The Dead Account by Naomi Norbez (Twine)
Spoilery Review
This work definitely captured some of the weirdness of being a social media moderator forced to comply with weird policies, and provides a voyeuristic (and explorable) view into the uncomfortable slice of life after a person’s death.
Can we call “Facebook stalking” a game genre at this point? There have been a number of games that used this sort of structure now, including the moderation conceit (Hypnospace Outlaw comes to mind). And it works! This is a compelling way to tell a slice-of-life story. I couldn’t help thinking that Dead Account would benefit from a more social-media-like interface, but that would have been a lot more work to build. As is, the game creates an effective imitation of the experience of browsing profiles without the look-and-feel of it. It’s the right kind of interactive for the story being told here.
That’s not to say this is a copy of any other game with similar mechanics. There’s a concreteness to the characters and realism in their response to the tragic death of a friend. In particular, not everyone reacts the same way. Some friends are particularly subdued; others seem to move on uncomfortably quick. This seems very much drawn from life. Their voices, as written, are appropriate for contemporary online posts; they’re not all as distinct as they could be, but this might also be in favor of realism.
I think the low point for me was the group chat session near the end. It’s timed out to be more like a realtime chat experience, and I think my frustration with this outweighed any added realism. I don’t know if this is how any social-media site is handling the accounts of deceased individuals today, but it seems so traumatic that I felt like I had to suspend disbelief more here than I did in other parts of the story (and I’ll be horrified if I find out this is also true-to-life). I also didn’t feel like I got much additional insight into the characters from this live session - they were just uncomfortable and cagey.
In the end I decided not to enforce the account deletion policy, and there wasn’t any consequence for this; I had a bit of an expectation up front that the work would be about criticizing such a policy, but the ending suggests that’s less the point and it’s more about experiencing this moment with these characters.
The author clearly took a risk sharing this personal work, and effectively conveyed a difficult experience. Thank you Bez!