Virtual Dystopia

Posted on Mon 9 Feb 2009 by Keira Peney under Design .
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A dystopian landscape is a favourite of sci-fi writers and game designers everywhere. Atmospheric, with ready-made conflict, and easy to overlay with a veneer of social commentary, dystopia seems to be a video game dream come true.

What’s interesting, however, is that every dystopia boils down into two main types (plus a hybrid type).

These are:

Anarchic Dystopia

This is the post-world war three, global breakdown of civilization style dystopia. I’m sure we can all name a few examples. There are some common features of this kind of world, including:

Violent Enemies - zombies, mutants, robots, other people competing over limited resources….
Limited Resources - sometimes food and water, sometimes drugs, sometimes futuristic energy sources.
Tribal-styled culture. Groups are small and fragmented, often limited to just a handful of survivors of the apocalypse.

Landscapes are often incredibly bleak and violent, yet there are pockets of human resistance and grit to compensate. Like with many war stories, the moral seems to be that the worst of times brings out the best in human kind. Human superstition, creativity and resourcefulness all make a good showing, but so does greed, fear and mob rule.

The ‘Elite’ Dystopia

This is the kind that was most famously presented in 1984. Essentially, some powerful group has seized control of most of humanity, and is manipulating them into becoming, essentially, slaves. This kind of dystopia frequently features the following:

Sharp rich/poor divide. Most of the power, wealth, status and accompanying lifestyle flows to a privileged few, whilst the rest of humanity suffers
Bureaucracy. Attempts to do anything frequently involve a long and arduous paper trail, complete with irrational regulations and forms in triplicate.
The ‘Sheep’. A zombified population is frequently held in thrall by television (or a futuristic equivalent) and most human ambition and creativity has suffered as a result.
War. Not unexpectedly, war plays a massive part in this kind of story - partly because expending human beings in wars is a prime reason for this kind of society, and partly because one way of manipulating people is through fear.

There are, often, a few pockets of resistance, which are dealt with in an efficient and near-robotic fashion. Institutionalisation is rampant, and human beings have become just a comodity to be expended at will.

The Hybrid Dystopia

This is an interesting one, because it combines the other two. This can be done in a very simple way - most of the world is an anarchic wasteland, but a single group holds out thanks to their ruthless lifestyle and strong elite. Alternatively, we can witness a pendulum swing from one to the other (usually from a controlled to an anarchic rather than the other way around) over the course of the story.

What dystopian games can you think of? Which ones are your favourites?

I have a thing for Final Fantasy 7 (obviously!) which is a bit of a hybrid, but Bioshock would come under an anarchic dystopia and is another fave of mine.