Rethinking Ludonarrative Dissonance in BioShock

Abstract

This article critically appraises Clint Hocking's seminal blog post, “Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock.” In doing so, it aims to provide clarity on ludonarrative dissonance: a concept that has been widely utilised yet under-theorised since its inception. First, the article reviews contesting notions of ludonarrative dissonance before establishing a game-centred, rather than a player-centred, understanding of the term. Then, by expanding on Hocking's brief reading of the acclaimed 2007 video game, BioShock, the article challenges the common assumption that certain aspects of this game's ludic and narrative properties are in flux. Finally, the article advocates moving away from Hocking's perception of ludonarrative dissonance as a design flaw in video games; embracing the concept from the point of view of the researcher and video game developer as a signifier of ideological tensions and a rhetorical device.

Introduction

The term ludonarrative dissonance first appeared in a blog post that was published on October 7, 2007, by video game designer Clint Hocking. In response to a perceived lack of critical engagement with video games (as opposed to reviews concerning whether they were worth purchasing), Hocking's blog post aimed to shed light on the ideological underpinnings of Ken Levine's BioShock (2K Boston, 2007). An outstanding commercial success, this Xbox 360 and PC game received immensely positive feedback from the gaming community upon its release. This was due to BioShock's variety of combat options (Onyett, 2007), its expansive fictional world (Gerstmann, 2007), and its inclusion of morally loaded choices for players to make (Graziani, 2007). The praise bestowed upon BioShock ensured its status as a prestige game: “a special class of AAA game that is expected to excel commercially but has distinction from other popular favorites and best sellers by grace of its supposed artistic quality and canonical status” (Parker, 2017, p. 740). Yet, according to Hocking, BioShock suffered from a significant flaw. Namely, ludonarrative dissonance, which Hocking described in relation to BioShock as “a powerful dissonance between what [a video game] is about as a game, and what it is about as a story” (2007).

Since the publication of Hocking's blog post, ludonarrative dissonance has become a commonly referenced yet under-theorised term in video game journalism and scholarship. Thus, this article begins with an overview of contesting notions of ludonarrative dissonance, which it then uses to establish a game-centred, rather than a player-centred, understanding of the term. Following this, the article expands upon and challenges Hocking's claim that certain ludic and narrative properties in BioShock contradict one another. Hence, the article argues that although Hocking's concept of ludonarrative dissonance is valuable due to its usefulness in untangling contradictory ideological threads within video games, his application of this concept to BioShock is unrefined. Finally, the article advocates moving away from Hocking's perception of ludonarrative dissonance as a design flaw in video games. On the contrary, it argues that ludonarrative dissonance can be embraced from the point of view of both the researcher and video game developer as a signifier of ideological tensions and a rhetorical device.

Theorising Ludonarrative Dissonance

The term ludonarrative dissonance does not appear at all in the main body of Hocking's 2007 blog post, “Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock.” Rather, it appears exclusively in the title of Hocking's work. As such, Hocking does not explicitly define ludonarrative dissonance in his blog post. However, a definition of the concept can be inferred from his criticism of BioShock, wherein he notes a clash between the implications of this game's ludic elements and those of its narrative elements. According to Hocking, this clash – the ludonarrative dissonance he alludes to – undermines “the player's ability to feel connected to either [BioShock's gameplay or narrative]” (2007). What is more, Hocking claims that the frustration he felt due to this dissonance was so great that he nearly stopped playing BioShock entirely.

Restating the crux of Hocking's blog post, Makedonski states that ludonarrative dissonance refers to “the idea that when a game tells the player one thing through its story and environment, and then contradicts it though gameplay, the player becomes unimmersed [sic] and disconnected from the experience to a degree” (2012). Ludonarrative dissonance can thereby be thought of as the impairment of the player's suspension of disbelief, due to conflicting meanings arising from the ludic and narrative properties of a game. This idea is expanded upon by Seraphine, who argues that ludonarrative dissonance can instil a sense of emersion in players. That is, it can give players “the sensation of being pulled out of the play experience” (2016, p. 2). In Seraphine's work, ludonarrative dissonance is positioned as the antithesis to immersion, which Murray defines as “the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality […] that takes over all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus” (1997, p. 98). Likewise, Howe compares ludonarrative dissonance to being “thrown out of [a] game” (2017, p. 44) due to its conflicting ludic and narrative elements, while Dennin and Burton associate ludonarrative dissonance with “breaking the player's immersion in the game” to the point where they “[want] to quit playing” (2023).

