‘Orwell’: Because Big Brother Totally Is Watching You

  Remember the pre-launch Xbox One fears? How Kinect was mandatory, and gamers were terrified that Microsoft were spying on them through the device? That Xbox operatives in a top secret facility somewhere were watching us playing Call of Duty in our undercrackers, or putting us on piss-poor amateur porn sites? It was a concern, a real concern.  

Nothing much became of that, as a Kinect-free bundle was soon introduced. What with all the bitching on that thar Internet and all. A lot of it was BS and fearmongering anyway, but everyone loves a good alligators-in-the-sewers, Bieber-is-Satan-disguised-as-a-wanktastic-pop-pretty-boy conspiracy theory.

When it comes to Nineteen Eighty-Four sort of stuff, you can see why. It’s all a little too close to home. With this new-fangled ‘Internet’ thing, it’s terrifyingly easy for the powers that be to keep tabs on our every move. They know what we’re buying. They’ve read all the lurid emails we’re sending. They’ve seen our dodgy browsing histories. I don’t know who 'they' are, but they have freaking eyes everywhere.

On that note, here’s Orwell. In this freshly announced PC title, Polygon reports, ‘players take on the role of a surveillance operative who spies on the digital activities of suspected criminals, terrorists and activists. The player chooses which information to disregard, and which to forward to the country's spy network, known as Orwell.’

So there it is. This one’s on its way later this year, and it’s all sounding a little too on the nose for me. I’m kinda creeped out.