A Visit to the Human Resources Administration
Jesse
Argh.
The existence of the system that this game illuminates is infuriating. And at the first screen, I could tell what the game was going to be, and was all “argh”. And then it indeed Was That Thing, and I was all “Argh!”
And then there was a twist of sorts at the end, which was really interesting! And, like, even though it was complaining about Yet Another Thing, somehow it made the game a little lighter; a little more hopeful. Because indeed, the lens through which we viewed the bulk of the game was “Hey, look at the crappy things humans do to each other.” And the pushback at the end said, in a way, “We don’t have to do this! It’s not just Human Nature that puts these systems in place; it’s something more complicated.” And with a bit of a spoiler (of sorts)…
The alien is clearly powerful (they can freeze time!) and they’re using that power to take notes. And it’s not too much of a stretch to point out that this a very easy trap to fall into: to take notes about a broken system, and publish findings about the broken system and receive accolades about how insightful you are about broken systems, all the while failing to fix the broken system. And it’s not just elites with this power; most of us have at least some. Are we taking notes? Or are we doing something? I kind of think Jesse is doing something.
Did the author have anything to say? Yes! Shine a spotlight on a broken system, and then also pose a question about the nature of spotlights themselves.
Did I have anything to do? No, not really. Most clicks are ‘click to continue’, and a few are ‘which thing do you want to see’ and of course the answer is ‘thank goodness there’s an undo button’.