So, you know how BioShock Infinite does that extremely jarring thing of applying the typical lib anticommunist "both sides suck" thought terminating cliché to a slave revolt? That's probably a product of rewrites.
In early interviews, Ken Levine talks about the Vox as "starting as kind of a student movement, working to unionize workers, protect rights of minorities" and an "internationalist movement, a worker's movement". IIRC there's even some vestigial elements of that in the final game, like the red color scheme, and an audio log that unsubtly draws a parallel between the Vox and the khmer rouge, something about going after people with glasses/intellectuals (I might be missremembering this last one, since I couldn't find it by CTRL + F on a transcript).
Came out during the height of "populism bad" being the lib mantra to say so I'm not surprised it got a bit of a rewrite when their name is vox pop.
I cannot for the life of me disassociate Bioshock Infinite from the Tea Party. Crazy to think how quickly the Tea Party sort of disappeared/rebranded in favor of MAGA/Q-Anon style shit.
The Tea Party cost too much. It was financed by oil executives and the Koch brothers to simulate a genuine grassroots movement, but was in practice campaign funding and propaganda. Various Tea Party organizations got investigated by the IRS in 2012, and that was enough to make the billionaires lose interest. They were getting diminishing returns anyway.
I remember I used to think populism was inherently bad. That's obviously not true, but I've reached the conclusion that American populism is seemingly doomed to be bad
The real step is realizing that "populism" isn't a thing, but an empty buzzword used to describe everything that isn't bloodless liberal managerial technocracy. It gets applied to everything from explicitly elitist ideologies like Fascism or even Monarchism, to tepid flavors of social democracy, to any and every form of leftist thought. It gets applied to both racism and civil rights activism, to both anti-war protesters and pro-war agitators (when they're using the "wrong" reasons, of course - cold and cynical justifications for war are obviously good and mature geopolitics), to both elitist theocracy that favors the entrenched privileged classes and to secular liberation movements that focus on the oppressed classes.
It's completely and utterly without any meaning at all beyond saying that something is either to the right or left of a narrow band of right wing hegemonic liberal ideology.
Well said. I more or less dropped it from my vocabulary when I noticed how loosely it would get throw around by ( everyone. Whatever the fuck could actually constitute "American populism", I don't want to see it
Imo populism is when the people overwhelmingly support something. It can be people, it can be wars, its that patriotic spirit that fell over everyone except the most educated of libs after 9/11.
Rewriting is only called that when people want to say it’s bad. When they want to brag they say “an earlier draft”.
Bioshock Infinite had nothing to say other than “wow, bioshock is great!”
There were so many rewrites on Bioshock Infinite I'm certain the final script wasn't in place until maybe 9 months before release, despite 6 years of development. The 2012 E3 demo shows scenes that didn't make the game, like main villain Comstock has a completely different role. These scenes weren't simply little basic dialogues or small levels, they were entire scripted sequences with full Troy Baker voice acting and setpieces. Comstock was a lot younger in earlier demos, Fitzroy had a Caribbean accent, and the Vox Populi was more fleshed out.
The final game feels messy, like a patchwork quilt of a hundred different smaller ideas. Like you said, vestigial elements. The entire game feels like a vestigial element of various unformed thoughts Ken Levine had, except he was probably given too much money and had too high of a reputation after Bioshock 1 for 2K to say no. Pretty sure that's why Levine's latest project has such high turnover and it's been close to 10 years now. He has infinite money from 2K.
It's a shame because I really like Bioshock Infinite. I really like old timey 1910s settings with handlebar mustaches and malt shops, and at least Infinite is bold enough to show the setting is implicitly racist. There is a surprising level of criticism against American imperialism, something you didn't see much from big budget games, especially not an FPS. Except the plot screws up by portraying a rebellion against racism as bad or worse than the society perpetrating it.
There were so many rewrites on Bioshock Infinite I’m certain the final script wasn’t in place until maybe 9 months before release, despite 6 years of development
That's apparently just how all Levine projects go:
During a panel discussion a few years ago, Levine explained the final act of his process. “In almost every game I’ve ever worked on, you realize you’re running out of time, and then you make the game,” he said. “You sort of dick around for years, and then you’re like, ‘Oh my god, we’re almost out of time,’ and it forces you to make these decisions.”
From this article (or archived here). Typically you wouldn't see having to do massive crunch at the end of development as somehow a positive, but the genius auteur mind of Ken Levine understands that being forced to rush things right at the end is good for art actually.
This is what Mensa brain savant Ken Levine calls "environmental storytelling"—simply make your company a hostile hellhole to work for, and the story gets done.
