Surveillance. The lovechild of technology and restrictive governments. The key to social order and stability. The title of Martin Le Chevallier’s game Vigilance 1.0 already suggests that in 2001, there was much more to come. While in his game you play as an actual observer, keeping watch over an actual town with citizens commiting actual felonies like public masturbation, prostitution, possession of drugs and littering, meanwhile we have long reached vigilance 2.0.
But let’s stay 1.0 for now: You play as an observer. Your task is to detect and immediately punish all kinds of felonies to increase public morality and social control. Well and good, at first. Sent the zoophile back to where he belongs, +6! Showed that filthy hooker, +2! Took the dangerous drugs away from the kids, +5! Ha, finally caught that nimble pickpocket in the act, +10!
The more you increase your score, however, the more you become aware that this game has no goal. As you steer your society towards morality, you will eventually realize that if you choose the path of surveillance, you choose the path that has the most fatal consequences. Punishment alone does not educate. Punishment works as long as it lasts. Whenever the surveillance level drops and the guiding and punishing hand ceases to do its work, a moral decline of unknown proportions will ensue.
Most modern governments chose the path of surveillance nevertheless, ignoring all sociologists’ and educationalists’ advice. 2001 might well have been a fateful year to release such a game.
2 Comments
1 Ben Chandler wrote:
Everywhere I look, I see filth! Look, men masturbating in public! Women whoring themselves out! Waste, both litter and excrement lying on the sidewalk! Violence, vandalism, drunkenness and crossing the street where prohibited!
I cannot stand it! All of these creatures have the potential to defile my beautiful city with their wanton recklessness! Every single citizen is a ticking time bomb, just waiting for the opportunity to lower their trousers and cover the city in their filth! Who knows how many of these creatures are concealing guns beneath those jackets!?
I refuse to allow this! I must… nay, I WILL click on them all! Each and every one shall be reprimanded for having the ability to choose such unacceptable activities!
It is the only way.
2 Igor Hardy wrote:
When a game doesn’t have a goal I usually feel scared playing it. Even worse when despite there not being a goal the situation becomes worse and worse with time.
Now, a game suggesting that the real world life in society is like that could drive me really insane.