

Nothing to Hide – Game inspired by government surveillance - jimicy
https://github.com/ncase/nothing-to-hide
Article on it:
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rockpapershotgun.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;12&#x2F;nothing-to-hide-is-a-very-smart-anti-stealth-game&#x2F;<p>Back it: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;back.nothingtohide.cc&#x2F;
======
ninjin
A noble effort and looks like a decent game. As-of-yet though, I think
"Papers, Please" is possibly the best take on a dystopian game. The oppression
in that game isn't just some puzzle mechanic but the whole monotonous process
and being a cog in a gigantic bureaucratic machine. Could something similar be
made for surveillance?

[http://papersplea.se/](http://papersplea.se/)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QP5X6fcukM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QP5X6fcukM)

~~~
vikp
Oh man. "Papers, Please" is way too realistic. I used to be a Foreign Service
officer, and part of my job was doing visa interviews/approvals. Playing feels
very similar to the job (minus random in game events, etc).

I tried to get into it, but after doing visa interviews for a year, I don't
want to do them, or anything remotely like them, ever again (although some
people enjoy them....)

~~~
krashidov
Can you elaborate on why you disliked doing interviews? Were there other parts
of the FSO job that you disliked as well?

~~~
vikp
NIV (non-immigrant visa, like a typical tourist visa) interviews are the
worst.

Imagine sitting in a chair, behind bullet proof glass, with a room full of
people in front of you. You and the other interviewing officers (I was in a
very small post, so it was usually me and one or two others) have about 3-4
hours to either approve or reject all of them.

You will end up interviewing about 60 people in this time period (unless you
are slow, which hurts everyone). Imagine picking up a passport, calling a
name, waiting until they come to the window, asking questions, and determining
if someone can come to the US (is this person on the terrorist watch list? Are
they likely to illegally migrate to the US?) all in 5 minutes or less.

I was in a post with very high fraud and people illegally overstaying in the
US (Guyana), so we had a lot of rejections. I think our average was 50%, but
people ranged from 40% to 80%. So, imagine doing all of the stuff I described,
but in the end, you reject half of the people. Imagine that most of them plead
with you, and say that they have sick relatives in the US, they haven't seen
their family in years, or they really need to go for business. The worst were
the ones who had a relative that died or was dying in the US and wanted to go
for the funeral/to see them one last time, but you couldn't approve them
because they were likely to overstay. Things like this make me really hate US
immigration policy.

You might be thinking "visas, who cares about those?" because of how easy it
is to travel as a first world (I don't like this term, but it is concise)
citizen. It is a big deal in countries where visas aren't automatic. Imagine
being stuck in one country the size of Maine and unable to visit the rest of
the US.

IV (immigrant visa) interviews are more interesting, because your goal is to
determine if there is a legitimate family relationship between the two people.
You get to examine documents, look at photos, do follow-up interviews, etc.
Sometimes you even get to take trips to the persons' house to canvas the area
and talk to the neighbors to see if their story checks out. You see a lot of
fake birth certificates, and a lot of "marriage" photo albums where the couple
is just in a courthouse, signing the marriage paperwork. The main source of
fraud here is people from the country getting a fake marriage to an american
citizen to allow them to migrate. Usually the american citizen is paid a lot
of money or is a relative/friend of the other family. This, too, can be
frustrating because american citizen fraudsters who are persistent enough
eventually will succeed because of all the bureaucracy.

Luckily, unless you are consular coned, you only have to do one consular tour.
My first tour was a split tour, so I only ended up in consular for a year. I
did some economic work in the second year, where I talked to economic leaders
in the country and wrote cables back to DC. This was more interesting, but
like anything in the foreign service, is highly dependent on the competence of
your boss. I was not lucky in this regard.

Wow, reading back on this sounds really negative. A good friend of mine (and
current FSO) once told me that the Foreign Service is the "same [stuff] as any
other job, just in different places." I think this really sums it up. I
enjoyed my time in the FS, and enjoyed the country I lived in. I know some
really great and intelligent people who are in the FS. I also ended up cutting
my first tour short and leaving after 1.5 years. I am really glad I did that,
as it enabled me to learn and do a lot of amazing things.

My advice to people who want to join the FS is always -- do it, it will be fun
and you will learn a lot, but don't put the job on a pedestal, and don't be
afraid to get out when the time comes. It actually is surprisingly hard to
leave early on, so do your homework in that sense. Please feel free to email
me if you want to talk more about this.

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krallja
Holy crap.

I just finished the demo.

The mechanics feel like a Legend of Zelda puzzler level.

The ambiance and storyline are a mix between Orwell and a new Snowden file.

And it's open source. And crowdfunded. I'm in.

~~~
jplarson
Cheers to that, that was a delightful way to pass 20 minutes. I'm in for $25--
feels good to support a project like this, even in a small way.

