You Are Either with Us or against Us: Manipulating Computer-Mediated Discourse in Orwellian Video Games

While also shedding light on the literary-ludic representation of totalitarian regimes, this paper primarily seeks to contribute to the study of multimodal textuality in video games by examining a literary-inspired series which, as I aim to demonstrate, heavily relies on the ideological manipulation of in-game computer-mediated discourse to produce meaning. Developed by a Hamburg-based indie company and clearly influenced by George Orwell’s popular dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, the ‘Orwell’ video game series currently comprises two titles, ‘Keeping an Eye on You’ (Osmotic Studios, 2016) and its midquel ‘Ignorance Is Strength’ (Osmotic Studios, 2018), which may be described as narrative-driven choices-matter drag-and-drop political thrillers. These games, which remediate both synchronous and asynchronous forms of computer-mediated communication, not only thematise but also gamify human-computer (as well as interhuman) interactions. Essentially, the player, who assumes the role of an investigator operating a state-run surveillance system called ‘Orwell’, is tasked with identifying potential threats to the totalitarian regime governing The Nation by scrutinising the digital activities of (at least initially) unsuspecting citizens. My close reading of ‘Keeping an Eye on You’ and ‘Ignorance Is Strength’ intends to investigate how, to what extent and for what purposes player and non-player characters are allowed or expected to manipulate in-game computer-mediated discourse. To assess the aesthetic and ideological implications of the manipulation of linguistic signs by a variety of language users within the two titles in the ‘Orwell’ series, my paper will place special emphasis on the multimodal emulation of features associated with different media, genres and text types and on the significant in-game consequences that the manipulation of computer-mediated discourse has on human characters. By means of a detailed multimodal analysis of the interrelated verbal and non-verbal rhetorics that are simultaneously at work in ‘Keeping an Eye on You’ and ‘Ignorance Is Strength’, I will identify and interpret the various ideological uses of in-game computer-mediated discourse, thus highlighting its fundamental role in the meaning-making process of the ‘Orwell’ video games