Infamous: Second
Son, a recently released exclusive for the Sony
PlayStation 4 game console doesn’t quite deserved to be described
as a political video game, at least not in the sense that there’s
some specific ideological message being delivered.
What’s interesting, though, is the way game developers at Sucker
Punch Productions have casually incorporated a slew of familiar
issues about security state overreach into the story, world, and
gameplay.
For the most part, Second Son is a fairly typical
open-world action game that casts players as a Delsin Rowe, a young
man granted a variety of superpowers that can be charged and
activated by interacting with the environment (smoke power
abilities require smoke, neon powers need neon, concrete powers use
concrete, and so on). In this case, the environment is a digitally
mocked up model of present-day Seattle, complete with all the
recognizable landmarks, including a fish market, a neon-lit version
of the Crocodile Café, and a fully scalable Space Needle. Running,
jumping, and gliding around the gorgeously rendered virtual city is
a lot of fun, and the game offers the best demonstration yet of the
processing power and visual potential of Sony’s new console.
But the game’s vision of Seattle is informed by newsy security
state fears: Rowe, the player’s avatar, is a Conduit—one of a rare
but growing cohort of individuals who can access all those special
environmentally charged powers. In the game’s world, the mere
existence of Conduits scares a lot of people (protesters are a
common sight in the game); they’re branded as terrorists by the
government and the media, and a heavily armed new agency, the
Department of Unified Protection (DUP), is created to keep them in
check.
Shortly after the game begins,
the DUP puts Seattle on lockdown. There are armed patrols and
massive security checkpoints everywhere. DUP drones patrol the
skies, and security cameras keep tabs on public spaces. In a nice
touch, most of the DUP agents have been granted Conduit-like powers
themselves—the same ones that they are supposed to be eliminating
from the general population. (Indeed, the agency is run by a
particularly powerful Conduit.)
In some ways, it’s a pretty familiar sci-fi security state
scenario. But many of the specifics—the checkpoints, the
cameras—are also pretty clear inspired by contemporary concerns
about surveillance-state excesses. The DUP resembles a sort of
exaggerated, hyper-militarized mash-up of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA), with maybe a little bit of the border patrol
and SWAT thrown into the mix as well. In the end, the DUP chief’s
motives turn out to be a little bit complex, but there’s never any
question that the agency is the game’s villain. You spend an awful
lot of time moving Rowe through spectacular set-piece battles with
the DUP, and many of the game’s objectives involving destroying DUP
equipment, checkpoints, and patrols.
I don’t think the game, which relies on a fairly typical
comic-book-style plot about a young man gaining powers, has a
particular political message in mind. But its casual use of
security state signifiers does suggest how common those worries now
are, how far they’ve spread, and how deeply and thoroughly they’ve
penetrated the pop-culture consciousness.
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