| Neurocracy | |
|---|---|
 Logo of Omnipedia | |
| Developer(s) | Playthroughline |
| Designer(s) | Matei Stanca |
| Artist(s) | Alice Duke |
| Writer(s) | Joannes Truyens |
| Platform(s) | Web browser |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Neurocracy is a browser-based video game developed by Joannes Truyens, Matei Stanca and Younès Rabii under the label Playthroughline, released in ten weekly episodes from July to September 2021. Players explore Omnipedia, a fictional Misplaced Pages successor launched in 2049, and uncover information about the assassination of its major investor, Xu Shaoyong, by perusing its articles, hyperlinks and revision histories. It has been described as "wiki-based metafiction".
Gameplay
Neurocracy has variously been described as an alternate reality game and hypertext fiction. Navigating through their own web browsers, players peruse Omnipedia, a fictional online encyclopedia heavily modelled on Misplaced Pages, to solve the assassination of its major investor, Xu Shaoyong.
Omnipedia's articles mimic Misplaced Pages's distinctive formatting and dispassionate tone, complete with images, infoboxes and citations. Players can also view these articles' revision histories – allowing them to discover when and how articles' text was expanded, deleted or changed. These histories were updated as new episodes were released. Players can explore Omnipedia through its function to display random articles or by following its extensive hyperlinks. To compensate for its writers' inability to create a full-length page for every hyperlink, while maintaining the impression of a comprehensive, interlinked encyclopedia, most articles' content is limited to a brief preview. Players view these previews by hovering their mouse over a hyperlink, mimicking Misplaced Pages's ability to display article previews.
Neurocracy lacks any user interface other than Omnipedia's own and does not log players' progress in solving its mysteries. Reviewers have suggested players instead record their deductions in a separate document or join Neurocracy's community Discord server to share speculations with other players. Over the course of Neurocracy's episodic release, Truyens planned to modify its narrative in response to player-created theories, although its ultimate ending would be unchanged.
Synopsis
The game is set in 2049 where AI technology has advanced considerably; China has supplanted the United States as the global superpower; and the world is still recovering from a pandemic of Cariappa-Muren disease, a tuna-borne prion illness. On 1 October 2049, the first in-game "day", Chinese technology billionaire Xu Shaoyong is assassinated in Beijing when his helicopter is shot down by a hacked security drone.
Development
Neurocracy was developed by Joannes Truyens and Matei Stanca, who met in the Half-Life modding scene. In 2019, they raised £12,000 via a Kickstarter campaign, which was sufficient to commission Alice Duke, a concept artist, to produce the game's illustrations. Several guest writers – Leigh Alexander, Malka Older, Axel Hassen Taiari, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Holly Nielsen and Younès Rabii – contributed articles for Omnipedia. Although Truyens briefed the writers on Neurocracy's overarching plotlines, they were otherwise permitted creative freedom.
Stanca was responsible for Omnipedia's technical development. To create Omnipedia, they initially planned to employ MediaWiki, the underlying software of Misplaced Pages itself – however, it was outside their technical experience. Since Omnipedia's software was not required to fully maintain a wiki, merely to simulate its appearance, Stanca instead used Drupal.
Truyens has cited the influence of Deus Ex on the worldbuilding of Neurocracy, telling PC Gamer "I soaked up all the attention to detail in its depiction of a grounded near-future...which made me want to create such a world of my own". The open-ended nature of games such as 80 Days and Heaven's Vault inspired the choice to allow players to approach the story from any angle or starting point.
Reception
Critical reception of the game was generally positive. Critics noted the novelty of the game's format, which uses ergodic text extensively. Sarah Maria Griffin, writing in The Guardian, praised the game's realistic worldbuilding: "There is a sense in each entry that what we see there could be just around the corner. This is what excellent science fiction does: it holds up a mirror to culture as it is, and shows us what is just creeping up behind us". Oscar Westerholm, writing for Sydsvenskan, agreed, especially with regard to the game's depiction of disinformation, and noted that Omnipedia's dynamic nature reflects that of information on the Internet and a changing global society.
References
- ^ Griffin, Sarah Maria (16 September 2021). "Neurocracy: futuristic murder-mystery fiction as told through Misplaced Pages". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
- Price, Renata (3 September 2021). "Dive Into A Murder Mystery On This Creepy, Cyberpunk Misplaced Pages". Kotaku. G/O Media. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
- ^ Ong, Alexis (14 July 2021). "Neurocracy is future fiction in the form of Misplaced Pages". The Verge. Vox Media. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
- Ong, Alexis (13 December 2019). "Hypertext Transfer: How Misplaced Pages and its Forerunners Inspired a New Kind of Game". EGM. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
- ^ Gordon, Lewis (31 July 2021). "'Neurocracy' Is a Murder Mystery That Plays Like a Misplaced Pages Binge". Waypoint. Vice Media. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
- Clayton, Natalie (19 July 2021). "Solve a murder by flicking through a fake future Misplaced Pages". PC Gamer. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
- "Neurocracy and when Misplaced Pages leads to murder | Financial Times". www.ft.com. Retrieved 2023-08-22.
- Truyens, Joannes (6 August 2020). "Neurocracy: Using Misplaced Pages as an Interactive Narrative Device". Gamasutra. Informa. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
- Stanca, Matei (22 October 2020). "Creating a futuristic Misplaced Pages for Neurocracy". Playthroughline. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
- Peel, Jeremy (2021-11-26). "How Deus Ex inspired a Misplaced Pages-style murder mystery". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2023-03-18.
- Westerholm, Oscar (2021-11-11). "Året är 2048 – och ett auktoritärt Misplaced Pages äger sanningen". Sydsvenskan (in Swedish). Bonnier Group. p. C7. Retrieved 2021-11-19.
'Neurocracy' simulerar hur det digitala uppslagsverket förändras för att spegla samhället. Artiklar redigeras, skrivs om och stryks ner för att anpassa sig efter ett globalt samhälle som befinner sig i gungfly. 'Neurocracy' skildrar övertygande ögonblicket när sanning och lögn blir till maktens verktyg.