ranzware
In 1996, a US studio called MediaX began working on a videogame inspired by George Orwell’s 1984. It was called Big Brother, and you played a member of the resistance called Eric Blair (which was Orwell’s real name), breaking into and sabotaging government installations across 12 levels with hundreds of puzzles. Yes, they were turning Orwell’s classic dystopian novel into an adventure game.
MediaX’s Big Brother was canceled in 1999 or 2000, possibly because the licence had expired before the game could be completed. It had been shown at E3 in 1998, with a release date of September that year and a $30 price tag, but at some point after that it was delayed and subsequently thrown down the memory hole.
A demo from January of 1999 has recently surfaced on the Internet Archive, though before you race to download it I’d take a watch of the video embedded above. It’s an adventure game of the “find wrench” and “turn valve to adjust water pressure” variety, only in first-person, as if someone remade Myst with Quake’s graphics. Apart from the posters declaring WAR IS PEACE and HATRED IS POWER it doesn’t feel particularly Orwellian, nor does it look like a particularly interesting videogame.
I’m glad it’s been preserved for the sake of history, but if it’s a properly dystopian videogame you’re looking for then Papers, Please already exists. And there’s another official adaptation of 1984 on the way, with a Steam page that declares it’s been adapted “by the Narrative Designer of Subnautica, Talos Principle and FTL.”
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Kurt Indovina
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