Is Crackdown 2 a veiled warning against creating game-mechanics for everything?

Stay with me for a second for a bit of over-analysis.

In Crackdown 2 (which, let’s face it, is really just “Crackdown 2.0,” so this applies to Crackdown 1 as well) you play as a cloned bionic called an “Agent” who is working for one of the apparent three forces fighting for control of the city (The Agency). Now, there’s not much plot besides that – a point many of the game’s reviews have noted as a detriment to its “score” (hahahahaha). It is clear, though, from various audio logs you find (yay, audio logs… sigh) that The Agency aren’t exactly the good guys, that there are other forces at work, blah blah blah blaaahhhhhhhhhh….

The point being that the world might be complex, but you are stuck working for The Agency. There is no choice in this matter. (Well I haven’t yet completed the game – maybe there is a twist? Eh, probably not.) If you run off and try to kill the Peacekeepers (the police force), ignore objectives for too long, or purposefully fail at your missions, the Agency Director (always a voice in your head) will berate you and even has the capacity to punish you!

It’s kind of odd. And what is even more odd about the Agency Director is that he appears to be aware you are playing a game. He will relish in the times that you earn an achievement (“Enjoy your achievement! You earned it!”), delight at your kills (“Your first Cell kill! Feels good, doesn’t it?”), and mock your failures (“Haha fire burns, doesn’t it?”).

It’s possible to say this is where Crackdown 2 just gives up on having any semblance of story and just wants to be an entertaining game. Nothing wrong with that. You can still have a good game that way.

But what if this strange game-self-awareness is actually intentional?

What if the real reason your character has no real free will in Crackdown 2 is that he is essentially a game slave in “real life,” driven only by his desire to earn experience and achievements as they are dolled out by the self-serving Agency Director?

The game-within-a-game mechanics are designed to make your Agent unaware of the complexities of what they are doing. Your Agent’s only intent is to complete objectives, earn experience and power, and leave a total path of death and destruction in his wake, just as The Agency wants it to be.

Also interesting are the civilians in the game. They seem aware of the game-like trick being played on your character, but unaware that they’re in a game themselves. When I was playing it last night, a civilian on the street yelled: “What do you think this is your personal playground? People live here you know!”

If this is true, then Crackdown 2′s theme implies that game mechanics can be used to disconnect the human brain from the real reasons for its decisions. As long as one is constantly supplied with achievable, interesting, but totally meaningless, goals, the brain will push the body on to meet them.

Is the brain really capable of falling for such a trick? Surely not all the time. There are critical people out there who would no doubt say “no!” if they appeared one day in an Agency power suit. But, well, how many people do you know of worked for 30 years at the same job just to be awarded with nothing more than a gold watch and a pat on the back?

Of course, it’s not like our brain wants to be fully aware of everything we do. This is where things like Epic Win, an iPhone app that links daily chores to xp and other game-like goals, are brilliant. Daily household chores are mostly meaningless and simply not worth thinking about. Using game mechanics to make them more interesting and fun makes perfect sense.

But what about killing other people? Already, real war is becoming more robotic and disconnecting. More game-like. Apparently the jury is still out on how dangerous that might be, but Crackdown 2′s vision of the future implies that it’s lethal.