When Pharmacist saw me playing this game this morning, he said, "your sort of game :P". When MrFodder woke up and saw me playing this game, he said, "It's the perfect Fodder game." Add this to the growing list of dystopic socialist games I have in my steam library.
In this game, you play an investigator for a system called Orwell. Once a person has been identified as a person of interest, you are tasked with investigating their lives, and trying to find evidence that they were or weren't linked with a particular crime. It starts out with information available on public websites, but as you uncover more and more information about them, such as their online handles, phone numbers, or PC IDs, you gain access to more ways in which you can spy on them. If you find that people they're associated with may be linked to a crime, the higher ups may deem them persons of interest by association, which allows you to spy on them, too.
It's a stalker's paradise.
The game starts off a bit slow as you learn the controls and unlock more and more features, but once the story starts to unravel, it really digs its hooks into you. I played it from start to end in one sitting, though it's one of those games with multiple endings based on decisions you make throughout the game.
As an investigator, you can upload information that you find into Orwell for the advisors to use. They will only see what you upload, so you have the power to portray someone as badly as you want, or as nicely as you want. For instance, one of the pieces of information you can upload is one character saying to another, "that's torture and cruelty by my friend", which links the two characters as friend, but also lists one of the characters as having the trait "engaged in torture".
Which any sane person looking at the context (Cassandra has convinced Juliet to go clubbing and she doesn't like going out) would know is untrue, but if you are only given that line to go on, then it's easy to make that kind of conclusion. As an investigator, you'll often come across conflicting pieces of information, and it's up to you to look at the context and try and work out which piece of information is "correct". For instance, one person might post a pro-government statement on a public website, but post an anti-government statement on their private blog. You get to choose which gets linked to their profile.
As the game continues, and you listen in on phone calls and read emails, you get to know the people. I began to doubt that I was doing the right thing. The game did a really great job of making you flip-flop between thinking someone is a terrible person, and realising they're not so bad, but then uncovering something else and thinking you were right the first time.
It really makes you think about the data that's available about you electronically. For instance, my work conversations between Jal have been pretty intense lately. We were talking about the movie The Belko Experiment over office chat and debating guns vs. axes, as well as whether it'd be worth defending the kitchen (which has knives) or the stationery cupboard (which has scissors and staplers). Not to mention whether it'd be better to have a pistol or a rifle. And yet, every time we've discussed the situation, both of us agreed that we're against the idea of killing another human, and if asked to choose between 30 or 60 deaths, we'd both try to opt for an alternative option.
I wonder what an investigator would think about me from reading this blog. I feel sorry for whoever it is. Not only do they have the emo years to go through, and the numerous posts about World of Warcraft or other inane things, there's the growing number of food posts. They'd probably think I"m some weirdo sociopathic stalker who likes doing experiments on people, and writes too much about trying to do "the right thing". Oh, and that I'm a coward who needs to be more aggressive to play a mid lane hero. And that I like to eat. So I guess they wouldn't be too far off from the truth.
But there is a lot that is posted online that could be used. Most people have a Facebook account, and even with your privacy settings locked down, your friends or family might not be so locked down. I remember when I was searching for RH, and managed to find his wife who had everything set to public (though that's no longer the case - I hope it's not because he read my blog and realised I was looking at pictures of his kid.... not creepy!). Though she seems to change her profile picture so often (which makes a public post), that I feel like I have access to her photo album and can still see pictures of his son. I'M NOT CREEPY.
The game really makes me want to phase out social media though. I recently uninstalled Instagram, as I really only use it to upload photos of ice-cream to prove to one of my co-workers that I'm keeping up my one-flavour of ice-cream per month challenge. I rarely check Facebook anymore. Even reddit is on the decline, as I find I'd much rather be playing games than browsing reddit for hours. Am I getting old or paranoid? It's hard to tell.
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