Hocking does not go into detail on the narrative and ludic elements of video games that may contradict each other to cause emersion, and thereby ludonarrative dissonance. Although, he does comment on two potentially contradictory contracts that players implicitly agree to when playing video games. He calls these the ludic contract and the narrative contract. In relation to BioShock, Hocking proposes that the ludic contract encourages the player to seek power through gameplay choices to complete the game, while the narrative contract encourages the avatar to aid a supporting character to complete the game. Therefore, it can be deduced that the ludic and narrative elements of video games Hocking alludes to coincide with what Malliet (2007) describes as elements of simulation and elements of representation. On the former, such elements include the complexity of controls, game goals, character and object structures (customisation options and item usages), balance between user input and pre-programmed rules (what the player can do within the permit of the game system), and spatial properties of the game world (the affordances of video game landscapes). On the latter, such elements include audiovisual style and narration; for example, the graphical mise-en-scène of a video game (Jenkins, 2004, p. 126), as well as the story information derived from its cutscenes, character dialogue and in-game notes.

Ludonarrative Dissonance and Emersion

The way Hocking alludes to ludonarrative dissonance, and the way academics have since theorised this concept, is player-centred rather than game-centred. Ludonarrative dissonance is often presented as less of an observation of a clash between the meanings inferred from a game's ludic and narrative elements and more of a negative feeling that arises from this (perceived) observation. This is the case in Dennin and Burton's (2023) account of playing The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog, 2020), a post-apocalyptic video game in which players control the avatars Ellie and Abby. On their playthrough of this game, Dennin and Burton state the following:

As Abby, we had to chase down and attack Ellie, in an attempt to kill her. When Kimberly [Dennin] realized that she had to fight Ellie, she stopped playing as Abby. She instead stated that she could not attack Ellie, so what was she supposed to do in this part? Even after accepting that she had to attack Ellie to progress through the game, Kimberly died multiple times (as Abby) and expressed intense dissatisfaction with having to play through this part. Given that Kimberly went so far as to stop playing to grapple with what the game was asking, we found this to be a striking moment of ludonarrative dissonance. (2023)

Despite featuring multiple avatars, The Last of Us Part II can be seen as “Ellie's story” because Ellie is a prominent character in this game's predecessor, The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013). When Ellie's guardian, Joel, is murdered by Abby in the second game, the narrative driving force behind Ellie's gameplay segments becomes actualising her “thirst for revenge [and] retribution” (Druckmann, cited in McKeand, 2020). Therefore, when the tables are turned and the player is directed to kill Ellie while playing as Abby, it is understandable that some players may feel conflicted about this. Yet, it is problematic to label feelings of conflict – or even outright discomfort to the point of not wanting to continue playing the game – ludonarrative dissonance.

For Hocking, ludonarrative dissonance appeared to be discomfort (emersion) caused by contradictions in the ludic and narrative qualities of a video game. In the example presented above, there are no such contradictions. While it is true that The Last of Us Part II can be viewed as the continuing story of Ellie's story of survival, it makes sense that during Abby's segments of the game the player is directed to kill Ellie (and vice versa). What Dennin and Burton describe above is a video game directing a player to do something that they may not want to do, which plays exactly into the themes of The Last of Us Part II: a game that invites players “to see revenge from two sides” (Druckmann, cited in Dornbush, 2020).

Speaking on the questions raised in The Last of Us Part II, the game's director Neil Druckmann asks the following:

Can we make you hate someone to such a degree that you want to hurt them in really horrible ways for what they’ve done to you? And then all of a sudden make you play as them and, the challenge was, can we get you to empathize? (cited in Dornbush, 2020)

With regard to the gameplay described in the work of Dennin and Burton (2023), the answer to the latter question may be a resounding no, especially as they later went on to “throw Abby off a cliff a few times” to satisfy their disliking of the avatar. ¹ However, a lack of enjoyment while playing a video game does not necessarily equate to ludonarrative dissonance, as emersion and ludonarrative dissonance are not synonymous.

Despite the subjective nature of Hocking's blog post, it is worth adopting the viewpoint that “ludonarrative dissonance isn’t about your beliefs, it's about the [game] system's imposed beliefs [emphasis in original]” (Ballantyne, 2015). With this in mind, the experiences of Dennin and Burton while playing The Last of Us Part II seem to exemplify what Seraphine calls avatar bias rather than ludonarrative dissonance. Avatar bias is “the assumption that a controllable character in a videogame always has to be considered as the [representative] of the player” (Seraphine, 2016, p. 4). For Seraphine, this is a prominent issue in Hocking's account of BioShock, which is explored in subsequent sections of this article. Cautioning against false claims of ludonarrative dissonance, Seraphine advises that:

Before diagnosing ludonarrative dissonance in a game, one should maybe ask if the ludonarrative dissonance would still be there once the alterity of the controlled character is accepted by the player. If it disappears, it might mean that we were rather facing cognitive dissonance instead. (2016, p. 4)

As such, it is important to remember that video game avatars can have different (perhaps even oppositional) motivations to the players controlling them. Accordingly, when Dennin did not want to materialise Abby's desire to kill Ellie, this was a dissonance between Dennin's wants and the wants of Abby rather than a dissonance between the ludic and narrative elements of The Last of Us Part II.

