Life Imitates Art: Warren Spector Says He Wouldn't Make 'Deus Ex' In Today's Toxic Climate

from the mankind-divided dept

The Deus Ex franchise has found its way onto Techdirt's pages a couple of times in the past. If you're not familiar with the series, it's a cyberpunk-ish take on the near future with broad themes around human augmentation, and the weaving of broad and famous conspiracy theories. That perhaps makes it somewhat ironic that several of our posts dealing with the franchise have to do with mass media outlets getting confused into thinking its augmentation stories were real life, or the conspiracy theories that centered around leaks for the original game's sequel were true. The conspiracy theories woven into the original Deus Ex storyline were of the grand variety: takeover of government by biomedical companies pushing a vaccine for a sickness it created, the illuminati, FEMA takeovers, AI-driven surveillance of the public, etc.

And it's the fact that such conspiracy-driven thinking today led Warren Spector, the creator of the series, to recently state that he probably wouldn't have created the game today if given the chance.

Deus Ex was originally released in 2000 but took place in an alternate 2052 where many of the real world conspiracy theories have come true. The plot included references to vaccinations, black helicopters, FEMA, and ECHELON amongst others, some of which have connotations to real-life events. Spector said, “Interestingly, I’m not sure I’d make Deus Ex today. The conspiracy theories we wrote about are now part of the real world. I don’t want to support that.”

This could be a post about how drastically disinformation has altered our society. Or it could be a post about how some of the very real aspects of modern surveillance have so warped the trust between the public and government so as to allow more conspiracy theories to better breathe.

But I think instead I'd like to focus on how clearly this illustrates the artistic nature of video games. The desire, or not, to create certain kinds of art due to the reflection such art receives from the broader society is exactly the kind of thing artists operating in other artforms have to deal with. Art imitates life, yes, but in the case of speculative fiction like this, it appears that life can also imitate art. Spector notes that seeing what has happened in the world since Deus Ex was first released in 2000 has had a profound effect on him as an artist.

Earlier, Spector had commented on how he was “constantly amazed at how accurate our view of the world ended up being. Frankly it freaks me out a bit.” Some of the conspiracy theories that didn’t end up in the game were those surrounding Denver Airport because they were considered “too silly to include in the game.” These include theories about secret tunnels, connections to aliens and Nazi secret societies, and hidden messages within the airport’s artwork. Spector is now incredulous that they’re “something people actually believe.”

If you had thought that the debate over whether video games are an artform was settled, you haven't been paying attention. To this day, there are very real implications for the courts and wider government understanding the artform, particularly when it comes to whether video games receive the same First Amendment protections as movies and literature.

Hopefully, artists like Spector, engaging in these types of artistic internal debates, can help solidify the understanding further.

Filed Under: conspiracies, conspiracy theories, culture, deus ex, life imitates art, warren spector

Square Enix Tries Being Cool And Embraces Fan-Conversion Of Original Deus Ex

from the machina-me-happy dept

Deus Ex is a video game series built around the theme of human-augmentation and its effects on people's underlying humanity. It is published by Square Enix, a company built around the theme of trying to piss off fans at every possible turn. Whether it was the nuking of a fan-translation that had already been three years in the works, the company's loving embrace of stupid DRM, or cease-and-desist-ing an entirely harmless Final Fantasy fan-film out of existence, it's always appeared that Square Enix might just be some kind of corporate monster that can only sustain itself on the tears of its biggest fans.

But maybe they had their heart augmented or something? I don't know, but this story about Square Enix not only allowing a major fan-made total conversion to the original Deus Ex game to exist, but actually going out of its way to endorse it, is a rather profound about-face for the company. The conversion is entitled Revision, and it's pretty damned impressive.

Revision, which went live on Steam a few hours ago, is more than just a set of new textures, but holy cow, it has that. It’s not only a visual upgrade, either. Revision has a bunch of different mods, such as Human Renovation, which fixed glitches, re-balanced augmentations, modified the AI of various NPCs, and a whole bunch more. Fans have been slowly improving and tweaking Deus Ex for a number of years, but if you’ve been afraid to download a bunch of random mods, Revision is your catch all solution.

I haven't played it yet, but I sure as hell will. Having said that, the visual and gameplay updates are of a quality that you'd expect from a group of fans with a great deal of love for the game. This is normally when Square would step in and dash the sandcastle just for fun, but it's gone a different route, going so far as to issue a press release at the time that Revision went live on Steam.

Today Square Enix and Eidos-Montréal continue to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the release of the original Deus Ex® by authorizing a fan-created mod for the first Deus Ex game originally released in 2000. Called ‘Revision’, the mod by Caustic Creative overhauls the environments and soundtrack of the original Deus Ex and is available to download for free today on Steam®.

Huh. Deus Ex is all about conspiracy theories at its heart, so maybe there is some nefarious purpose behind Square doing this? All kidding aside, it's nice to see once-controlling companies embrace their fans and those fans' labors of love this way. After all, what's the harm? At worst, this will drive players of the new games to go buy the old ones and give them a spin. Everyone wins.

Filed Under: copyright, deus ex, fan art, fan conversion, fans
Companies: square enix

British Newspaper Confuses Deus Ex With Real Life

from the augmented-fact-checking-needed dept

If you dig through a Techdirt search on augmentation, you'll return links for our ongoing Daily Dirt pieces and some interesting stuff about augmented reality. That kind of thing is all well and good, but fans of cyberpunk thrill-rides like me have something different in mind for ourselves when it comes to augments. We want the good stuff. You know, implanted HUD vision, mechanical servos in our leg joints that will make us jump like LeBron, maybe a gun-arm or two so we can savagely disperse justice on unsuspecting bad guys. Unfortunately, very little in the way of improvement in these fields has occurred.