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ncasenmare
The devs are also running a crowdfunding campaign for this, with 10% of the
donations going to the EFF, Demand Progress, Mozilla, etc:
[https://back.nothingtohide.cc](https://back.nothingtohide.cc)

~~~
sethillgard
It's a single guy, except for the music.

~~~
brokenparser
That's 10 guys (and one cup).

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nswanberg
Fans of shady government games should check out Floor 13, an early 90s game
where you are in charge of a secret British agency charged with keeping the
Prime Minister popular by any means necssary. I vaguely remember manipulating
the press and torture being some of the options. Sadly, I was never able to
play the game very much. My friends and I all had Macs, and were never able to
get our Windows emulator to run it very long without crashing. And at some
point afterwards, when we had access to PCs, we were defeated by its copy-
protection scheme (despite having a legitimate copy!) and by then many more
games were much more compelling.

Even if we'd been able to play it, though, it's not clear we'd have gotten
much more out of it than we'd gotten by reading _1984_ , _Fahrenheit 451_ ,
and being at the mercy of the administration of an American public high
school.

As for this game, it seemed much more compelling in the intro screen, which
resembled some sort of Twitter / Facebook wall and had some cool effects while
scrolling. When the actual game started it seemed like a puzzle game combined
with a paranoia game, which is great for those who are already convinced by
the world the game depicts but not convincing otherwise. It might be a tougher
game mechanic to figure out, but it might be more compelling if the UI were
Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter clones, and the game was such that the player
attempted to sift through volumes of intercepted correspondence and
communication metadata, fingering bad guys, political opponents, and hapless
citizens, and, with limited resources, decided who to investigate/hassle. The
game could have real terrorists that need to be detected, rewarding real
detections and penalizing false positives, or have super-cynic Floor 13 mode,
where the player used the surveillance system to their own personal gain. Or,
turn the system described in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882378)
into a game (I posted then and still believe that the concerns there were,
while possible, vague and improbable, but possibly a game could convince me
and others otherwise).

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GhotiFish
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Anvilicious](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Anvilicious)

clever puzzles though!

~~~
krisgee
Yeah I thought it was pretty heavy handed too. It's a fun game though and of
course, Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped

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Kiyumars
Really love the game. The puzzle mechanics are interesting, and I picked up
the logics fairly intuitively. The ambiance and art sells it. The intro is
cleverly set up, but the story about the father politician is a bit confusing.

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lukifer
Not just a compelling political statement, actually a pretty clever puzzler.
Reminds me a little of Portal.

~~~
shmerl
They idea is similar to Closure also.

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seba_dos1
$20000 out of $40000 and 8 days left... hopefully he'll manage to raise it
all. I played it soon after the demo was released and it got me super excited.
Feels like Portal - when in some vlog entry the author admited to be a big fan
of Portal series I wasn't surprised ;)

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siculars
25$ via btc on coinbase. no brainer. should be required gaming for all public
school kids.

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shmerl
Backed. Sharp and satirical idea for a game. Reminds me of Papers Please and
Closure.

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pdkl95
I was liking the art style quite a bit already, but when the "conveyor belt"
mechanics started - which kicked the challenge up (a good thing) - I was sold.
This game has some surprisingly well-executed ideas in it!

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_redwire
I really enjoyed playing the demo just now. Great atmosphere, incredible
music, and clever game mechanics. I definitely felt something for the
characters in the game, and I really enjoyed the story and cutscenes. I can't
wait to see what a full version of the game looks like. Backed.

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gridspy
Play now online:
[http://demo.nothingtohide.cc/](http://demo.nothingtohide.cc/)

~~~
Springtime
Great intro for such a game. Unique and engaging use of the social media UI
we're used to seeing.

~~~
gridspy
I thought it was really clever. It also puts all the "posts" that you create
as you walk around later into context.

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csense
Anyone notice how prominently the game satirizes Twitter? What's up with that?

~~~
TophWells
I red it as satirizing Facebook, not least because some of the messages are
over Twitter's character limit.

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ehartsuyker
Great job, and hopefully we'll get to see the rest of it.

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e3pi
The game already exists, titled Hacker News:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest)

E.g., A play in today's game:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7328214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7328214)

....................

puppetmaster3 1 hour ago | link

< Using Baysian type on data is very damaging on society, for those with
strong maths:

We'll move from causality( we noticed you are stocking up on baking powder,
lets chat) to inference (according to our data there is 85% chance you are not
compliant - w/o a cause).

<One outcome: The populace will be demotivated to do anything, just to be
safe.>

>

Stardust’s It Is Safe Law:

1> IIS1: To be unknown and invisible is to be safe.

2> IIS2: The Freedom Law:

    
    
         We enjoy the freedom of the press, 

the freedom of speech, and the FREEDOM to use neither in our Total Information
Awareness digital surveillence state.

3> IIS3: "Oops! I did we again!%$%^$!" Law:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=puppetmaster3](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=puppetmaster3)

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