Ludonarrative Dissonance and Abstraction

According to Makedonski, ludonarrative dissonance is “a sensation that undermines every gaming experience, whether we’re actively aware of it or not” (2012). This raises questions regarding the necessity of emersion as a caveat for ludonarrative dissonance. If players can be unaware of contradictions between a game's ludic and narrative elements, or simply not care about them, does this mean that ludonarrative dissonance ceases to be? Discrepancies between gameplay and narrative do not always pull players out of their gaming experiences. For instance, when playing Resident Evil (Capcom, 1996), avatars Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield can be bitten by zombies and appear to lose copious amounts of blood when this happens. Yet, both characters can repeatedly withstand these assaults without acquiring permanent injuries, even though they are presented as regular human beings in the game's narrative and its accompanying paratextual materials. ² Furthermore, despite the implied infectiousness of zombies in Resident Evil – which are revealed to be carriers of a virus called the T-virus – neither Jill or Chris show signs of infection after being attacked by undead humans, crows, dogs, sharks, and other genetically modified monstrosities. Certainly, these contradictions exemplify clashes between the ludic and narrative elements of Resident Evil, but these clashes do not necessarily lead to emersion in the game's players. On a personal note, as somebody who has completed Resident Evil several times, I am aware of these clashes, but I am simply not bothered by them.

It is perhaps a necessity for video game players to suspend their disbelief and to accept that the fictionalised worlds of video games and the rule-based patterns of behaviour these games facilitate are not always in sync. Indeed, most video games appear to have a level of abstraction, a concept that is explained by Juul (2007) in the following extract:

If we assume the perspective that games have two complementary elements of rules and fiction, all content in a game can either be purely fictional and not implemented in the rules (such as in the case of a game's back story), purely rules and unexplained by the fiction (such as the multiple lives of a player), or in the zone in between, where the rules of the game are motivated by the game's fiction (cars that can drive, birds that can fly, etc.). […] The level of abstraction concerns the border between the content that is purely fictional and the content that is presented in the fiction as well as implemented in the rules of a game. [emphasis in original]

Thus, considering Resident Evil as a zombie simulation that is modelled after modern zombie films, Weise (2009) argues that the expectations of zombie fictions established by films may not always be met in their translation to video games. For example, doors in Resident Evil are “magical safe zones” (Weise, 2009, p. 255) at which players can escape the grasps of the undead at a moment's notice. By clicking on a door, the player is transported to a loading screen depicting the avatar (from an abstracted first-person perspective) calmly opening it and entering another room. As a result, “the ‘shrinking fortress’ concept so central to zombie films [became] difficult to express [in Resident Evil]” (Weise, 2009, p. 255). Moreover, the safety of doorways in this game is illogical. From a simulated (ludic) perspective, zombies should be able to grab Jill or Chris as they try to enter another room; yet, from a fictional (narrative) perspective, the avatars avoid such attacks.

In a sense, ludonarrative dissonance is to be expected in video games, which often require players to accept levels of abstraction (and subsequently ludonarrative dissonance) to facilitate gameplay. This is not to say that ludonarrative dissonance and abstraction are synonymous, but ludonarrative dissonance can reside within a game's level of abstraction. With Resident Evil, ludonarrative dissonance appears on a literal level. Gameplay dictates that zombies should grab avatars as they move through doorways, but the narrative refutes this. Alternatively, the narrative indicates that zombies are infections, but the gameplay refutes this. These are surface-level contradictions existing on the level of denotation; they are easily dismissed by players to facilitate gameplay. However, where such contradictions exist on the level of connotation, they may not be so easy to overcome.

