New video game mirrors NSA-style surveillance state
Anti-hero accesses conversations and personal information to win, amid US spying storm
A video game with a protagonist who controls the world around him by hacking into systems is generating growing buzz for its eerie parallels with the current storm about US surveillance.
Games typically use weapons ranging from guns and swords to magical powers to defeat enemies, and hundreds like that are on display at the E3 gaming industry conference in Los Angeles.
We're seeing a time when the technology has caught up with [Orwell's] views
But in Watch Dogs, the player-controlled anti-hero can access everything from cellphone conversations and medical records of passers-by to computer-controlled traffic lights to advance through the game.
"We knew we had a relevant topic," said Canadian Ubisoft developer Dominic Guay, recalling how he arrived ahead of the gaming mega-gathering this week, and checked into his hotel.
"I turned on CNN, and the first sentence I heard was 'invasion of privacy,' switched channel and on Fox they were like, 'surveillance,' and I said to my creative director, 'Those are all our key words'."
Ubisoft, the French company behind top gaming titles including Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, showed off Watch Dogs on Monday, at a pre-E3 press conference in a downtown LA hotel.