and feel good to use. A huge number of factors influence gun feel, from how guns affect enemies (by making them stumble, for instance), to how they sound, to how they re animated. Bioshock s gunplay didn t live up to these standards.
Likewise, Bioshock s plasmids weren t as diverse or interesting as they could have been—many of them were merely the same element reskinned with slight, mostly meaningless differences. Good gunplay is like a roller coaster—the more varied the experience, the better it is. In order to have fun, players need to experience both tension and triumph. Without a proper balance between the two, the game becomes flat. A flat roller coaster isn t all that fun to ride, is it? At some point, it just becomes a really crappy train, and who wants to ride that?
It s not like Bioshock was all bad ideas, of course. Setting up arenas before fighting a Big Daddy was cool, as was turning turrets and security bots to your side. Crafting ammunition types with unique strengths or weaknesses was always a delight. But the vita chamber system robbed the player of vulnerability set up in the game s more successful mechanics. Shoot someone in the face, die, respawn, and now you ve got fewer enemies to deal with. With them, there s no risk or reward in Bioshock s combat: just keep chipping away at your foes until they re dead; your victory is as inevitable as nightfall. Vita chambers flatten the roller coaster; without vulnerability, the risk and reward that makes combat engaging is lost, but that s not all.
Turn them off, though, and Bioshock s combat falls in line with the game s quieter, more powerful moments, that window of gameplay that didn't involve shooting splicers. Suddenly, we re not completely safe.
The power of vulnerability
We loved Bioshock because it was tense—because we were vulnerable. It s that initial climb on the roller coaster. We know what s coming, we can see it up ahead, part of us dreading it and the other part impatiently waiting... and then it hits, time slows for an instant, and we rush downward in one thrilling moment. Vulnerability gives way to catharsis.
If we look back to classic shooters, the idea of vulnerability pops up a lot. From Half-Life to Aliens vs Predator, a lonely, vulnerable player overcoming the odds is a standard experience. By 2007, shooters had moved away from this, focusing more on a more heroic, unstoppable player.
But Bioshock was different. Bioshock was the spiritual sequel to System Shock 2.
Like Bioshock, System Shock 2 s combat was less than inspiring, but the game succeeded because of its emphasis on player vulnerability. It was a game about being a lone hacker facing off the mutant crew of a dying spaceship. System Shock 2 was tense and thrilling, a game well worth revisiting even now. Yes, it had shooting, but System Shock 2 wasn t a shooter. It was more of a sci-fi horror simulator.
When you beat a Big Daddy, you feel a rush because you just overcame the odds. You just did the impossible.
Both of these games thrived on vulnerability. It wasn t so much about shooting people as it was about being there, in the moment. Up until the would you kindly moment, Bioshock presented a world that still felt real, where you were just a guy with a wrench trying to survive against superpowered maniacs and walking tanks with father complexes.
Killing a Big Daddy is fun because Big Daddies are hard to kill. You ve got to set up traps, distract them with splicers, hack turrets to gain additional support, and make sure you ve got enough supplies to see an encounter through. It s the cars slowly rising up the hill, readying for the apex. Attacking the Big Daddy is like cresting the hill and rushing down it, a moment of furious ecstasy. When you beat a Big Daddy, you feel a rush because you just overcame the odds. You just did the impossible.
So, how do you create vulnerability?
The ingredients of vulnerability
A a designer, you should want your players to go: I don t know if I can make this,
Followed by: But I m going to try,
Which leads to Wow, I made it! I feel great!
Half-Life, for instance, shows you the tentacle monster and how scary it is, encourages you to get past it, and climaxes with this awesome moment where you torch it with a rocket engine.
Being alone is a great way to craft vulnerability. Think about how much scarier Predator is when there s no one to watch Arnold s back. He s out there, on his own, fighting this alien thing. The ultimate action hero, utterly outgunned.
Bioshock established vulnerability in a number of ways. The game s levels were dark, which is always nice and scary. Rapture was unfamiliar, and ominous signs and creepy sounds gave it a terrific ambiance. The splicers made Rapture feel like a city occupied by thousands of super-powered Jack Torrances. Much of the sense of vulnerability in Bioshock stemmed directly from its ambiance.
The open maps and planning-focused gameplay encouraged a cautious approach, especially where the tough and quick Big Daddies were concerned. The inventory system furthered the sense of vulnerability—Bioshock required scouring the environment for supplies, which meant that players could worry about not having enough of the right thing. In a game like Call of Duty, there's always ammunition to pick up; with Bioshock, there's a constant risk of running out. Ammunition types pushed this tension even further, introducing players to the worry that they might have plenty of ammo, but not the right type.
Bioshock used a bunch of little tensions to create one big sense of vulnerability. It sounded, looked, and felt threatening, and as a result, when we overcame a Big Daddy or a particularly nasty gaggle of splicers, we felt good about it. Modern shooters are focused on providing that sense of victory nonstop, but doing that robs victory of any meaning. With vulnerability, Bioshock gave its victories impact.
Consider Bioshock 2, a game which made the player a tough Big Daddy. Bioshock 2 improved on the combat, treated Rapture as if it was familiar, streamlined the world through linear progression, and removed the crafting and ammunition systems. It didn t stick with us quite as much, despite having a really well-written story, clever call-backs and responses to the choices in Bioshock. Bioshock 2 could be seen as a better shooter, even a better game than Bioshock, but because players weren t as vulnerable, their victories didn t matter quite so much.
It was always about vulnerability, and Infinite never made players feel vulnerable. 1999 Mode makes weak players, not vulnerable ones.
Then along comes Bioshock Infinite, which streamlines things even further. It gave us a new world to explore, which was a plus, and initial reception was immediately positive, but in the months after its release, players began expressing their displeasure. Bioshock Infinite hadn t learned the lessons of System Shock 2 and Bioshock. Rather than putting us in a new world, it merely showed it to us, keeping us at arms length.
It s why I think Irrational s attempt at 1999 Mode in Bioshock Infinite was so misguided. The 1999 seems to reference System Shock 2, but Infinite doesn t feel like System Shock 2 or even Bioshock. Those games make us feel vulnerable in order to give us a sense of triumph. Irrational seemed to think that the complaints that Bioshock had been dumbed down related to difficulty, but it s not about that. 1999 Mode makes weak players, not vulnerable. Vulnerability gives players long stretches where they worry about dying; it s the feeling you get when you re holding onto a rope that s fraying. Weakness is what you feel when you die a lot, as you re likely to do in 1999 Mode, given that your character has the constitution of wet tissue paper.
Rapture eternal
Victory has to feel earned rather than be an expected outcome. For shooters, providing players with a sense of vulnerability means that victories matter. Vulnerability adds weight and meaning to victory. A big flaw in recent shooter design has been the push towards power fantasy. Players become a Steven Seagal character, walking into a room, wrecking their foes with little thought or concern. Players have a lot more fun when they re playing as Bruce Willis in Die Hard or Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator. As players, we need the thrill that comes with earning our victories. We need to feel like what we did mattered.
When we walk away from an experience, what we have is the memory of the emotional roller coaster ride we went on. What sticks with us is how we felt about the game we played. For a game like Bioshock, vulnerability was a vital component, and Irrational built atop it as Rapture s unnerving foundation. I walked into rooms worrying about whether I had enough items to survive. I left them feeling like a champion. It was a journey I took, one I made happen.
That, more than gunplay or story, is what sticks with us. It s why we call Bioshock one of the best games ever made. We made memories down below the waves of Irrational s virtual ocean. In making us vulnerable, Irrational gave us a world.