Ludonarrative Dissonance and Ideology

In his description of ludonarrative dissonance in BioShock, Hocking does not simply address literal contradictions between the game's ludic and narrative contracts; for example, if the game was to necessitate killing during gameplay and portray the avatar as a pacifist during cutscenes, this would be a literal contradiction. Instead, Hocking addresses the ideological contradictions between these contracts. Hence, when he makes claims relating to what BioShock “is about as a game, and what it is about as a story” (2007), he argues for a disconnect between the meaning of this game's elements of simulation and its elements of representation. For Hocking, BioShock is a video game with paradoxical values stemming from what Pérez-Latorre et al. (2016) would refer to as the semiotic resources located within its ludo-narrative dimension (which aligns with Hocking's ludic contract) and its audiovisual narrative dimension (which aligns with Hocking's narrative contract).

As ludonarrative dissonance can be rooted within the meaning of video games, it requires interpretative work on the part of the player to be recognised and understood. As stated by Treanor et al., claims about the meaning of video games “necessarily involves making generalizations and interpretations about what is observed” (2011, p. 118). Accordingly, when a player perceives ludonarrative dissonance, they are effectively producing what Fernández-Vara (2019) calls an interpretative analysis of the video game they are playing. However, this does not mean that players can reasonably arrive at any conclusion with regards to the covert and/or overt meaning(s) of a video game. As Fernández-Vara asserts, “interpretation is not just your opinion” (2019, p. 240). Instead, it is an action that should be grounded within the contexts of the video game being played – particularly if a video game is to be read as making a commentary on socio-political, cultural, and historical concepts and events (Fernández-Vara, 2019, pp. 240–244). Indeed, arguments on the meaning of video games can be undermined or discredited with empirical evidence, as is demonstrated in the following sections of this article with regards to Hocking's reading of BioShock.

In summary, ludonarrative dissonance is best perceived as a “disconnect between what the narrative [of a video game] says, and what the gameplay directs” (Dunne, 2014, p. 3) and not “a dissonance between the player's self-narrative and the game's narrative” (Grabarczyk & Walther, 2022, p. 10). In other words, it is useful to understand ludonarrative dissonance as something that is game-centred, rather player-centred; something that emerges through the varied meanings inferred by a game's ludic and narrative properties This may not make ludonarrative dissonance an objective phenomenon, but it does make it less subjective in the sense that it ceases to rely on feelings of emersion in players. Moreover, it should be noted that ludonarrative dissonance cannot strictly be thought of as a flaw in video game design. Instead, it should be recognised as something which players can manifest voluntarily, as in Abby's demise at the hands of Dennin in The Last of Us Part II, and something that can facilitate ideological tensions within video games, whether these tensions be a deliberate part of game design or not.

BioShock and Ideology: Rapture, Ryan, and Rand

Hocking (2007) initially envisioned ludonarrative dissonance as bound to his own sense of emersion while playing BioShock and deemed it to be a flaw in this game's design. Not only is this problematic for the wider application of his concept to other video games, as shown above, but also for his critique of BioShock. Indeed, Hocking's claims regarding BioShock can be undermined by a more in-depth examination of the Randian philosophy underpinning this game, as well as the game's inclusion of narrative repercussions to the player's in-game choices.

In BioShock, the player controls a man named Jack as he traverses Rapture: a retro-futuristic, underwater city located somewhere in the Atlantic. Rapture was founded by the eccentric businessman, Andrew Ryan, who intended the city to be a laissez-faire capitalist utopia: “A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small” (2K Boston, 2007). However, the city descended into chaos when a civil war broke out between Ryan and Frank Fontaine: a power-hungry criminal and entrepreneur. Adding to the pandemonium, demand for a gene-altering substance called ADAM increased exponentially during the civil war. Initially, Rapture's citizens consumed ADAM through Plasmids: body-altering, commercial serums that grant people fantastic abilities, such as telekinesis and elemental powers: shooting fire from one's hands, for example. However, prolonged and excessive use of Plasmids caused people to become addicted to ADAM and consequently seek it out in its purest form. Those suffering from ADAM addiction experienced physical and mental deterioration, transforming into hostile monstrosities known as “splicers.” Thus, with a civil war, rampant ADAM addiction, and mutated citizens, Ryan's utopian vision of Rapture was proven to be illusory as the underwater city became a dystopian hellscape.

BioShock's avatar, Jack, stumbles across several characters throughout Rapture. Most significantly, a man named Atlas and many young girls called Little Sisters. Atlas serves as Jack's guide for a large portion of the game, giving him tasks to fulfil via a portable radio; these tasks include finding Atlas's family and, later, killing Ryan. Little Sisters are genetically modified children who have been mentally conditioned to gather ADAM, which they take from the corpses of splicers using large syringes. Guarded by bio-mechanical behemoths known as Big Daddies (which resemble large men in deep sea diving suits), Little Sisters fulfil their tasks in a blissful state of delusion, perceiving the corpses scattered around Rapture as “angels.” Due to their possession of ADAM, the zombified children are highly sought after by regular humans and splicers. Evidencing this, during Jack's first encounter with a Little Sister he is encouraged by Atlas to drain the child of her ADAM in a process that will kill her.