Until now. I bring you the British tabloid, The Sun, and their amazing story about an augmented mechanical eyeball that, if associated material is to be believed, allows you to see through walls, color-codes friends and enemies, and permits telescopic zoom. Here's the reference from The Sun.

Oops. See, part of the reason that Sarif Industries' cybernetic implants are still in their infancy is that the company doesn't exist. Sarif Industries is a fictitious company from a cyberpunk video game, Deus Ex, set in a future Detroit. As Kotaku notes:

Granted, the folks behind The Sun don't really care that much about nonsense like "accuracy" or "making sure the news they report isn't actually from a video game." And yes, perhaps eyeball implants will indeed be common in 50 years. But they probably won't come from Sarif Industries.

Thank science for all the fact-checking our brick and mortar newspapers do. On the other hand, seriously, how much fact-checking is required to determine that no biomedical company producing what would be a ground-breaking achievement in augmentation exists in Detroit? I recognize that the Sun has a bit of a reputation for skipping out on pesky little things like "facts" in its reporting, but rewriting video games as fact seems to take things to a different level.

Filed Under: deus ex, journalism, real life, tabloids, the sun, uk, video games
Companies: the sun

Gamestop Discovers The Streisand Effect; Gives OnLive Tons Of Free Publicity In Trying To Take Away Coupons

from the epic-failure dept

Last week was an interesting week for Gamestop. As a ton of you sent in, the company decided to require all stores to open up all PC copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and discard an included coupon for a free version of the game via the OnLive streaming platform. OnLive and Square Enix had announced the promotion to help both companies, but apparently Gamestop was jealous to be cut out of the mix. Below is an image of the order that GameSpy, who broke that story, received: From there the story got more bizarre. Gamestop didn't even seem to realize how bad this looked at first, insisting that it just didn't want to help advertise "a competitor." Soon after all of this came out, Gamestop ordered its stores to remove the game from its shelves entirely as part of a "recall" in agreement with Square Enix. The likely implication: Gamestop and Square Enix worked out a deal to offer versions of the game without the coupon, meaning Gamestop employees won't have to destroy the coupons.

However, the real story in all of this should be just how much free publicity Gamestop just gave OnLive in its hamfisted attempt to pretend the company didn't exist. And, of course, now it means that anyone wishing to buy the PC version of the game is probably (assuming that no coupons will be available) better off buying it from someone other than Gamestop. I've defended Gamestop's used game sales practices for years, but I'm amazed the company thought any of this was a good idea.

Filed Under: coupons, deus ex, streisand effect
Companies: gamestop, onlive, square enix

Definition Of Irony: Deus Ex Leak Spawns Conspiracy Theories

from the the-truth-is-out-there dept

If you don't know the story of the Deus Ex franchise, it's a good one. The original game wove a cyberpunk conspiracy thriller action game that was as critically acclaimed as it was wildly successful. That wild success spawned a wildly lame sequel that disappointed fans of the franchise. But those fans were pleased to learn that another sequel would be coming out this summer, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. There was some speculation as to whether Eidos Montreal could finally put out a worthy sequel to the original, but anticipation mounted.

You know what happened next, because it happens all the time. An early build of the game leaked onto torrent sites. The only thing stranger than the company's reaction to all this is the story of how it happened. First, let's get the legal nonsense out of the way.

According to The Escapist, the publisher sued fifteen "John Does" for accessing the build and leaking it to the public Square Enix was displeased, lamenting (and I swear to you I'm not making this up) the estimated loss of $5,000 whole dollars! So they're bringing suit against unnamed defendents, paying whatever associated legal costs are required for such an endeavor. I'm struggling with the obvious question: why? For $5,000? What's a UK lawyer cost these days?

Interestingly, there was some question about how this whole thing happened and whether or not Square Enix had something to do with the leak. The official story is that a group of bad guys, real revolutionary types, somehow faked Italian journalist credentials to get the early build from Steam. Then, after much smokey back room discussion, uploaded the leak to torrent sites. There was some initial speculation that Square Enix may have leaked this themselves, due to what appears to be consensus that this leak helped the title in marketing and pre-sales, since fears of an unworthy sequel were laid to rest. But most are taking the lawsuit brought before the UK court over the lost $5,000 as evidence that they didn't (because such a suit makes so much more sense?).

As a side note, minus the mucking up of the legal system for all this garbage, how cool would it have been if Square did manufacture this leak and get creative with the story of how it fictionally happened? What if they got the benefit of this leak (laying fears of a crappy game to rest) while simultaneously building even more hype around the game through fictional conspiratorial intrigue? They could have mocked up interviews with internet cafe owners claiming that MiBs came in and used their property to pull off this "heist". They could have taken their cues from the movie The Fourth Kind and created fictional accounts all across the web that I can promise you Deus Ex fans would have absolutely eaten up.

Instead, we have a story about a couple of folks downloading it via Steam and a lawsuit from a video game mega-publisher claiming damages of an amount less than it would cost one of their execs to go on a European vacation.

So you tell me which is crazier, the tale of Illuminati dominance and conspiratorial intrigue woven into the Deus Ex mythos, or a company bringing legal action to court over five thousand whole dollars?

Filed Under: conspiracies, deus ex, leaks