Watch Dogs and pervasive gaming

Watch Dogs is a game about vigilante Aiden Pearce. The futuristic Chicago is his playground. The entire city is connected by a system called ctOS. This means that traffic lights, pipes, bridges, trains and so on are connected and they are therefore all hackable. Aiden Pearce so happens to be a very skilled hacker and parkour practitioner, using the ctOS system to his own advantage. He hacks through his phone, which enables him to control the city and to check the people he meet on the street. The phone is equipped with a profiler that tells Aiden personal information on the people he profile as well as enable him to steel money from them. Aiden’s greatest weapon is therefore his phone.

The game has multiple online parts including a multiplayer option for a max of 8 players to roam free in the world.

When playing the single-player mode one has the opportunity to join an online game and either race or fight other players. These are online games that will give you points and trophies without affecting your normal gameplay. But requests for racing can be shown on the screen when running around the city freely.

There are two other online games, but in these you enter another players game without their knowledge.

One of them is hacking: here you are challenged to hack another player’s phone without them profiling you.

You therefore enter their world and hack them when they are within sight. Once you start hacking, they will be alerted of your presence and start looking for you. However, you do not look like Aiden Pearce to them, but a random person on the street. They are therefore forced to profile every person they see within the purple circle shown on the map to contain both your locations.

You win the hacking when you have hacked them a 100% and thereby gained the desired file. They win by profiling you and even killing you after.

When getting hacked you can be anywhere in the city, doing whatever you want – except playing the main story. And then you are suddenly under attack. Many players therefore when trying to find the hacker tend to look at “human” behavior such as not crossing the road by the crosswalk, or by speeding and such.

Tailing is a little bit different. Here the player being tailed is told so by the system. They can be wondering around and suddenly notice a person acting differently than an AI. Their job is to profile you and kill you. However, they cannot recognize you as anything other than a normal person so if the player trailing you is good you will not even notice until a sign says that you have been tailed.

The player tailing must be able to blend in and does therefore not necessarily have to hide from the other player.

Another thing about this is that players can tail you while you are looking at the map, trying to decide where to go or basically when you think the game is paused. This is seen when you tail a player standing perfectly still, doing nothing.

A pervasive game is a game that has one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play socially, spatially or temporally.

 Taking the text: “fun with strangers” McGonigal talks about the game “the comfort of strangers” where the player meet lovers and dancers, giving and taking your lives respectively. You do not know who they are only that they are close and that you have either gained or lost a life. You therefore have to be aware of your surroundings and the strangers around you. They are your friends and foes.

The two mini-games in watch dogs can very well be perceived as pervasive, since they use the ”strangers” surrounding us. However now they are only visually available to us on the screen and not in our own living room. It is a form of game within a game effect. The other online players of the game have the opportunity to enter your game without your knowledge and accept. You are then tasked to find among the AI-people and eliminate them from your game.

The games expand the social of the original game, forcing you to interact with strangers. It also expands temporal as you can be affected even whilst you are “on pause”, looking at the map.

It breaks the magic circle since you are no longer in control of the game world.

The mini-games seem to simulate a pervasive game within the game world of Watch Dogs.

The sudden hacking of your person in the game can be a very overwhelming and scary happening to some players. This leads to players shutting of their console as they are hacked leaving the hacker alone and back in their own game world. Others panic and start shooting every AI near them, in the hopes of getting the hacker. This approach however more often than not leads the player to be chased by the police instead.

When with your console many players are in the confines of their homes, playing against each other, alone or maybe even online. Nevertheless, this sudden intrusion cannot only feel like an intrusion in your game but also like a break in to your home.