1700896 - Thought Experiment

Level Design
Level Overview

The player’s job is to monitor the populace from a control room. Multiple screens are visible to the player on which they can see security feeds from around the city sector to which they have been assigned. On these screens the player will witness crimes, both serious and petty. Whenever they report a crime, as is their job, their risk metre will decrease. Once a crimes is reported the player will witness the ‘criminal’ being violently apprehended and removed by armed police, with an implied finality that they won’t be returning. The violent outcome is present for all reported incidents even for ‘crimes’ as petty as littering or jaywalking. It is designed to make the player feel guilt over inflicting such a fate on an innocent that may have simply dropped a piece of litter by accident and did not mean to commit a ‘crime’. The player is tasked with the moral situation of risking themselves to save the innocents unwittingly committing petty crimes or saving their own skin by reported said innocents.

The are three stages to the level, in which more screens are added and the crimes witnesses are less crimes and more mistakes made by the populace.

The level is based loosely on the Milgram Experiment where subjects were told to shock another person to the point of death to test obedience to authority figures.

The level adds another layer to the experiment in the fear influence on the player’s obedience, which is implied by the risk metre.

Crimes Available to Witness:
 * Murder
 * Petty Theft
 * Mugging
 * Vandalising Public Property
 * Robbery
 * Assault
 * Jaywalking
 * Littering
 * Acts of Aggression
 * Acts of Defiance towards the Government
 * Disobeying government/public officials
 * Breaking and Entering
 * Loud public displays of emotions
 * Acts that can be viewed as threatening
 * Anything actions that can be construed to be in related to the rebellion

Level Visuals

The player sits in a security room with multiple screens on the wall in front of them. The room is dark so that only the screens are visible. Each screen has a red button below for the player to report an criminal activity. As the level progresses more screen will turn on for the player to use. All of the screens show security feeds, in black and white, with somewhat grainy picture. In the bottom the player UI is a metre recording the level of risk the player is currently at.

Level Outcomes

The risk metre also acts as the player’s morality metre. Depending on where the risk level is at the end of the level attributes to the player’s morality level which in turn combines with the scores from the other minigame/levels to determine the player outcome. A high morality equal with a bad end, an average score equals a basic end and a low morality results in a good end.