BioShock - Killing / Harvesting the Little Sisters Is Bad Again

A couple of months ago, we discussed a very delicate issue surrounding Irrational Games' just launched FPS, BioShock, and that was killing (Harvest) the little sisters or sparing (Rescue) them. A piece up on The Boston Patriot Ledger discusses the very same issue, with 2K Boston President Ken Levine and a psychology professor - something bound to happen once the game was out.

As everyone knows, rendering the strange creatures (strikingly resembling little human girls) dead, results in you, the gamer, getting some precious serum, called Adam. Sparing them won't do you much good during gameplay, except morally perhaps.

At the time the issue was first tapped, IGN interviewed Irrational Games' Joe McDonagh. Here's what he said among other things: "What we want to do is create a game which deals with moral shades of grey and doesn't try and patronise us with two-dimensional cut outs - like a Disney take on what is right and what is wrong. The real world doesn't operate like that - it's not "Oh! He's good, he's bad!" We thought that gamers are mature enough, sophisticated enough to deal with sophisticated moral issues."

Given that the majority of gamers aren't exactly what you'd call "morally sophisticated..." yeah, well... And here's what the piece up on The Boston Patriot Ledger says. According to them, BioShock is "testing the limits of the ultraviolent gaming genre with a strategy that enables players to kill characters resembling young girls."

More than that, according to Joystiq.com, "2K Boston President Ken Levine defends the artistic vision of the game [...] while a psychology professor tells the paper that young people who play violent games 'had lower feelings of empathy and stronger 'pro-violence attitudes.' "

You be the judge here, I for one am tired to see so much speculation. However, killing/harvesting or sparing the little sisters is indeed somewhat of a sophisticated moral issue, come to think of it, but if the game asks you to kill them in order to get the goods, so then what the heck are gamers supposed to do? Just so everyone's on the same level here...:

- kill (Harvest) little sister = 160 Adam
- spare (Rescue) little sister = 80 Adam

Either way, had it been that bad, rating boards would have kept it away from store shelves, so remember that it's just a game and you'll be fine. Jeez...!