I’m still thinking about Bioshock. I haven’t even played the game – I only watched it – yet it’s on my mind. Perhaps the critics were right: there’s something about this game that hits you on a deeper level.

Lately I’ve been wondering, how did Bioshock remain scary without anyone jumping out in the demo? It may be because of the frightening story of a utopia gone wrong, where little girls become soulless monsters and people brutally kill their best friends. Still, I can’t help thinking that it’s more than that.

In Bioshock, you are an outsider in the city, so you don’t really care about it, but the horror of the game still affects you on some level. The game encourages you to loot corpses. Many games do this, and it is probably essential to survival in many of those hypothetical plots, but does that make it right? The splicers are selfish beings who kill each other and are only out for themselves. If you loot corpses and kill splicers, you essentially become a splicer yourself.

When first entering the city of Rapture, there is a scene where one splicer attacks another. These attacks happen in front of you multiple times. I kept expecting there to be a “good” side and a “bad” side – like some sort of resistance. My friend informed me that the story of the game explains how the resistance has been defeated, making your situation more hopeless. However, I was surprised by the lack of a companion. Outside of the companion accessible through the radio, there is really no one checking in with you. No one in this game seems to be “on your side” – no one wants to help you get out alive unless they believe it will help them (like the radio guide).

These factors help to isolate you and make your situation all the more desperate. I keep thinking back to that scene where the splicer was drilled by the Big Daddy. The gore didn’t bother me, but the lack of emotion I felt did. Why didn’t I care about this city and the fact that people were tearing themselves apart? Why did I find myself laughing at the monstrous little girl when she said normal children’s words in a creepy voice?

It seems that games allow us to have an unnatural separation from the morals we use in daily life. Perhaps this is a motivation for some to play. I am personally shocked by the way in which I slip into this lax sense of morality. While watching my friend play Bioshock, I would ask him if he checked this or that corpse in the corner to make sure he raided all the items. I saw enemies like tasks on a to-list: kill him, kill her, and kill that one over there.

It is common to separate ourselves from the enemy in games, but does that make it right? People separate themselves from enemies in wars so they can kill them. We voluntarily play games against enemies that are very human in nature, from Germans in war games to zombies. I have no problem at all killing monsters in games, but killing people in the virtual space feels different. I have no problem with other people playing these games since the vast majority seems to have a strong distinction between reality and virtual worlds. However, I don’t like the part of myself that can human enemies like animals to slaughter, so it may be hard for me to ever have the desire to buy a game like Bioshock.