Bioshock Designer - Killing The Little Sisters Is a 'Sophisticated Moral' Issue

It has been known for some time now that Irrational's very anticipated next-gen FPS, BioShock, will require gamers to render the Gatherers (Little Sisters) lifeless in order to get the Adam (a substance that genetically modified beings extract from the dead and eat it, for their bodies to reprocess it into a usable form, known as Eve) from them. A player will be faced with two options when encountering a Gatherer: kill it (her) and get all the goods; let it (her) live but get less goods. How will this God-feeling affect players when the game's released?

Naturally, as soon as the world found out that gamers will actually have to kill little girls in order to progress through the game, controversy arose. Although the developer assures that they are not human, the Little Sisters nevertheless look quite human, so what exactly tells the difference? Irrational Games' Joe McDonagh was compelled to provide an answer, in an interview with IGN. Here's an excerpt:

"IGN: how much controversy was there in the office over the idea of being able to kill off Little Sisters. Do you expect a public outcry?

Joe McDonagh: We don't expect a public outcry - we don't want one and we're not looking for one. How did we feel about making it? Amazingly challenged, because that's exactly what we want people to feel. It was quite interesting because originally, the Little Sister was just a little bug. Nobody cared, because you can't relate to an insect. You can't understand or appreciate or feel anything for an insect.

When we changed it to a little girl, it completely changed the dynamic of the experience. 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.

I hope very much that people do focus on that with the Little Sisters and not try and reduce it to something that I really don't think it is."

So the deal with killing the Little Sisters for the Adam is really more of a sophisticated moral issue huh? Tell me, exactly how many morally sophisticated gamers do you reckon are out there...? Let's face it. They just wanted to give gamers a more intense gameplay experience. Killing bugs is for Daxter gamers, not FPS gamers. We know it, and they know it.