Imagine waking up to a world where people think less of you for reading or writing. Or one where itâs not likely that youâd learn how to read or write at all, and if you did, youâd have to get rid of the evidenceâerase the data, destroy the letters. Imagine not having much control over the affairs of your life, from what you are allowed to say, to where you are able to go, or how you are able to live, to who youâd be allowed to marry. Imagine trying to rebel against this realityâŠand having your tongue cut out for it.
Now imagine all of this happening during a time when weâve perfected space travel and cryogenic stasis.
Is that possible? Can we waltz into the future without carrying âprogressâ there with us? Wonât technology pave the way for a better tomorrow; isnât this the promise found at the nucleus of science?
Christine Love, developer behind Analogue: A Hate Story and current Indiecade finalist, isnât so sure. Analogue, which takes the previous surreal-sounding premise and was released earlier this year to much praise, is a game that takes the idea of an advanced civilization gone awry. This allows it to create a harrowing tale of a woman pushed too far. A woman who cannot deal with being treated as less than human and goes insane, killing everybody aboard her spaceship.
The story is fictional, but itâs based on an actual time period; the Joseon Dynasty in Korea. This was a point in Koreaâs life when its society became strangely backwards thanks to internal strife and crisisâmuch like 9/11 set up conditions that allowed the war on terror to become a perpetual state of being in the United States.
Now that Christine Love is working on the follow-up, DLC for Analogue titled âHate Plus,â she hopes to tackle one of the failings of Analogue. Some players mightâve not realized that the point is that we are always just a step away from the type of society depicted in Analogue. âItâs sort of easy to dismiss as just âoh, thatâs just how it was in the past, itâs all cool now!â Christine told me via instant messenger. Neo-Confucianismâthe central ideology behind the Joseon Dynastyâmaking a comeback? Not likely.
Of course, it would be naive to think such a thing is completely impossible, especially with the burgeoning science of cliodynamicsâor, the study of historical dynamics which has uncovered that âhistory repeats itselfâ is more than a tired cliche. Itâs a thing whose existence is more and more proven real by mathematics. And with the constant media reminders of politicians who seem keen on mandating the ways a woman can be in charge of her own body, fearing a future where similar basic human rights are stripped from women is not wholly outlandish.
âI think itâs a cop-out to dismiss philosophies as unimaginable and unempathizable, just because theyâre also reprehensible. For one thing, you canât fight what you donât understand.â
âIt WAS a huge regression⊠in a way that North America right now kinda scarily reminds me of! You know, troubled times leading to nostalgia for the good old days (that didnât really exist), presenting modern inventions as being tradition,â Christine mused.
âA lot of the tenets of neo-Confucianism were not actually things that were ever tradition; it makes me think of, say, the notion that being anti-abortion is a fundamental part of being Christian in the United States right now when really itâs just something that dates to like the â70s. Only instead of selectively quoting Confucius, itâs selectively quoting the bible.â
Plus, itâs curious to note that modern times have no shortage of what Naomi Klein calls âshock doctrines,â or man-made crises engineered specifically to create the opportunity to push problematic reformsâlike the destruction of womenâs rights. Hypothetically, of course. But shock doctrine is why we have an utter erosion of rights in the in the United States right nowâthe Patriot Act is an exampleâall in the name of democracy.
Anna Anthropy puts it best when she states âa womanâs apocalypse is not the terror of technological regression, but of social regression: not a strange and unknown future but the imposition of an all-too-familiar pastâŠ.doesnât describe a far future nightmare, but a near one: the protagonist is a woman like me or you, living in her own house, dressing how she wants, fucking partners of her own choosing, whose world is changed overnight into one in which she is property, a walking, breathing womb, existing only so that she may carry a manâs child.â
Itâs no accident that the central character of Analogue is a teenager much like any other that might exist today.
For Christine, creating the story is no easy thing. During development she would often remark on the necessity of being drunkâwhich is not uncommon for a writer, to be sure. But you donât often hear about authors who have difficulty writing because the subject is just that reprehensible and disgustingâŠbut it takes playing Analogue to have a good idea of what this means, exactly. Suffice it to say that as I personally played, it wasnât uncommon for me to feel uneasy if not nauseated by the tale.
âOh god, itâs going to be terrible and scary to live in [the villainsâ] head for monthsâŠtheyâre an evolutionary psychologist!â Christine exclaimed.
Still, itâs an important exercise for her to undergo. âIâm kinda interested in how those ideas take root, both in people, and also in society. Nobody ever just wakes up one day and says âyeah, I hate women, I wish weâd stop letting them read.â
The curiosity, to meâas a personal friend of Christineâseems to extend beyond needing to get into the appropriate headspace to write. As someone who struggles with mild Autism, Christine can sometimes have difficulty with social interactions, if not understanding feelings and emotions . It also seems like no mistake that most of her games feature AIsâher early game, Digital: A Love Story, can be said to be a story where you teach an AI how to love. In this way, writing to me can sometimes seem as something Christine does to come to terms with her issues, if not overcome them.
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But thereâs a more tangible benefit of figuring out how to write from the point of view of a misogynistic society, too. It can help us consider how to better deal with the reality it proposes. âI think itâs a cop-out to dismiss philosophies as unimaginable and unempathizable, just because theyâre also reprehensible. For one thing, you canât fight what you donât understand,â Christine explained. âAnd secondly⊠when presented with things that are unimaginably bad like that, people often like to think âoh, I wouldnât be like that, Iâd be differentâ and I think itâs pretty important that people realize that no, they wouldnât. At least, not if they didnât understand the causes of it.â
Hate Plus takes place right after A Hate Story, with your character returning to Earth after having discovered the tragedy that occurred on the spaceship. The plan is to shed some light on what, exactly, were the circumstances that led to the society breaking down and reverting to a less progressive philosophy.
Prior to Hate Plus, these circumstances were a piquant mystery: the player had no idea what happened to make things the way they were. This makes the prospect of Hate Plus an exciting one, as it will finally answer big questions that Analogue left unanswered. Itâs particularly enticing when you consider that it, too, will take many inspirations from actual history. Christine wants to âdraft a plausible political program for womenâs rights being completely eroded.â She expects to undergo heavy research in hefty tomes of Korean history, much like her first game.
She teases that if players thought Analogue was sad, theyâre in for something else on Hate Plus. âIâm sure you can imagine that, if nothing else, what happened to *Mute [a central character in Analogue] in the transition from being in modern society to neo-Joseon was not heartwarming.â
Hate Plus is hoping to go for the jugular on January of the coming year.
(Ryan Jorgensen | Shutterstock)
