Since I've been sampling various games that come free with a Netflix subscription, I finally decided to give Scriptic: Crime Stories a go.
I had some reservations about this game. There's currently 2 different stories to play through in the game, and more are planned for release over the year. You play a "London Yard" police detective. As part of your investigation into different cases, you receive access to the phone of a victim of crime. This is the conceit that allows the gameplay mechanic of your going through a mock up of someone else's phone on your actual phone. You also stay in touch with other members of your police team via an app on your in-game phone, and you can attend interrogations or sometimes tag along on operations via accessing other officers' body cams.
The fake phone you play with in the game has fake websites, like a BBC News-type website, and fake social media (eg: "Chirper" for Twitter, or "AllMyFans" for Only Fans) - you're often looking through the victim's social media feed for highlighted "clues". Collecting those helps to move the story along.
It's possible to play in something approximating real time, where you can wait minutes or hours as your colleagues take action on a range of different tasks. (Eg: forensics carries out an autopsy of a murder victim, or another colleague digs up more data on a suspect.) But you can also choose to speed time up and just play through the various episodes in the game without any delays. Some of the time I chose to wait the time out, because the stories require your concentration to read all the dialogue and follow the action. It's not bad to have proper breaks along the way.
These are basically narrative games, though Netflix categorises them as "adventure". Some of the choices you make will result in your getting a "bad" or "good" ending. You won't always know ahead of time when you're reaching a crucial choice point, but after you get the "bad" ending, the game will offer you an additional final chapter that allows you to go back to the crucial choice again, so you can play for the "good" ending without having to re-open a previous episode.
That's how the game works. I will now have to go into some story spoilers to talk about my reservations, but I'll clearly state when I'm about to do that.
Firstly, some general things I really liked about this game (discussed with light SPOILERS). The 2 stories I played tackled topics like racism - including racism in the police force - and misogyny, especially prejudice against sex workers and sex work, and again some of those prejudices are evidenced by members of the police. There are actors of colour portraying some characters in the game - there's clearly been a concerted effort to write for a diverse cast, and to make a game that tackles themes that marginalised people will recognise or relate to. And that does this in a way that is supposed to educate or inform, or cause the player to question and consider prevailing social prejudices.
BUT, and this is a big caveat, you play a police detective, and as I went on playing I had to wonder how the game would deal with the player character trying to be a force for good, but playing a role that, in real world terms, well... ACAB. I mean, you are playing a role in a lightly fictionalised version of a real world organisation that is currently recognised for harbouring serial rapists like David Carrick, or has form for institutional racism. (Go plug "British police institutional racism" into a search engine for yourselves if you need a refresher; there's so many recent articles.)
Yes, the game does [HEAVY SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ONWARDS] show everything from micro-aggressions to outright police corruption/violence and crime. But, it stops short from having the player character really interrogate the system in a way that would result in you leaving the police force. It's a game that never fully goes ACAB.
In the first story, when I got the "bad" ending, I had failed to stop corrupt police colleagues from committing murder in order to conceal their previous racial harrassment of young black men. I was unable to get enough evidence to make the murder charges stick. And if I tried to carry the matter forward anyway, I ended up having a chat with none other than the fictional Home Secretary, who promptly called me a "cunt" for wanting to go on embarassing the police! (Just like a real Home Secretary probably would! 😂)
That's the "bad" ending, and to be honest, while I didn't like failing to prevent a murder, this felt like a properly critical look at how the system is rotten to the core. I liked the game for being willing to show all that.
If I played on for the "good" ending though, I prevented the murder. But in order to push forward with action on the misdeeds of my colleagues, I had to get help to leak information to the press. But then the group I approached for help - a group of young men who were friends with the initial victim in the game - would eventually conclude that although some police officers are "bad" people (the colleagues I was investigating), there are also some "good" police officers too (me, the player character, who was giving them info to leak to the press.)
Uhhhhhh. Ummmmm... I didn't feel good about that. I didn't want that to be the "good" ending, or a conclusion I could "earn" with the other player characters - who I genuinely enjoyed getting to know. The writing in the game for them was fun, full of feeling, and I became really attached to that little group. But the system is rotten. ACAB because the rot in the system is larger than the behaviour or motives of any one individual, and that should include the player character too. I didn't actually want the other characters to conclude that my character should get a pass as a "good" police officer, and that this somehow balanced out the actions of other "bad" police officers. I would have preferred that I didn't win their trust that way, even if that meant I failed the game.
That is the game lighting the blue touch paper... And then retiring. It doesn't go far enough, is what I'm saying. It wants you to ask questions about existing systems and structures, but then it stops short of allowing you and others around you to conclude that actually this structure needs dismantling altogether.
I went on to play the next chapter, which is about misogyny, and harmful attitudes to sex work/sex workers. I have the same mixture of feelings about that: on the one hand, the game is exploring some themes that are good to cover. But on the other hand while it shows the failings of individuals, it is perpetually stopping short of condemning the system as fully unfit for purpose. That conclusion can't be part of a winning condition in this game.
I really hope that somehow this series will go that little step further by the time it concludes. For that matter I'm not sure you would have to play a police officer to engage with the phone-in-a-phone format. What if you were a private investigator, and you were given access to the phone of a victim, by the victim's family, after the police had failed to really help them? There's more than one fiction that could be deployed here, and that could still address these same themes, could still offer further stories to be played through in the same series, but that would allow you to both "win" the game, and also conclude that the system has to be dismantled.
I do feel torn about this game, and this series of stories. I want to support writing and casting for diverse actors and pitched for a diverse audience. I long for writing that is willing to lean into politics, and address real world issues like racism. On balance, I was gripped by this game; I would play more chapters or more stories in this series. But at the same time, I also want to stay critical about what the game doesn't dare to say, and how I wish it would take its thinking a step further. I wish it was just a little bit braver, a little bit bolder. It should be a winning condition when the Home Secretary has proper grounds to call you a cunt! 🤣
