This game needs an overhaul.

[AlienDjinn]

It has so much potential but why in god's name didn't the Devs let us select our own relevant text?

I get that it would a ton of complexity but they could add a serial processing component so if you send too much or the wrong text, it takes too long or Orwell barfs at you. The only mystery right now is can you find all the click-bait.

Don't get me wrong, I bought this game becaue I love the premise. My advice to the Devs: Stop coding for 4-6 hrs and play the hell out of "Her Story" for inspiration.

[Zoog]

could add a serial processing component so if you send too much or the wrong text, it takes too long or Orwell barfs at you.

Personally I think that would become freaking frustrating! Ever played Police Quest 1 on DOS where you had to write commands into the console to let your character do something contextually? Trial and error pain in the ass to find what the system "accepted" ;)

The only mystery right now is can you find all the click-bait.

The main mystery is what Orwell does with the uploaded information and how uploading or withholding information will affect the characters and story of the game. It's about what you DO with the datachunks and how YOU relate certain pieces of information, it's not about FINDING the datachunks in the pieces of text (which obviously is not a challenge at all, although sometimes you can get stuck nonetheless).

[Murderhorse]

I think an overhaul of that magnitude would result in too many possibilities, especially given how much there is to read.

[Mo0rk]

Wait, let me get this straight.... So you're saying let every player of the game select any text they like from the billions of words and phrases in the game?

A ton of complexity you say? That is an understatement for what you are suggesting. Maybe not in game terms so much as programming terms but do try to think from the devs point of view.

Even at it's most basic level, tell me how you would you program Symes responses given that players may now upload anything at all?!

Going further, how would you program the branching story based on users uploadeing anything at all?

Comparing this to Her Story is unfair, since that game only had one end result. Also, whilst you could type anything you wanted into the search box, all you're doing there is searching a database for words contained in it that are linked to certain video clips. If you entered something stupid you wouild get no result and you are forced to try again. You could do something similar here, but in this case, that would just make the game extremely frustrating in trying to second-guess what the devs wanted you to upload and there would be no advantage to doing this. Her Story itself is a much simpler premise and game.

And FYI, the devs did play Her Story, they have named it as one of their influences, alongside the obvious Papers Please.

[BtB]

On the one hand, it's the same system but they keywords aren't highlighted, and you could copy/paste everything and get some result.

But I think from an accessability standpoint, this is the sweet spot. I could stand a few tweaks, but I think they found the balance.

[AlienDjinn]

>>>>>>> On Complexity >>>>>>>

You're saying that it's the programming equivalent of building a B2 Bomber for me to cut and paste a paragraph like the following and have Orwell show the end user tagged concepts?

Character: X: "How come you care so much about Politics now? I'm not surprised you stand-up for your beliefs, underneath you're a strong one. But activism? Attending demonstrations? Is that still you?

This would generate tags like: <POLITCS>, <DEMONSTRATIONS>, <ACTIVISM>.

It would then be incubment on the user to delete the concepts they don't agree with.

Let's take another example:

Character X: "Alright, alright! You win, I'll be there in half an hour! That torture and cruelty my friend. Now where is Amnesty International when you actually need them?"

This could tag to <TORTURE> and <CRUEL>.

If I'm an evil actor then I would leave those as part of this person's profile.


>>>>>>> On Her Story >>>>>>>

A big part of the magic of that game is the sense of discovery as you start to pull bits and pieces together after making all those wrong turns. In Orwell the "Listner" mechanic is the closest 2nd to that but the mechanic let's us down by spoon feading you the important bits.

The magic of this game should be around the edges. That sense of "ah-ha" when you realize that someone used to go school with "so and so" and you get to connect the dots.

>>>>>>> "It's not about finding the data, it's about HOW you use it?" >>>>>>>

What exactly is the "How" in this game?

1) You don't get to interact with my Orwell contact directly. Would love a way to ping him for advice or just say "hi" or "frack me, people are evil in this world." The Devs should play FIREWATCH. That game is the king of setting the mode with an untrusty narrator.

2) The game tells you every document to read and every piece of text to look at. If it was too difficult to put a simple search engine to search the Orwell-verse, then PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT show me every doc I still have something left to do on. Normal hyperlink notation is just fine.

3) The Dots.... would loved to have been to be the one to identify the character relationships. For example the alumni list vs the student attendee list could have been a fun rabbit hole for searching for connections but instead everything was shown to the user.

