Almighty Game Designer

The theme of Detroit: The Weird is science fiction in the near future.

In the real world, changes in technology and social patterns are mutually reinforcing, just like GPS positioning, which affects all aspects of life for all and profoundly changes people's lifestyles.

If, in the future, black technologies such as neural connectivity, antigravity devices, controllable nuclear fusion, ultra-range transport, etc., then just one of them could make a dramatic difference in real life.

Of all the black technologies, the first and the second are likely to have a completely different impact on the real world, transforming the social fabric into something completely different.

The so-called "point distorted the technology tree”, that's what it means.

Many films and TV shows with science fiction elements are just old bottles of new wine, creating a completely unconvincing future because the technology tree is too distorted. In a movie, for example, when a Kanda technology is so developed and the social system is so backward, it is inevitably very absurd that the leader should personally fight with the enemy in the face of alien invasion.

For a story, it doesn't matter if it's not rigorous, the key is to see what it wants to say and what it feels like for the audience and the players.

From this point of view, the subject of "science fiction in the near future” is a more manageable option.

This “near-future science fiction” means that for a short period of time to come, the slightest advances in a technology will have an impact on human behavioral habits and social patterns. While maintaining the overall data unchanged, only a small variable is taken to explore some of the underlying social problems.

Detroit: The Changer, technically, is not the future world, it's just a world that happens to distort the tree. Compared to the real world, the only technological leap is biomicry, and everything else is no different than it is now. Transportation, housing, guns… are not very different from modern society.

That's what this game is all about: artificial intelligence, biomimicry, what impact it will have on our society if it comes out.

Most people's questioning of this game focuses on two main points.

First, why does it exacerbate social injustice when this is clearly a huge leap in productivity?

Secondly, why does artificial intelligence have to be human?

In fact, both points can be explained, it is a matter of insight, but it cannot be said that it is the hard wound of this story.

First of all, the enormous leap in productivity does not mean the early arrival of communism. During the industrial revolution, many workers smashed machines because they believed that machines had taken their jobs, which was a real event in history. The leap in productivity and the emancipation of the workforce do not mean that its results are accessible to all. Just as transnational corporations captured large profits, benefiting top capitalists, workers in developed countries faced unemployment.

Workers in the lighthouse countries are calling for jobs to return because they actually lived less well than they did in the '60s and' 70s, when they needed only one person to work to support their cars, but now they can't, because transnational corporations are driving their factories to cheaper places in the workforce, and these workers are facing unemployment and living worse.

Indeed, productivity has increased, but the direct beneficiaries are the executives, capitalists and politicians of large corporations. It is also a good thing for the middle class of society to have access to biomimetics at little cost, but it is also normal for the bottom of society for biomimetics to cause their unemployment.

For manual workers, such as take-out brothers, courier brothers, workers, salesmen, etc., they would inevitably lose their jobs if such cheap biomicrys appeared. And what can they do when they're unemployed?

As for placing hope in the social security system… this is a wishful idea, capitalists make a lot of money, you take money from them to feed the poor, will they be happy? The Lighthouse Nation is inherently a “corrupt” capitalist country, with a big consortium holding politics, and you want to take money from capitalists to build communism, which is a little more than you can imagine.

For these large consortia, it is not their business for the poor to die or live. As long as the poor do not rebel or revolutionize, they will not be willing to pay so much to maintain social stability when social contradictions are not exacerbated to the extreme.

The time point chosen by Detroit: The Variant is the time node of the sudden emergence of biomimetic technology and the rapid change of society. It can be said that the whole of Detroit is not fully prepared for this transformation, and the turmoil manifested in the game is actually the pain caused by the transformation.

Secondly, why does artificial intelligence have to be human? Because the most comprehensible illusion of artificial intelligence at this stage is the human being itself.

Because human beings are the most advanced intelligent life we know today, and if there is some kind of intelligent life that is more advanced than human beings, such as the Trisomy, artificial intelligence could become the Trisomy.

If there are two domestic robots for you to choose from, one is the robot Wallace, with tracks and robotic arms; the other is Miss Kara, which one are you choosing?

Obviously, the latter represents a more advanced form of artificial intelligence that… is just as difficult to distinguish as human beings.

Strictly speaking, "fully controllable AI" is lower than “uncontrollable AI like humans”. If humans were to develop the highest level of artificial intelligence, it would almost certainly be out of control, otherwise it would not be worthy of being called the "highest level of artificial intelligence”.

And of course, one of the problems with Detroit: The Changer is that the world doesn't seem to have any biomimetic front-line technology points.

Luther, for example, was developed to carry heavy loads, Kara for domestic service, and some female biomimetics for special needs… these biomimetics should have been made a long time ago, because they don't need that high level of artificial intelligence at all, let alone make their minds the same as humans. Wouldn't it be better to be a professional robot to carry heavy loads? Why be a big, tall guy with a black face?

You can say that it's a little tough on this, but it's still that line. In the near future, science fiction is the future world of "a little distorted technology tree," and you can totally understand that people in this world just skipped the front-row technology and just lit up the biomimetic technology points.

The loopholes have to be made to tell a story, and it's not the end of these branches that matters, but what the story is trying to tell us and what we can learn from it.

It's a touching story, that's enough.