Onlooker: Who is spying on your life?

Thank you for inviting comments from the Black Box.

In our present life, we often feel that something is peeking at our life. This "what" is big data, and our preferences and needs are always in its hands. Even in the era without the internet, people can't escape this voyeurism. This is the world described in The Spectator.

Severe dystopia

Mankind has never stopped exploring social forms. Utopia is a perfect world in people's fantasy. The means of production and living are fully enjoyed. People don't have any disputes and always think of others. This social form is beautiful, but if it is to be realized in reality, it will cost a very painful price. Perhaps in the future, after people's living standards and quality and morality have risen to a certain height, this kind of thing can be easily realized, but as far as the current development level of human society is concerned, it is still too early.

Therefore, there has always been an enduring theme in literary works: dystopia. In order to keep people's lives stable, we must always eliminate all hidden dangers, formulate laws and regulations that are too harsh to be understood, and expose people's every move in real time to the authorities' vision through monitoring.

When a major phenomenon appears, some people will be worried about it, make a pessimistic outlook on it, and create literature and art based on it, such as the theme of Cyberpunk, and of course dystopia is the same. There are three representative works about dystopia in history: We by Russian writer Zamyatin, Brave New World by British writer Huxley, and George? Orville 1984.

Of course, in addition to these fictional stories, the realistic model of the theme of "spectator" is the history of the Soviet Union. After all, the producer is Russian, and it is understandable to want to play Soviet terrier.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union seems to be a world-class joke. Up to now, many creators have jumped on its grave from time to time, pulled it out and whipped it wildly. For the fuse of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there is a ridiculous saying that a KGB agent bought some canned herring from a certain channel and opened it to see that it was expensive caviar, thus discovering the decadent core of the Soviet Union. In The Spectator, players also have to pay for caviar of a senior government official. This at least shows that "The Spectator" contains elements that allude to the Soviet Union.

Obviously, the Soviet Union failed on the road of exploring a perfect society, but from the perspective of time, this is the problem that mankind will eventually face. Therefore, "Kanke" not only lashed the Soviet Union, but also served as a warning to us now. I had a little discussion with my elders about this problem. Although strict laws and neighborhood supervision seem outrageous today, they were inevitable at that time. The enemy's infiltration is everywhere, and people can't even believe in themselves. Looking at past actions from a modern perspective is a bit like "it's easy to stand and talk."

In the game, we play a landlord, not because we own an apartment, but because the government appointed us as the landlord. When we got the landlord's position, we also got a task: monitoring all the residents in this apartment, whether installing cameras, peeping through keyhole, or even invading other people's homes to search for personal belongings. There is only one purpose of all this: to find potential criminals or to find their existing criminal facts.

During the game, new laws will be promulgated continuously, which is understandable at first, such as prohibiting harboring criminals and manufacturing drugs, but later laws are becoming more and more outrageous, such as not reading books, not wearing blue ties (as if national leaders all wear blue ties), and even holding rubber ducks. Some previously allowed behaviors may become illegal in the future. These laws are somewhat incomprehensible, but we are only enforcers and have no right to interfere.

The transformation of human nature

In the game, we will come into contact with all kinds of tenants, such as ordinary tobacco salesmen, honest librarians, unruly boatswain of coal barges and so on. Because of their personality or work, they will attract the attention of the authorities more or less, and even break the law because of something. According to the work regulations, we need to write a report letter to report them, and then they will be put into prison by law enforcement agencies. But these people have helped us more or less in the plot, even just because we feel that this law is unfair in our hearts. We may turn a blind eye to these people and even help them stay away from the country by illegal means.

(Helping a tenant targeted by the government to flee the country)

There will be rebels in the game, who will try their best to drag us into the water, or seduce us with money, or threaten the lives of ourselves or our families. According to the work regulations, we should fight to the end, but the money and goods given by the rebels can often get us through the difficulties. To this end, we have to assassinate our generals and scientists and give up our undercover, and our boss doesn't care if we live or die. After all, we have as many tools as we want.

The rebels asked us to give up undercover in exchange for our daughter's life-saving medicine.

Of course, although the authorities have gone too far, the rebels are not good people. They incited the masses to sabotage everywhere and smashed the protagonist's apartment. They did express their ideas, but only ordinary people were injured.

We will also come into contact with our family members: wives, daughters and sons, and they will all ask us for money. The wife will ask for living expenses, utilities, and the son will ask for tuition. Otherwise, he will dig coal and die because of various follow-up events, and his daughter will be seriously ill. Only expensive drugs can save her. The demand for money makes us breathless, forcing us to contact residents or do some illegal activities. After discovering the illegal behavior of residents, we can extort money from them instead of reporting it (the amount is different for different difficulties). Although these residents are very kind, we must bear this guilt for the sake of our families.

The color of the game screen is very dark, and the characters are small black people with round white eyes, which also means the dark connotation of this game.

It's not worth playing intentionally.

Although it has a deep kernel and excellent ideas, this game is not perfect.

At the beginning of the game, we will interact with a family, accept their help and have a linkage effect with the following two families. With this precedent, I am somewhat looking forward to the linkage between subsequent households, but unfortunately these households will soon have their own stories, or even no stories. Therefore, I can get help from other residents in the early stage of the incident, but I can only rely on myself to conduct underground transactions with the rebels in the future, but I have unscrupulously blackmailed the residents.

During the game, my son will ask us for money, flee abroad and break the law at the same time. I reported my son after giving him money. He was taken away by the police, but he soon sent me a letter from abroad. This shows that the game did not make good arrangements when the plot conflicts, which made people feel a little inferior.

Similarly, we can see the ending of many things in the end. In the course of a game, I got the result that the rebels will overthrow the authorities and establish a new regime, but at the same time the government will clone countless patriotic heroes. This is obviously contradictory, because cloning is the plan of the old regime, and the new regime-according to their attitude-opposes strict laws and neighborhood supervision. The problem with this is the same as my last one.

One more thing, at the end of the game, there was a task for me to file files for five residents, but I had already filed files for them before, and no new residents moved in later, so this task was put on hold until the end of the game, which was obviously not an important task. I don't understand why game design is such a meaningless task.

abstract

This is the basic situation of spectator. Of course, my introduction is not comprehensive. I hope you can experience the details of the game yourself. And although it reflects a lot of problems, I hope everyone will just regard it as a Russian-style self-deprecating entertainment and don't think too much about the content of the game. Just like in some games, characters can only wear supporting equipment, so we should only consider our own knowledge.