Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Hacking into This Book (Introduction) -- Part I Level 1 Research Bonus: Increased Wisdom Capacity -- Chapter 1 BioShock's Meta-Narrative: What BioShock Teaches the Gamer about Gaming -- Mind Games -- Rapture: How BioShock Hooks You -- Horizons and Expectations in the Mid-Atlantic -- The Meta-Narrative: Twisted Horizons -- Gaming Freedom: Choosing or Obeying? -- Notes -- Chapter 2 The Value of Art in BioShock: Ayn Rand, Emotion, and Choice -- Ayn Rand on Art, Ethics, and Choice -- Horror Beneath the Waves -- Why Randians Should Celebrate BioShock -- How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ADAM -- Notes -- Chapter 3 SHODAN vs. the Many: Or, Mind vs. the Body -- "Remember Citadel" -- "What is a Drop of Rain, Compared to the Storm?" -- "Your Flesh is an Insult to the Perfection of the Digital" -- "And Now They Seek to Destroy Me! I Will Not Allow That!" -- "All You Have is Your Hatred and Your… Individuality" -- "Remember, it is My Will That Guided You Here" -- "Your Flesh, Too, is Weak. But You Have… Potential" -- Notes -- Chapter 4 "The cage is somber": A Feminist Understanding of Elizabeth -- "Danger: Do Not Speak to the Specimen"-Tower Sign -- "Why did They Put Me in Here? What Am I? What Am I?"-Elizabeth -- "I'm Out. It's Hard to Believe, but it's True, isn't It?"-Elizabeth -- "You Don't Need to Protect Elizabeth in Combat. She Can Take Care of Herself"-Game Instructions -- "My Days of Victimhood are Done"-Elizabeth -- "Smother Him in the Crib"-Booker -- Notes -- Part II Tears, Time, and Reality -- Chapter 5 Rapture in a Physical World: Did Andrew Ryan Choose the Impossible? -- Physicalism, Ryan's Putter, and Ghosts -- Plasmids and Ghosts in a Physical World -- The Smell of Poo and Ghosts -- The Last Bit -- Notes.

Chapter 6 Would You Kindly Bring Us the Girl and Wipe Away the Debt: Free Will and Moral Responsibility in BioShock Infinite -- "Liberty Means Responsibility"- George Bernard Shaw -- "No Animal is Born Free…"-Zachary Hale Comstock -- Between the Confines of Necessity and Free Will -- Measurements in Different Worlds -- Would You Kindly? -- BioShock Infinite as a Frankfurt-type Example -- "We All Make Choices, But in the End Our Choices Make Us"-Andrew Ryan -- The Impossible Price of Clemency -- "One Can't Believe Impossible Things" -- Notes -- Chapter 7 BioShock as Plato's Cave -- Is Outside the Cave Real Either? -- BioShock Is Better -- The Other "Choices" -- What About Refusal? -- Harvest vs. Rescue: Stroke of Genius, Not a Flaw -- Pretending to Talk about It -- Chapter 8 BioShock Infinite and Transworld Individuality: Identity across Space and Time -- Why Should We Care? -- Essentialism -- Transworld Identity and Counterpart Theory -- Counterparts in the World of BioShock -- BioShock and Necessary Beings -- The Plurality of Worlds to Come -- Notes -- Chapter 9 Shockingly Limited: Escaping Columbia's God of Necessity -- Determinism, Necessity, and the "Infinite" in BioShock Infinite -- Limiting Possibilities Means There Is No Real Infinite -- Attempting to Reconcile the Infinite -- Religious Extremism and the BioShock Infinite Narrative -- Final Thoughts -- Notes -- Part III The "Union" and the Sodom Below -- Chapter 10 "The bindings are there as a safeguard": Sovereignty and Political Decisions in BioShock Infinite -- "No, But I'm Afraid of You"-Booker DeWitt -- The Vox -- "Cherubs for Every Chore!"-Jeremiah Fink -- War without End -- "I Was Thinking Two Things, But Only Mean One of Them"-Guard -- Bird or Cage? -- Notes -- Chapter 11 Propaganda, Lies, and Bullshit in BioShock's Rapture.

"Even in the Book of Lies, Sometimes You Find Truth"-Andrew Ryan -- That's Bullshit! -- Noble Lies, Noble Propaganda -- Notes -- Chapter 12 The Vox Populi Group, Marx, and Equal Rights for All -- Marxism and Class Warfare: The Bourgeoisie Oppresses the Proletariat -- Proletariat Suppression through Propaganda, Inequality, and Control -- Functionalism: We Are Parts of the Whole -- Symbolism: How We Create Meaning -- Part IV The Circus of Values -- Chapter 13 Infinite Lighthouses, Infinite Stories: BioShock and the Aesthetics of Video Game Storytelling -- "Not Stars, They're Doors"-Elizabeth -- Constants and Variables -- The Illusion of Choice -- Notes -- Chapter 14 Have You Ever Been to Rapture?: BioShock as an Introduction to Phenomenology -- Prometheus Falls -- Plasmids, Vigors, and Other Methods -- Now Would You Kindly Pick Up That Controller? -- Time to Put Some Sweat on That Brow -- Welcome to Rapture -- Is a Man Not Entitled to the Sweat of His Brow? -- Notes -- Chapter 15 "Evolve today!": Human Enhancement Technologies in the BioShock Universe -- What Exactly Are They Researching? -- Wait, You Want to Change the Nature of Humanity? -- But Isn't Human Enhancement a Big Leap Forward? -- Don't Tell Me What to Do with My Body! -- Who Profits from This? -- We Would Program Our Children -- But at Least the People with "Disabilities" Could Live a "Normal" Life -- Would You Kindly Evolve Today? -- Notes -- Chapter 16 Vending Machine Values: Buying Beauty and Morality in BioShock -- What Is Beauty? -- Steinman's Justice through Beauty -- The Value of Beauty and Morality -- This Is the End -- Notes -- Notes on Contributors -- Index -- EULA.