Before Jack decides whether to drain the Little Sister of her ADAM (a choice that is given to the player), a woman named Brigid Tenenbaum offers an alternative solution, wherein he can save the child. Saving her still grants Jack ADAM, albeit on a reduced scale; half the amount of ADAM is earned than if the girl was killed. Furthermore, Tenenbaum offers future rewards for players who choose to show mercy to Little Sisters. These are later revealed to be packages of ADAM: one for every three Little Sisters saved. Overall, there are twenty-one Little Sisters in BioShock, which the player can decide to either “harvest” or “rescue.” As Eichner points out, each meeting with a Little Sister “demands a moral decision from the player” (2016, p. 181), who must choose between compassion for the unfortunate children and the pursuit of power via obtaining the maximum amount of ADAM, which serves as an in-game currency through which to purchase power-ups.

BioShock is typically viewed as a critique of a philosophical system proposed by Ayn Rand (1905–1982) called Objectivism (Hocking, 2007; Packer, 2010; Pereira, 2023; Schubert, 2015). However, while Objectivism can be seen as having strong connections to metaphysics, epistemology, morality/ethics, and politics, it “is neither easily defined nor well understood” (Dent et al., 2018, p. 2). As Schubert points out, some key principles of Rand's philosophical system are “a belief in rational self-interest, that is, in pursuit of one's own happiness, and in the importance of individualism and individual choice” (2015, p. 276). Moreover, from a governmental standpoint, Rand proposed that the only way her principles can be realised is through the implementation of unadulterated capitalism: a possibility Rand explored in Atlas Shrugged (1957). In this novel, Rand imagines the fictional hideaway, Galt's Gulch, wherein the worlds brightest – “a corps of elite capitalist-geniuses” (Clardy, 2012, p. 238) – shield themselves from the global collapse of civilisation caused by “the inept machinations of collectivist looters” (Clardy, 2012, p. 238). Galt's Gulch is “a complete laissez faire capitalist society where economic exchange and local custom mediate all interactions” (Packer, 2010, p. 213) to the point where even the “use of the word (and behavior) give is prohibited” (Clardy, 2012, p. 242). For Rand, Galt's Gulch is a utopian vision wherein “men live and work together in perfect harmony [without experiencing interference from, or having to make payments to, an appointed state]” (Clardy, 2012, p. 243). Indeed, “Levine's vision of [BioShock's] Rapture […] is founded on the same objectivist principles as Galt's Gulch, with radically different results” (Packer, 2010, p. 213).

Ultimately, Rand's philosophy is opposed to altruism. As Sheehy states, “By her standard, rational self-interest is the only correct, ethical stance. To look out for the interests of anyone else is unethical” (2004, p. 231). Yet, while Rand's philosophy can be read as selfish, it does not condone the use of harm. As Stobbart asserts, reading the harvesting of Little Sisters in BioShock as an Objectivist gameplay choice is problematic as one of the “Randian tenets of Objectivism […] is that self-interest of the individual should not harm another human” (2019, p. 91). However, by embodying Rand's principles to the extreme in character dialogue, Rapture's architecture (which features banners stating that “Altruism is the root of all wickedness”), and the ideals of the underwater city's egotistical creator, BioShock still manages to ironically subvert these principles (Schubert, 2015, pp. 276–279). In fact, the chaotic and dilapidated state of Rapture can be read as satirical in the sense that it sardonically alludes to the fact that “the utopia it was meant to be was unsustainable over a prolonged period of time” (Schulzke, 2014, p. 326). Truly, the ruinous aesthetic of the underwater city signifies more than the decline of its own structural integrity, but also that of “the ideology on which it was formed” (Watts, 2011, p. 254). After all, a common technique of satire is exaggeration (Feinberg, 1967, pp. 105–119; Gilmore, 2018, p. 12).

