====== The Dead Account ======

An [[IFComp]] 2021 game, [[https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=w7gvrlhg4s9e757j|IFDB]]. Definitely captured some of the weirdness of being a social media moderator forced to comply with weird policies, and gives a voyeuristic (and explorable) view into the uncomfortable slice of life after a person's death. In the end I decided not to enforce the policy, and there wasn't any consequence for this.  The group chat session near the end was drawn out and my interest sort of dropped. I'd be shocked if this sort of moderator-initiated live group chat is how any large site is handling this today, and I didn't feel like I got additional insight into the characters - I just got to watch them be uncomfortable and cagey.

I rated it 5 of 10.

  +1 Interactions are fun and/or consonant with the theme
  +1 No distracting bugs
  +1 Effective prose
  +1 Memorable character(s)
  +1 I admire this

I wrote on intfiction.org:

This work definitely captured some of the weirdness of being a social media moderator forced to comply with weird policies, and provides a voyeuristic (and explorable) view into the uncomfortable slice of life after a person’s death.

Can we call “Facebook stalking” a game genre at this point? There have been a number of games that used this sort of structure now, including the moderation conceit (Hypnospace Outlaw comes to mind). And it works! This is a compelling way to tell a slice-of-life story. I couldn’t help thinking that Dead Account would benefit from a more social-media-like interface, but that would have been a lot more work to build. As is, the game creates an effective imitation of the experience of browsing profiles without the look-and-feel of it. It’s the right kind of interactive for the story being told here.

That’s not to say this is a copy of any other game with similar mechanics. There’s a concreteness to the characters and realism in their response to the tragic death of a friend. In particular, not everyone reacts the same way. Some friends are particularly subdued; others seem to move on uncomfortably quick. This seems very much drawn from life. Their voices, as written, are appropriate for contemporary online posts; they’re not all as distinct as they could be, but this might also be in favor of realism.

I think the low point for me was the group chat session near the end. It’s timed out to be more like a realtime chat experience, and I think my frustration with this outweighed any added realism. I don’t know if this is how any social-media site is handling the accounts of deceased individuals today, but it seems so traumatic that I felt like I had to suspend disbelief more here than I did in other parts of the story (and I’ll be horrified if I find out this is also true-to-life). I also didn’t feel like I got much additional insight into the characters from this live session - they were just uncomfortable and cagey.

In the end I decided not to enforce the account deletion policy, and there wasn’t any consequence for this; I had a bit of an expectation up front that the work would be about criticizing such a policy, but the ending suggests that’s less the point and it’s more about experiencing this moment with these characters.

The author clearly took a risk sharing this personal work, and effectively conveyed a difficult experience. Thank you Bez!

{{tag>played "played in 2021" "played on PC" "interactive fiction"}}