In Not Broadcast, the new left-wing government comes to power, with the threat of a future police crackdown. My job is to make everything enjoyable for most people by seamlessly incorporating changes and victims of celebrity and mind-blowing ads. While Not Broadcast articles as a political illustration, the weight of which is too good to wander.
Developed by UK-based NotGames and TinyBuild, Not Broadcast is a propaganda sim that launched on Steam last week. He plays the role of a janitor who finds himself in control of the nightly news program. The producer of the show can't be bothered to show the work, but it's always just a phone call to teach you the 1980s radio journalism era.
Each night is divided into three sections performed by real people for short FMV days. The anchor reads articles, the author talks to a specialist, and occasionally manages a feed of live events. You watch it all happen on two monitors, one happens with a slight delay, where you can take out the curses, walk between the cameras to impress anyone who is talking, and play with the dial to stop the channel ad from falling off. The metering meter serves as a health bar. Let the ratings drop and you'll be fired. Keep people up to date with their fine print and you will get extra money for upgrading equipment.
While some of your editing decisions have obvious consequences – allowing the camera to stay in that person for too long will send the ratings to the nosedive – others that are more specific. The little game that made you pick images that would suit the headlines during the opening moments of the radio gives you an opportunity to plan how the community will interpret them. Are you suggesting a newly appointed university graduate or gambling at a casino? Is a brief reading of government power better aligned with the image of gang members or police standing in a row lined with violence?
Not Broadcast it suggests that these options may have an impact on how the newly elected government's agenda will unfold. Sometimes your producer counters that he may eventually want to count more than just dirty words, but only the first three of the ten chapters included in the current version of the game, however, it is not clear how the behavior count will start each day.
One night you don't go to the TV station, instead you will rest at home. During one of these delays your spouse stops asking about your passport so that his wealthy family leaves the country before the new property tax is created. You can choose to help him or prove your allegiance to the new regime. No one can feel it as a satisfactory answer, emphasizing the small evils that adhere to the broader political conscience of the game. Although I may intend to feel like a cog on a big machine, I can't hold the power too high and it's too quick to jump between camera angles to try.
Not Broadcast it has some fun things to do for it, even though the quality of writing and performing FMV sometimes interrupts the hard work of satisfying viewers and the clothing line of corporate sponsors trying to seduce them.