Hocking's Critique of BioShock

For Hocking, BioShock's ludonarrative dissonance is directly tied to its purported commentary on Randian Objectivism. This commentary proposes that “the notion that rational self-interest is moral or good is a trap, and that the ‘power’ we derive from complete and unchecked freedom necessarily corrupts, and ultimately destroys us” (2007). Although, Hocking claims that this message is inconsistent due to the player's implicit adherence to the game's contrasting ludic and narrative contracts. The ludic contract is summarised as “seek power and you will progress” (Hocking, 2007) and is evidenced by the player's choice to harvest Little Sisters rather than rescue them: a decidedly (yet exaggeratedly) Objectivist approach to gameplay. The narrative contract is summarised as “help Atlas and you will progress” (Hocking, 2007) and is evidenced by Jack's unwavering alliance with Atlas from the start of the game: a perceivably altruistic narrative development. For Hocking, there are three key issues with the narrative contract. First, aiding another person does not align with Rand's ideas of rational self-interest. Second, acceptance of the game's mechanics aligns Jack and the player with Ryan rather than Atlas, raising the question of why either Jack or the player should oppose the former and listen to the latter. Third, given the issues stated above, the player cannot choose where their allegiances lie in a narrative sense; they must comply with the commands of Atlas and cannot choose to side with Ryan.

Essentially, Hocking explains his dissatisfaction with BioShock as follows:

In the game's mechanics, I am offered the freedom to choose to adopt an Objectivist approach […] Yet in the game's fiction on the other hand, I do not have that freedom to choose between helping Atlas or not […] if I accept to adopt an Objectivist approach, I can harvest Little Sisters. If I reject that approach, I can rescue them. Under the story, if I reject an Objectivist approach, I can help Atlas and oppose Ryan, and if I choose to adopt an Objectivist approach – well too bad… I can stop playing the game, but that's about it. (2007)

Therefore, the main issue that Hocking sees in BioShock is the game's lack of choice over how the game's narrative unfolds. As Murphy observes, “[i]nstead of criticizing the mechanics for not matching the story, he attacks the story for not matching the mechanics” (Murphy, 2016, p. 4). This seems like an unusual choice given that Hocking's overview of BioShock presented the game as “a criticism of Randian Objectivism” (2007), which implies that the game's problematic elements stem from its gameplay, which allows players to adopt the ideals that the game appears to critique. Perhaps more importantly, though, the problems Hocking observes with the narrative elements of BioShock can be dismissed with closer inspection.

A major twist occurs in BioShock in the latter half of the game wherein it is revealed that Atlas is really Ryan's rival, Fontaine. Adding to this, Atlas/Fontaine then discloses that before the events of the game began the avatar had been “genetically conditioned to bark like a cocker spaniel whenever [he says] ‘Would you kindly’ [before verbalising a command].” Hence, Jack was always predisposed to follow Atlas/Fontaine's commands after the latter uttered the triggering phrase. This is conveyed most dramatically when Jack finally comes face to face with Ryan. During this meeting, Jack bludgeons Ryan to death with a golf glub in a cutscene – without the input of the player at all. Therefore, the game suggests that just as the agency of Jack has been an illusion so too has the agency of the player, who has also been faithfully following Atlas/Fontaine's implicit commands for a large portion of the game.

The scene in which Ryan dies at the hands of Jack and the revelation of Atlas/Fontaine's power over the avatar (and player) of BioShock have been widely read as metatextual commentaries that challenge the notion of player agency in video games (Aldred & Greenspan, 2011; Schubert, 2015; Wysocki & Schandler, 2013). Yet, for Hocking, these aspects of BioShock are purely insulting: a mockery of players who have invested a great deal of time playing the game. However, despite their offensive potential, these narrative developments in BioShock undermine Hocking's claims of ludonarrative dissonance because they resolve the alleged trio of inconsistencies that he highlights with regards to the game.

The first issue that Hocking pointed out with BioShock is that aiding another person does not align with Rand's ideas of rational self-interest. This may be the case, but it makes sense that Jack would not deviate from the commands of Atlas/Fontaine given his backstory. Thus, even if players opt for an Objectivist playthrough by harvesting Little Sisters, the gameplay and narrative exist in harmony when Jack follows the direction of Atlas/Fontaine given the context of Jack's condition. Moreover, it is also worth noting the difference here between the macro and micro narratives at play in BioShock. On the macro scale, the game may strive for a critique of Randian Objectivism with its vast fictional world, which consists of many characters and places with their own histories and lore. On the micro scale, the game revolves around a single character, Jack, as he navigates Rapture. As such, although players experience the world of BioShock from Jack's perspective, he is just one part of a larger whole: a single drop in a vast ocean. Thus, perceived inconsistencies with his character do not necessarily undermine the wider message of the game.

