Will game analysis be done without playing? DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN

This video is not a game review. Someone who is curious about the world of gaming and checks out what happens occasionally tries to update himself. I had previously told Murat about the relationship with the games at the Console Base. You can watch it from there. So if you are a serious player you can not find it on this video. But if you want to be more player than player, you are the right place.

Yes, this game is questioning what it means to be a human being. The name is "Detroit: Become Human."

Things go on in 2038, 20 years from now. It's a not too distant future. Machine intelligence is so close to the human. Moreover, there is now a body very similar to ours. We play those games and we control those bodies. We're playing them. Depending on the choices we make and the decisions we make, these androids or the people around them either survive or die. However, unlike many games, if you control the character you control, the game does not end, it is not "game over". The story goes on without it.

I will try to look at this game from 3 different perspectives. As you can imagine, their primary technology will be. All the characters in the vote, real actors, actresses were created by scanning 3-D. Some sort of digital copy of them has been created. Not only their physical features, but their movements are also captured in 3D motion detectors in a private studio. This technique has been used in movies and games for years. Andy Serkis, who portrayed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, received prizes for this performance even though he never saw him physically in the film. We can call it modern puppet play. There are 250 different players in this game, the puppet 513 has given life to different characters. So in this world you can interact with 512 other people than you. We do not even have so many contacts in the real world that you think you are. The physical performances of these puppets were recorded as a total of 35000 plans in 324 days, and 74000 animations were made using these data. To capture a realistic effect in 3-D animated films, each picture frame is created after hours of rendering, once it has been calculated. That's the real challenge here. Because they have to do this in real time. Everything we see in this competition, lights, shadows, and textures are displayed in full detail at 4K resolution, 30 frames per second.

To give you all these technical details to ensure that you look behind the scenes. Behind that curtain is a 4-year study of a 180-member team. I have a 3000 page script and millions of lines of code. Now, using technology, value is produced in this way. Last week, the Turkish game company Gram Games sold 250 million dollars. A company founded by 2012 and operated by 77 people, was able to reach more than 1 billion TL in a short period of 6 years. Do not forget that on the one hand it may be your occupation or your venture. You may be the person who fancied the game, the person who encoded it. I mean, not a player, but a little bit of being a player.

Come to our second perspective: design. Cinematography, the use of light, depth of field, especially the blurring of backgrounds, makes it easy to feel the efforts of bringing the characters and their emotions to the fore. On the other hand, we can also see stylistic designs in some animations. But I want to draw attention to the size of a design that is not immediately visible. Choice of venue and design. You also caught your attention in the name of the game Detroit. Detroit is a city in the US. In 2015, it was selected as a "design city" by UNESCO. Now, when you think about it like that, it's a bright town, do not you think? That was indeed 100 years ago. It's bigger and bigger than cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco. Because in 1903 Ford built the automobile factory here. Detroit then became the automotive capital of the 20th century as other producers such as Chrysler and Dodge started to open factories here. This turn of automobiles began to be produced in series "2. industrial revolution "or" industry 2.0 ". But by 2018, Detroit is one of the poorest cities in the US. This city is almost an abandoned ruin with a rapidly declining population due to unemployment. Crime rates are at the highest level. You ask why? I can not go into details, but who depends on racism, and some can not keep up with new technological developments. You may have set up Industry 2.0, but if Industry 3.0 comes up and you can not adapt it, then it's like Detroit. You will turn into a ruin without notice. After that, boast of your past as much as you want. Business has passed out. Nevertheless, you have a chance to shake yourself. Here we see how Detroit, which started to shake in these days, has developed in 20 years. He probably caught the wave of "Industry 4.0" and this time it started to produce these androids instead of cars. We see plenty of abandoned industrial areas, factories in the design of the gaming space. On the other hand, the city's new technologies, which are trying to be born from their ashes. But a realistic approach has been adopted in the design of these technologies. There are no such cars flying, but the drones we have started to see in today's world are more advanced models. Vehicles that go on their own are everywhere. But there is a problem. It's a big problem. Obviously Detroit ignored something when he was rebuilding everything. The issue of discrimination in the past that has accelerated its decline. Beware that there is a section reserved for the androids behind the buses. These robots, who are involved in people and doing many low-level jobs, are intelligent, but in societal status in society. They collect the hatred of people who lose their jobs. Hate is a human feeling. The biggest difference between us and our machines is not our intelligence, but our emotions. The robots in this game have not only a developed intelligence, but also feelings.

Which forces us to look at the game from a third perspective. From an artistic perspective. Today's storytelling is one of the most important themes of narrative art. I mentioned this when I was talking about the philosophy of the WestWorld series. What happens if one of these robots we create in one day improves their intelligence as well as their intelligence? What are we going to do if they show that they want to have equal rights with us? Do they rebel? Or are they looking for peaceful means, such as demonstrating their rights? Do they have any rights? All these questions may be meaningless and even unnecessary for you right now. After all, we are not human, so we can cut off and say that there are no rights. But what does man mean? When you ask this question, you are also breaking away from the modern world of games, movies or series and you are stepping into the field of the philosophers of kadmis.

You start questioning what it means to be human. From the beginning of the game, "become human" to be a human being, it forces us to question this. In doing so, he benefits from our empathy. He's replacing us with an android. Then he puts it in the middle of a simulation. This simulation is not much different from our lives. Let's leave the discussion on whether the Androids can be so smart now. Let's take them as a symbol. Let's imagine it to be different from us, different thinking, different feeling. I suppose we put ourselves in the place of such a person in this simulation.

We are interacting with hundreds of different characters and events just like in real life. In these situations, we are making choices by checking our emotions or emotions. The choices we make are leading us to a better or worse situation in this life. Life is our line or our destiny is being brushed as if it is a flowchart in this game. In each branch we find both the designers of this game and the reflection of our own wills. This world is not much different from ours.

You have to protect yourself. You have to make your own choices. You have to decide who you are. This world does not like different things, Markus. Do not let others tell you who you are.
A world where different things are not loved, others are made. That's the real contradiction. We start to resemble others to get ourselves accepted, to get a place in society, we become faint, we become robotic. In this case, the name of our life game is "Become Android" rather than "Become Human". Let's not be unfair to the androids already. Maybe we will not get robotic but we will be far from being human. If we leave the choices to someone else's will, that's the end. We start questioning our humans. If we allow someone else to tell us who we ought to be, we will remain an ordinary actor in this life and continue to play the role that others have knitted.

Is not it time for you to get out of being an actor and become a "player"?

Images from: knowyourmeme.com, arstechnica.net, electricsistahood.com,

Written by Barış Özcan

Translated by @qafar