If concensus is that I've missed the subtle magic of dragging some information and not other items, then I would have made this like Tinder. Swipe LEFT for evil-doer and swipe RIGHT for defender of the realm. Based on the user reviews I think others are missing the pont as well. Maybe an Orwell tutorial in the form of a practice run by your Govt Handler would help make it more clear.

I want this game to be beter not because I think it's awful, but because it has so much potential.

-Alien

[BtB]

There are a few nuances to the situation. For one, the character isn't actually doing any real analysis, they're doing collection and filtering. While I certainly agree I'd prefer Google, the DMV, etc. for searching for these clues instead of following the red star of wisdom, there's little to suggest that those sources aren't already being culled by someone under you.

Also, there is a deliberate disconnect between the people above you and the data. Something akin to a Chinese Room, but this assumes there are others like the player. Otherwise the abstraction layer has shown its weakness through the course of the game.

And yes, I agree that an organic experience would be more my speed as well, using real network analysis to ferret out these people, their links, their organizations, and their weaknesses. Frankly, however, it's a different story. This is a story more than a simulator, and it really is a choose your own adventure with a veneer of the surveillance state. As a vehicle for delivering the story, I enjoy it. I've spent far too much time doing exactly what we both wanted, doing analysis rather than moving highlighted sentences around, here on the forums. The genius of this game is the episodic release, and it will lose a lot of magic for those who missed the delay (as infuriating as it can be).

Even Her Story had its mechanical weaknesses. The one-sided conversations, the need to search for "yes" and "no" to get every video viewed, and the centeral twist which seemed weak to me. I enjoyed it for the unique presentation and I didn't dislike the story, but it didn't wow me, either.

Gone Home is a great example of the atmosphere and completely untethered speculation similar to Her Story, but both have the key point of you make up your own mind, and the journey is the point, the ending on either was simply a statement of "this was the core answer, everything else you found is yours."

This, on the other hand, has specific objectives and a superior demanding results. As a framework it is considerably more limiting, and it's hard to compare the two styles.

It would be interesting to see an offshoot of this become more open-ended, but could you imagine the lack of accessibility? On the other hand, Zachtronics has made a developer out of inaccessible technical titles.

Suffice it to say, I like this game, and I like the game you're discribing, but I can see why they went this way.

Also, re: your tag idea, from a gameplay standpoint it's easy to abuse, and it's actually difficult to make useful. You'd be best off having a dossier, zero interaction from the collections end, and just fill out the dossier manually, including potential locations etc. Then it becomes effect based and really revolves around the sea of data surrounding the individual points you actually want to collect.

[Hido]

This would require a complete overhaul of the game... DO YOU REALIZE HOW EXPENSIVE THAT IS?!

This would actually cause more infuration on the player because without the highlights, people would be here months scanning through every single word or phrase to make sure they got the right thing. In addition a lot fo the progression of the game only comes along when you discover certain facts so unless you make every phrase highlightable and addable (rather than manually typing in everything with perfect grammar/spelling/phrasing) it's going to be a very infurating process.

There's also the conflicting data mechanic which good ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ luck avoiding those without the game telling you they exist, especially since you don't know about conflicting data until you unlock everything there is to read about it -- which would be impossible to tell 99% of the time (You would have to suspect lying of some sort or some sort of obvious bluff, which isn't always the case.)

[Spark]

Originally posted by AlienDjinn:

It has so much potential but why in god's name didn't the Devs let us select our own relevant text?

I get that it would a ton of complexity but they could add a serial processing component so if you send too much or the wrong text, it takes too long or Orwell barfs at you. The only mystery right now is can you find all the click-bait.

Don't get me wrong, I bought this game becaue I love the premise. My advice to the Devs: Stop coding for 4-6 hrs and play the hell out of "Her Story" for inspiration.

YOU WANT TO MAKE A RESPONSE, FOR EVERYTHING IN THE GAME?!!?!?!?

EXCUSE ME, DO YOU HAVE 5000 HOURS TO CODE?
Because i doubt these devs do either

[AlienDjinn]

For those that gave thoughtful replies, nice chatting with you.

For everyone else, OK, I stand corrected. This is not the game I thought I was buying. Since it's pointless discussing it here, I'll leave my feedback in the form of a review.