The second issue that Hocking pointed out with BioShock is that its game mechanics align Jack and the player with Ryan rather than Atlas/Fontaine, despite Jack and the player being inclined to assist the latter. The implication here is that Ryan and Atlas/Fontaine are contrasting characters, which is not the case. Atlas/Fontaine is certainly not the altruism to Ryan's Objectivism. In fact, this is foregrounded early in the game when Atlas/Fontaine tries to emotionally manipulate Jack (and the player) into harvesting the first Little Sister he encounters: “Listen to me, boyo: you won’t survive without the Adam those… things… are carrying. Are you prepared to trade your life, the lives of my wife and child, for Tannenbaum's little Frankenstiens?” In addition, if the player chooses to rescue the girl (thereby proving that the Little Sisters can be reverted to their pre-monstrous states), Atlas/Fontaine refuses to alter his stance after deriding Jack, stating that Little Sisters “may look like wee little girls, but looks don’t make it so.” Therefore, the choice to harvest Little Sisters aligns players with the values of both Ryan and Atlas/Fontaine, who are essentially two sides of the same coin. Finally, the third issue Hocking mentions is that the player cannot choose to ignore Atlas/Fontaine and side with Ryan. Again, the narrative developments in BioShock described above justify why this is the case.

Hocking's criticism of BioShock is superficial given that the alleged ludonarrative dissonance he highlights is easily contestable. Furthermore, Hocking's implicit claim that BioShock has no variety when it comes to its story elements is false given that the game has three different endings. Each of these endings is based on how the player interacts with the Little Sisters. To get the Good Ending, players must rescue all of the Little Sisters. To get the Sad Ending, players must rescue and harvest some of the Little Sisters. To get the Bad Ending, players must harvest all of the Little Sisters. In the Good Ending, Jack returns to the surface with the rescued Little Sisters and gives them a chance to live their lives fully. In both the Sad Ending and the Bad Ending, Jack succeeds Ryan and Atlas/Fontaine as Rapture's newest tyrant before setting his sights on world domination. Each ending is accompanied by voice-over narration from Tannenbaum, who sounds hopeful in the Good Ending, melancholy in the Sad Ending, and angry in the Bad Ending: her words are the same in the latter two endings, only her tone changes. Consequently, BioShock's players may not have the opportunity to side with Ryan at the beginning of the game and may even feel undermined by the game's exposure of the fallacy of autonomy in gaming, but they do get to choose between playing the game in a selfish or compassionate manner by harvesting or rescuing Little Sisters: a choice that has substantial narrative repercussions.

BioShock and Ludonarrative Dissonance

As alluded to earlier, the ludonarrative dissonance Hocking perceives in BioShock appears to be the result of avatar bias (Seraphine, 2016). Accordingly, the conflict Hocking describes in BioShock is not between the game's ludic and narrative elements, it is between what Jack is directed to do and what Hocking wants Jack to do. This is further emphasised by Hocking's repeated use of the first-person pronoun “I” when describing the actions of Jack, showing a conflation between himself and the game's avatar (Seraphine, 2016, p. 4). Although just because certain observations made by Hocking can be falsified, this does not mean BioShock lacks ludonarrative dissonance. On the contrary, ludonarrative dissonance can occur in BioShock during a late-game sequence of gameplay wherein Jack must protect one or more of the Little Sisters.

Toward the end of BioShock, Jack is tasked with escorting Little Sisters through several corridors to reach Atlas/Fontaine, who resides behind a series of doors that can only be opened by the girls. Tannenbaum advise Jack to “be gentle with the girls,” who appear one at a time. A golden health bar appears on the game interface at this point, signifying the present girl's health points. Typically, Little Sisters are invulnerable to damage (save for the harvesting process). However, those appearing in this escort mission appear to have been freed from their zombified states and reverted to their human forms. Hence, they can now be harmed and consequently require Jack's protection. Despite regaining their humanity, the girls will stop to gather ADAM from corpses due to the strength of the mental conditioning they were subjected to. When this occurs, splicers will appear and may kill the present Little Sister. Therefore, during this sequence of gameplay, Jack takes on the role of a Big Daddy: he must protect the present Little Sister and allow her to complete her task before she can open the doors ahead.

If a Little Sister dies during this escort mission, text will appear on screen that says “Go to any glowing vent and bang your Wrench on it to summon a new Little Sister.” Alongside this, Tannenbaum will pleadingly say that the girls need to be protected and will reiterate the aforementioned text, stating that “If a Little One falls, you can call for another at a vent.” She then adds, however, that “to lose even one is a sin.” Yet, in this instance, it is a sin without consequence, as the deaths of Little Sisters during this escort mission do not have an impact on the ending that the player receives upon finishing BioShock. Players who have chosen to rescue all of the Little Sisters thus far will still receive BioShock's Good Ending, even if some of the girls are killed by splicers in this section of the game.

