Life is like a video game…
Watch Dogs is Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure stealth sandbox set for release on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360, and the Xbox One.
Set in alternate reality Chicago, Illinois, the player controls Aidan Pearce (voiced by Noam Jenkins) who can hack into electronic devices linked to the city’s central operating system (CtOS). In the game universe, the Northeast blackout of 2003 was caused by a hacker, which prompted the development of CtOS. This system illustrates the concept of the inter-connectivity of data and the world’s increasing reliance on technology by controlling almost every piece of technology in the city and containing information on all citizens. Summarily, that system can be accessed by people like you so that bank numbers and personal funds can be stolen, traffic lights can be switched at random, and information can be used and abused.
To help illustrate their point and drive it home, Ubisoft launched a website, Watch Dog’s We are Data, showing us exactly how different the Watch Dogs universe is to ours.
Not very different after all.
In essence, the website allows you to look at data—CCTV networks, traffic lights, real-time running trains, as well as localized shared social media on Twitter, Facebook, email, Instagram, Flickr, etc. All of this pops up in real-time in three different cities around the world: London, Berlin, and Paris.
The point of the website is to underline the point of the game—that society’s hyper reliance on technology and interconnected reality already exists… and all that information can be shared, traded, and monitored in real-time by anyone. Even you.
Watch Dogs is set for release on November 19 for PC and current-gen consoles.