It's ironic that the week the Russians LITERALLY influenced the American presidential election by releasing hacked emails (which might be fake), that we're not willing to dream big about the experience this game could provide.

To Orwell's credit as I was reading my Facebook feed this morning, it was astonishing how many people were assuming the worst about the people they know and care about because of how they voted. As I was reading, I was imagining how easily it would be to profle your friends and family as extremists or hate mongers and use their own beliefs and principles against them. Hopefully America will never becomes that dark future, but thanks to creators of Orwell for reminding us it could happen.

[BtB]

If you're interested, check out the Times article on "The Agency." It's interesting how much the Russians have been involved in social media as a method of influencing American policy, and if you've ever talked to anyone on a public Facebook post who was blindingly (and stupidly) pro-Russian but somehow had plenty of links and refused to argue using their own words, you may have met one. I shut one down during the invasion of Ukraine, but I had plenty of photo evidence of the Russian involvement.

Also interesting, and pretty indicative of the trolls being Russian Intelligence is how they suddenly all shut up on 15 March 2015, halfway through Putin's little disappearing act. Neat reading.

And if nothing else, you sure learned how people vomit information and how it'll be misused and misinterpreted. Anyway, sorry to have people run you off.

[Mo0rk]

I agree more flexibility would make a more interesting game from a play perspective but I'm not sure how it would work. Something you probably are not aware of if you only played the first chapter is that all the links and documents you obtained in each chapter remain on your bookmarks page and can be revisited at any point. It is even necessary to revisit some of them for additional informaton you didn't realise would be needed at earlier points in the story. If you didn't have the red star and highlighted text mechanics, can you imagine how much time you would spend reading through everything multiple times in say the fifth episode when you have possibly upwards of a hundred links to listener chats and documents and insder PC desktops (you probably didn't get to that point in the game)?

I think these mechanics are there to keep the story moving along at about the right pace, as the story and the end result of your choice of data to upload is the point of this game. The point of the game in Her Story conversely revolves around the experience of unveiling the story. The story itself in that game is a simple one, even taking the twist into account.

Anyway, it's regretable that Orwell is not the game you were expecting.

A game with a similar concept to Orwell which may well be more what you are looking for is Need to Know if you are interested, although it is in private alpha at the moment so is not yet released:

http://needtoknowgame.com/

I belive that game is more nuanced. It has in-work and out-of-work hours. In work time your job is similar to that in Orwell in that you are searching people's private web pages and communications etc for suspicious data but instead of picking off highlighted bits of text you read stuff and then simply tell your superiors whether the target is a threat or not. The more times you correctly identify a threatening person, the more you climb the ranks and the higher your rank, the more powers of surveilance you are granted.

Out of work, you can use your powers for your own gain, if you choose to. For example, you may be interested in dating a certain girl, so you may choose to use your powers to spy on her and find out everything about her. You may then use your knowledge in open conversation with her with the express purpose of seducing her. And that's tame compared to some of the stuff you will be able to do in that game. Can't afford to pay the rent to your landlord? Why not just comb through all his personal communications, find something incriminating and have him arrested? It basically gives you great power and then puts temptation in your way to abuse it ;-)

Edit:

Here's a gameplay vid of the alpha release:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qcN4TdbeFo

[BtB]

My issue with any video is they may not be indicative of the final product. It looks interesting, but I don't do preorders anymore. Been burned way too many times.

[Mo0rk]

Just to clarify, I've not Kickstarted or pre-ordered Need to Know. Just something I came across that interests me :-).

Yeah, I've been burned with pre-orders too.

[Xentrig]

So, on one hand I agree with you. I felt like my hand was being held. But as others have stated, later on in the episodes, I realized that I would have either spent forever looking for specific pieces, or quit playing the game because as interesting as it is, it's not addictive enough to play needle in a haystack. Thus, I'm happy with the way it's done. Yes, it feels a bit guided, but it's a necessary evil to keep the pacing up. The story is good, and my heart jumped a little (very unexpected for me) in at least one of the scenes. This makes the game for me.

Had it been totally up to me to find everything, I feel like this would have become lost amongst the many other titles I own but never play. The game guiding me kept me engaged throughout. Now I just need the 5th episode to hit :)

Just my .02

[Clord]

Problem comes when you would submit things that make sense in context but game's detection system wouldn't get it. You would need an actual advanced AI to try understand what you mean.