In BioShock's Good Ending, Jack is portrayed as the saviour of the Little Sisters. Yet, the gameplay involved in the escort mission preceding Jack's final showdown with Atlas/Fontaine shows him treating the Little Sisters like disposable tools. If none of the girls die during this escort mission this contradiction will be ameliorated, as Jack (via the input of the player) will have performed his protective duties admirably. Moreover, for players who have harvested Little Sisters throughout the game and secured its Sad Ending or Bad Ending, treating the girls like pawns will only further justify the narrative resolution they attain. Yet, for players who have secured the Good Ending, to endure a gameplay sequence in which Little Sisters are deliberately placed in danger and simply replaced (potentially multiple times) with the unceremonious banging of a wrench on a vent presents a clear case of ludonarrative dissonance. In summary, a clash between BioShock's ludic and narrative contracts does not stem from the narrative restrictions on Jack's allegiances as Hocking (2007) claims. However, such a clash is discernible in the treatment of Little Sisters as cannon fodder during a late-game escort mission, when such treatment is followed by a narrative resolution that depicts Jack as the protector of these girls. ³

The Value of Ludonarrative Dissonance

Hocking concludes his blog post, “Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock,” by reinforcing the notion that ludonarrative dissonance is a flaw in game design. Looking to the future of video game development, he speculates that “it will take us several years to learn from BioShock's mistakes and create a new generation of games that do manage to successful marry their ludic and narrative themes into a consistent and fully realized whole” (Hocking, 2007). Certainly, the example of ludonarrative dissonance described above does create issues with the overall continuity of BioShock and can thereby be seen as a flaw in the game's design. Although, from an analytical standpoint, ludonarrative dissonance can provide opportunities “which [enable] us to study video games as ideologically complex and contradictory artifacts, often reflecting the ideological tensions of their time” (Pérez-Latorre & Oliva, 2019, p. 783). Therefore, what may be considered a flaw in BioShock can also be considered a significant point of ideological tension for video game researchers. From this point of view, the discernibly mishandled treatment of Little Sisters during BioShock's late-game escort mission may signify the difficulties in creating a video game that sustains a critical commentary on “Randian rational self-interest” (Hocking, 2007) – especially one belonging to the first-person shooter genre of games, which often rely on individualism and the pursuit of empowerment.

In a subversion of Hocking's speculation on the future of gaming, Seraphine wonders if “more games in the near future might use ludonarrative dissonance as a way to tell more compelling stories” (2016, p. 8). Hence, even for video game developers, ludonarrative dissonance need not be something to fight against. As Fernández-Vara claims, “there is a lot of expressive potential in the mismatch between what the player does in the game and what the game is about, if this mismatch is done purposely” (2019, p. 145). Likewise, as Grabarczyk and Walther state, “embracing the possibility of [ludonarrative dissonance] and finding ways of exploiting it in creative ways may lead to more interesting, experimental game design” (2022, p. 11). This is apparent in The Stanley Parable (Galactic Café, 2013), a first-person adventure game in which the player controls a nondescript office worker named Stanley, whose colleagues have mysteriously disappeared. ⁴

In The Stanley Parable, a narrator comments on the actions of Stanley as the player moves him through a deserted office building. The narrator's dialogue can be interpreted as instructional, as he speaks of Stanley's actions in the past tense. Although, the player can rebel against such commentary by taking Stanley down different routes to those described by the narrator (Grabarczyk & Walther, 2022, p. 11; Herte, 2016, pp. 35–36). In such instances, ludonarrative dissonance does not cause emersion. In fact, contradictions in The Stanley Parable are precisely what makes the game such a surreal and entertaining metatextual experience (MacDonald, 2013). Furthermore, the instances ludonarrative dissonance in this game directly correspond to its commentary on the illusory nature of choices in video games – especially as no matter what path the player chooses, Stanley will inevitably return to the beginning of the game.

Commenting on the cyclical gameplay of The Stanley Parable, Fest asserts that “it quickly becomes apparent that the myth so many contemporary videogames sell themselves upon, the seeming ability to do anything […] is just that, a myth” (2016, p. 11). Accordingly, The Stanley Parable can be read as an exemplar of procedural irony (Fest, 2016, p. 22). Ludic rebellions against the narrator in this game, while seemingly signifying the agency of the player and their control over the game system, are inevitably revealed to be futile in the sense that they lead to the same outcome as that which is attained by playing the game in compliance with the narrator's utterances. Therefore, in The Stanley Parable, as may be the case with other video games in the future, ludonarrative dissonance is employed as a useful rhetorical tool, providing the player with opportunities for reflection on the gaming medium and, in this case, the nature of choices both within and outside of the world of the game.