Games
typically use weapons ranging guns and swords to zappers to special
powers to defeat enemies, overcome obstacles or simply score points, and
hundreds are on display at the E3 gaming industry conference in Los
Angeles.
But in "Watch Dogs," the
player-controlled anti-hero can access everything the cellphone
conversations and medical records of passers-by to computers which
control traffic lights, to advance through the game.
"We
knew we had a relevant topic," Canadian Ubisoft developer Dominic Guay
told AFP, 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 areour 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.
Set
in Chicago, the game centers on Aiden Pearce, who uses his smartphone
to access the city's Central Operating System, which controls everything
power grids and traffic management technology to bank accounts and
phone networks.
That kind of hacking evokes the
stunning recent revelations about electronic surveillance by US
authorities, revealed by ex-government contractor and whistle-blower
Edward Snowden, who is in hiding in Hong Kong.
Under
the classified PRISM program, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has
gathered call log records for millions of American phone subscribers
and targeted the Internet data of foreign web users.
The
debate was also fueled by the April Boston marathon attacks, which
killed three people and injured over 260, with New York mayor Michael
Bloomberg notably saying people will have to get used to more cameras
than in the "olden days."
Guay said technology
is now making it possible to foresee a world not unlike that in British
writer George Orwell's classic novel "1984," in which Big Brother
watches and controls everything.
Orwell "had an
extreme view of that dystopian world at that time," he said. "I think
we're seeing a timethe technology has caught up to his views.the
technology would enable his dystopian world to exist.
"Happily
... most of us live in democracies that are not going there ... but
it's scary to think that a government that would be as ruthless and evil
as the one in '1984' would theoretically have the means to reproduce
that system."
In "Watch Dogs," Pearce starts
off seeking revenge for a loved one, but as he finds out more about the
city, through hacking into its systems and inhabitants, he becomes a
"vigilante," according to Montreal-based Guay.
"Most
of the hacks that we have in the game are based on stuff that's
happened in the real world. We just happened to give themto a single
player," he said in the sidelines of the E3 conference.
He
added: "It's actually happening as we speak. It makes a more efficient
city right? But it also creates the vulnerabilities we have in our
game," he said, insisting the game makes no value judgment on the
complex and sensitive issue.
"We're not trying
to be moralistic about it. But we're hoping that players, when they've
finished the game, maybe start a conversation. They can form an opinion
about it," he added.
"Watch Dogs" will be
released in November, including versions for play on on Sony's
next-generation PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Microsoft's Xbox One consoles.
Sony
Computer Entertainment of America chief Jack Tretton said the game
"reflects mainstream entertainment and what's culturally relevant I
think it's a game based on what people are seeing out there in modern
culture.
"I think it's less of a statement on
our industry and more of a statement on a cultural situation what could
create a good storyline," he told AFP.
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