Levine Responds to Outcries Against BioShock Infinite From Political Activist Groups

It appears that a number of political activist groups are upset by the content included in BioShock Infinite.

Irrational Games’ Ken Levine has responded to the outcry, telling PC Gamer that his latest game is hardly an attack on a specific group of people or philosophy.

Trust me, I get tweets… When I started working on this game, relatives of mine were very offended, because they thought it was an attack on the Tea Party. Specifically an attack on the Tea Party, which they were very active in.

Then, when we sort of exposed the Vox Populi people, I saw a lot more left-leaning websites being like, ‘This is trying to tear down the labor movement!’ I remember that I saw postings, unfortunately, on a white supremacist website, Stormfront, where people literally said, ‘The Jew Ken Levine is making a white-person-killing simulator.”

Levine then went on to admit that the original BioShock faced similar criticisms by Objectivists. I guess you can’t please everyone, especially when you create game experiences that are based heavily on political issues.

BioShock had the same thing, where you had Objectivists being infuriated by it, and people more on the left thinking that it was a love letter to Objectivism. I think these games are a bit of a Rorschach for people. It’s usually a negative Rorshach. It pisses them off, you know?

But I’d way rather have that than to…These games are, to some degree… If they’re about anything they’re about not buying into a single point of view. About having a lack of confidence in anything. They’re not ever an attack on a single idea. It’s a bit of a plague on all your houses.

What do you think? Are the complaints leveled against the content in BioShock Infinite justified, or are people taking the game’s political content too far? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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