Any Libertarian arguments against Anarchy?

[Dark_Lord_2008]

In their present form, videogames can't replace literary discussions of political ideology. The players usually have the freedom to determine at what pace and in what order events will unfold. They typically cannot be fast-forwarded or rewound, can't always be walked away from at any point, and can't be flipped through or searched for useful quotes. More importantly, they are not pure exposition. The challenges of gameplay-fights, tests of reflexes and agility, puzzles, and navigation-act as roadblocks in the way of a smooth path from start to finish. Could The Constitution of Liberty have made such an impression on Margaret Thatcher if she had to win a virtual fight with an undersea mutant every time she wanted to turn the page? Books, we may hope, will never die.

But by tackling the issues involved in applying political ideology to a ‘realworld' society, Bioshock demonstrates videogames' ever-growing seriousness and maturity. The game had sold over a million copies by mid-2008, and is one of the most highly rated titles on the current generation of videogame systems. Its critical and commercial success indicates that the mainstream is ready to embrace games of its kind, even if they usually have to be lured with action and pyrotechnics.

Is Bioshock's popularity good for libertarianism? It is, after all, a critique of one very influential strand of individualist thinking. In an article for the gaming blog Kotaku, Levine admits that despite Bioshock's uncomplimentary depiction of Objectivism's consequences when applied, he's sympathetic to it as a philosophy. ‘I find a lot of positive in it,' he says. ‘I find [Rand's] notion of selfishness is very interesting, not living for ... others, believing in the individual man as the central powerful force in the world rather than a government or a supreme being.' The same article quotes Yaron Brook, President of the Ayn Rand Institute, saying, ‘Ultimately it doesn't portray objectivism well, but the mainstreaming of objectivism is important too. And it's important to see the willingness to debate those ideas even in a video game.'

http://ipa.org.au/publications/1742/a-slave-obeys-a-player-chooses