This survival horror multiplayer game has mastered publicity stunts, but doesn’t quite make a lasting impression.
There are a few things that almost everyone finds annoying. For example, processing fees. Before dive-bombing your beer can, drain the flies that fly across your face. Likewise, “influencers” — TikTok creators, YouTubers, and other gelled 22-year-olds — tend to inspire deep resentment, which is probably why content warnings don’t mind throwing them into the horror game.
But unlike your resentment of silly flies, influencer fatigue also tends to spark jealousy: “Why don’t I have a hundred million followers?” You may find yourself confused in vulnerable moments, when work feels particularly overwhelming When you are depressed. “Mr. Beast doesn’t even real As a multiplayer game, therefore, Content Warning feels like an effective satire on our common obsession with attention. Most of the time, though, it’s as forgettable as the urge to always be seen and loved by everyone.
This is a losing game. Literally and figuratively. In theory, content warnings function similarly to Lethal Company, the most popular survival horror multiplayer game on Steam. During the three-day loop, you and up to three other aspiring SpöökTubers must descend into a charcoal pit. Your goal is to film something disturbing, go viral and make money. You’re Logan Paul and your brain is running at quarter speed. So you head into a deep pit with a depleted oxygen tank, and you hope you survive long enough to ride the suffocating diving bell back to the surface, upload your footage to your computer, and watch Advertising revenue poured in.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, but, less than a week after its popular free April Fools launch, I noticed that online randoms had ended the game early. As of this writing, Content Warning may be well below its original peak of 204,000 players, but it still attracted an impressive 55,000 concurrent players. Palworld, which will see an explosion of indie games in 2024, is also relevant; it’s in a similar position after the winter that dominated the video game industry. But all the games I played in preparation for this review ended after just one day because my teammates disconnected, earning me notoriety among white people.
I didn’t play any private games, but the save file option lets you play with friends or alone. The latter is pretty much useless – on both of my single-player attempts, I died within the first two minutes of exploring the Desolate Pit, or what the game calls the “Old World.”
First, I stepped into a rope trap and died, my health draining away in nasty bites until there was noth ing left to eat. Then I was blasted by a lingering bomb, one of the many Silent Hill-like monsters that stalk the old world, making it grim but hardly scary. For example, I kept encountering the Beard, a shaky ghost with a spinning hand blender on its head. I was defenseless, armed only with my all-important film camera, which only one player per game used to capture ghosts and selfies. The beards stalked and threatened me, but I was never really scared because I’m not a bowl of egg yolks.
Even in the selfish online world of personal branding, you need friends to help you get out of any real trouble. As a result, Content Warning is effectively an online multiplayer-only game, a quality I initially found troubling as a woman. While using voice chat in the game isn’t mandatory, it can be useful for planning shots and coordinating a team’s escape to the surface. In my experience, male-dominated voice chat rooms can be hostile to women, so I initially felt uncomfortable playing with the Content Warning.
Then I realized no one was taking it seriously, except, maybe, as a voice-over opportunity. In every game I played (which, as I suspected, seemed to be all male players), at least one guy appointed himself the unofficial group leader and lead role player. At one point, after we’d each chosen a bright chin emoji and left the toffee-colored hut where all games begin, my happy teammates welcomed us all “back to another video.” I was a little confused for a moment, wondering if I was involved in the Twitch live broadcast. Then I realized he had grabbed the camera and was talking to it in selfie mode. Later, another player screamed “Japanese Suicide Forest” and completed his mind-meld with Logan Paul, which made me laugh. I’m surprised.
Despite my reservations, the absurdity of the voice chat is the best part of the content warning. The game certainly incorporates some other humorous aspects, like the fact that it looks like an avatar of Gummy holding a flashlight with one fully extended arm. They look to me like stupid football players worried about the ball being coated with uranium. And if you manage to push the game through a full three-day cycle, you can use the SpöökTube funds you earn to purchase similarly hilarious props for your videos and emotes, such as the “Goo Ball” ($150) or the “Ancient Gestures 1” ” (middle finger), which is essentially your only tangible motivation to complete the full three-day game. Content Warning There’s no narrative or progression system other than making money, which makes it sound like it’s hopeless.
As a result, the game itself is rarely as entertaining as other players with content warnings, who I’ve noticed can scream, whine, and act as convincingly as the most embarrassing apology videos. “I have a flashlight…and a pretty good idea of how to use it,” I heard one player lie, feeling anxious after being separated from the crowd. “Oh my God!” my teammates cried later when I sacrificed myself for vision and let monsters attack me.
That’s another thing I love about Content Warning – it’s essentially a content creator role-playing game. The most effective way to become famous is to allow yourself to be stabbed while others film you, or to decide who you least care about and ask them to do something terrible. I noticed myself getting frustrated as I watched my teammates flee from the hordes of enemies, their flashlights uselessly pointing out the deserted road ahead of them. “Do something cool,” I wanted to scream, “like throw yourself into a meat grinder!” Content warnings slyly contribute to the disparagement of Lord of the Flies. Lifting and aiming a film camera with its grainy texture adds to the feeling of being detached from reality, of having a closed door between you and the action.
In other words: “In photography, we see nothing,” wrote the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in his 1999 essay “Photography or Light Writing.” “We are never the reality of the object. There is an impossible exchange between reality and its image.”
In a context of content warnings, and the type of heartless content it emulates, this isn’t a pretty exchange. It requires you to give up empathy because you have always believed that attention is more important. It’s a ridiculous human impulse, so content warnings are a ridiculous charade. deliberately.
I can work around this, but here’s the thing: light always penetrates darkness. The drop in player numbers with content warnings – which is probably natural for any game after the peak of its initial release window – tells me that indulging in this forbidden urge to be seen, no matter what , is a past trend. Without interesting players, content warnings are too weak to leave a lasting impression. As with other satirical games that touch on our high-consumer culture—2021’s “anti-visual novel” Class of ’09 or the upcoming reality show sim The Crush House—the content warning reflects a kind of divine indifference. We internalize this by living most of our lives through screens. But apathy isn’t enough to inspire, and I think we’ll eventually realize that’s not the case.
Landfall Publishing provided a copy of the content warning for review.
