Satire walks a fine, fine line in Jallooligan’s Crime Is Sexy. Enter your credit card information, sign away your rights in perpetuity to a rather extreme EULA, and then complete a user profile that includes your Facebook profile. I can’t tell you any more than that, however, because these faux data-collection fields are more than enough to make me flinch. Granted, you can fill in dummy information (and I shouldn’t have to tell you that), but these first few data-phishing screens are so accurate that the game, or at least the prelude to the game, made me genuinely uncomfortable, far more than anything understandably feigned, like Amnesia or even PT, which I have trouble forcing myself to march through, even with friends around. The concept simply hits too close to home for comfort, and while that’s not to say that a game needs to (or should be) built for the player’s convenience, especially when it’s trying to make a different point (see QWOP), I think it’s also fair for the user to opt out of such an experience. In my view, the best sort of art-game or statement sneaks in under the radar, rather than hammering you over the head with it, so whatever other surprises Crime Is Sexy has in store for me, I’ll have to read about them later. For now, it’s a bit as if Jonathan Swift were convincing me of his modest proposal not with his hypothetical essay, but with an actual bowl of baby soup–a much scarier sell.
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