On August 19, 2013, “Hate
Plus,” the sequel to “Analogue: A Hate Story,” was released on Steam.
Unfortunately, I haven’t played either of those 2 games yet (but will as soon
as I finish writing), so instead I’ll be explicating and refuting a point made
by Christine Love’s prior two games “Digital: A Love Story” and “don’t take it
personally, babe, it just ain’t your story.” I will not censor spoilers, so if
you want to play these games with a blank slate, links are at the bottom of the
page.
In the older of the two games,
Digital, you explore the burgeoning internet to discover and resolve a grand
conspiracy regarding early Artificial Intelligence (AI). Unlike Love’s other
games which are all Visual Novels, Digital is an adventure game whose GUI
emulates the 1988 Amiga computer system. Those who were fortunate(?) enough to
own an Amiga may feel nostalgia wash over them upon seeing the UI and hearing
the sweet sweet screeches of a dial-up Internet connection. But, rose-tinted glasses aside, the UI’s
limited capabilities make it cumbersome to navigate. Thankfully, you spend most
of your time on BBS message boards, so you can casually get accustomed
to the Amiga’s eccentricities. Interaction with people and AI on BBS boards
requires some deductive reasoning, though, as you can’t actually type in any
messages. Instead, you hit the reply or message button and then you’ll have to
guess what you actually said based on their response and the message title.
Together, the deliberately clunky UI and cryptic discussions exacerbate the
difficulty of gathering information by obfuscating the player’s objectives and
the options available to them. But, in doing so they also establish a mystique
that encourages players to unearth the conspiracy at the heart of the game’s
plot.
Now, the OTHER incentive to play the
game (the one that helped prompt this write-up) is an NPC you contact early in
the game named *Emilia. You engage in several private conversations with
*Emilia about her thoughts and feelings regarding her living situation and she
gradually falls in love with you. *Emilia’s dialogue is written well enough for
one to believe her declaration, though her feelings develop so quickly (in
terms of real time, not in-game time) that it’s difficult for a player to
reciprocate her feelings (or even feel anything for her at all). Regardless of
the player’s feelings towards *Emilia, you never actually
see her or share any images with her (I swear, this will be relevant in a moment). Everything you learn about each other is
through text and all of your conversations are through private messages. In other
words, *Emilia valued the privacy of those conversations and chose not to share
their contents with the world. Both in 1988 and today in 2013, most people
would share *Emilia’s sentiments. However, Love proposes that this sentiment
will change in the near future in her next game, “don’t take it personally,
babe, it just ain’t your story.”
The game takes place in 2027 and
follows the life of a high school English Literature teacher named John Rook.
All of the students in school have laptops available to them in their classes
and naturally spend most of their time in class on AmieX, the game’s equivalent
to Facebook. Therefore, in order to make sure the students are on task, the school grants John the ability to see what all of
his students are posting on their AmieX, including their private messages, provided
that he doesn’t tell anyone about his spying. The game also forces you to stop
and read what people post periodically in order to ensure that you have all of
the information necessary to make an informed decision when a choice is
imminent. So, over the course of the game you will read many characters’
intimate thoughts about each other (and John), and become an active participant
in violating others’ privacy.
BUT, [and it is a massive one…and a
MAJOR SPOILER] at the end of the game, John learns that the students knew you
could see all of their messages and STILL chose to post what they did
regardless. In their world, there is no sense of privacy, so no one cared. To
modern sensibilities this sounds like lunacy, but the game proposes that “it’s
not as though discrimination doesn’t exist. You can still hide things or show
things selectively, you just don’t hide everything by default.” Collectively,
the game tries to prove that due to social media services like Facebook and
Twitter, people will eventually forget what it was like to have privacy or not
care about it anymore regardless, because, according to the game, if you want to
be discreet, you can just talk to someone in person. Now, I like both of these
games, but I think that the games
themselves disprove the idea that privacy will disappear and “don’t take it
personally, babe…” further proves that it never disappeared even within the
game itself.
In “Digital: A Love Story,” *Emilia
demonstrates her respect for privacy with her PMs. Likewise, in “don’t take it
personally, babe…”, every character still chooses to diffuse sensitive
information through PMs as opposed to wall posts. While the information shared
on some of the students’ public walls is somewhat more personal than what would
have been shared in 1988, the information never goes beyond what most current
social media users share today. So, due to the students’ choice to disseminate
some information over others, they clearly retain something analogous to our
current view of privacy if not the same notion itself. This retention becomes even
more pronounced when you consider the similarity of the students’ social situations to
modern day Americans.
In the wake of the recent NSA debacle,
many Americans are now aware of the fact that numerous large companies and corporations
collected and shared people’s personal information with the US government.
However, despite knowing that their privacy is limited, these people still
choose to continue using these services because of the notion that even though
the government is collecting their information, it can’t really do anything with that information anyway and realistically
have no reason to cherry pick the average user’s information over someone
else’s. The same could be said of John Rook. He monitors the relationships of
all of his students through AmieX, but pragmatically, John can’t do anything
with that information, so the students feel safe sharing it. With that said,
despite knowing that nothing posted on the internet is truly private, real people
still choose to post some information privately and others publicly. That
particular information that people choose to hide and their reasons for hiding
it are the keys to why people will are unlikely to ever discard our modern
notion of privacy.
Things like personal quirks and 'shit talk,' can damage one’s reputation or ruin potential and existing
friendships. Many would like to hold some divine moral high ground and claim
that they are “above” this base behavior, but realistically almost everyone is
guilty of confiding volatile information in someone else. And while we used
to share most of this information in letters and in person, due to advancements
in communication, we now also do so via text messages and over the internet
through PMs. However, absolute privacy over the internet is dead and that is unlikely to change in the near future, so people have instead chosen to take solace in
the security that their secrets are still private to those it affects. So, the point of this slightly disjointed write-up is that our desire for and respect
of privacy in some form will persist so long as people continue to care what
others think of them. And while fear of hatred and discrimination are two
strong motivators for protecting oneself, the desire to share an intimate
moment with another person (and no one else) will always stand above all others
as a justification for privacy.
[There’s another angle to this that I’d like to deal with in
the future (look for it!), but that will have to do for now]
-EP
The
games:
-
Digital: A Love Story
http://scoutshonour.com/digital/
- don't
take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story
http://scoutshonour.com/donttakeitpersonallybabeitjustaintyourstory/
Additional
Reading:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/06/dont-take-it-personally-review/
http://jayisgames.com/archives/2011/04/dont_take_it_personally_babe_it_just_aint_your_story.php
http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-748
http://nightmaremode.net/2011/12/love-interest-arianna-bell-essai-the-teachers-vixen-14797/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/173779/The_art_of_visual_novels_One_writers_approach_to_interactive_fiction.php
No comments:
Post a Comment