In 1984, a small company called West End Games released a tabletop role-playing game designed and written by Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, and Eric Goldberg. It envisioned a dystopian society threatened by treason, an unhealthy obsession with security and a domineering artificial intelligence force known as "The Computer."
The game was Paranoia, and it featured both dark humor and a style of play that encouraged participants toward treachery against each other in what was, in many ways, a comment on four decades of government security and social fear-mongering during the Cold War.
Flash forward to the post-9/11 age of terror threat levels, heightened security, government surveillance and digital spying - and welcome the development of the next version of Paranoia, for which Mongoose Publishing - in collaboration with the original writers and well-known game designer James Wallis - is now raising money via Kickstarter.
Tagline: "Imagine a world designed by Kafka, Stalin, Orwell, Huxley, Sartre and the Marx Brothers."
Spoiler alert: "The Computer" is still the heavy. And so are your "friends."
To get a sense of what the old school table-top game developers are thinking for 2014, here's original designer Costikyan on the thinking behind the update: "Today, the theoretical threat of terrorism is now used, as the supposed threat of Communism was before, as a way of scaring us, controlling us, and justifying wars, massive expenditure on armaments, and reduction in our civil liberties. Why must we take off our shoes to enter an airplane? Terrorism! Why do a dozen cameras monitor me on the way to my closest subway stop (lower Manhattan has the highest concentration of surveillance cameras in America)? Terrorism! Why does the NSA (and GHCQ) routinely monitor our actions on the web? Terrorism! Why is location data from our phones routinely made available to these organizations as well? Terrorism!"
Of course, headlines about Edward Snowden and the NSA also spell opportunity for the franchise. As goes the generational rise of geek culture in media. The original Paranoia was built on a generation of players who grew up on Spy vs. Spy, Boris and Natasha, and Dr. Strangelove - and it was released in an era of cultural dystopia and fear of technology; picture Blade Runner (which came out before Paranoia) or Brazil and Robocop (which came out after). Now it's Catching Fire and vast digital surveillance is real. Meanwhile, geek culture isn't a niche - it's the mainstream. And dark alternative worlds where governments set citizens against each other to preserve their power and control are just as mainstream.
"We were doing dystopias before dystopias were popular," said Paranoia co-creator (and, in full disclosure, my good friend) Eric Goldberg, a veteran New York gaming and digital media expert.
That creates a real market for a terror-themed update to Paranoia, especially one that - in terms of technology - is decidedly old school with its cards and die rolls. According to industry analyst ICv2, the hobby game (non-computer) market in the U.S. and Canada was about $700 million last year. And the UK-oriented Kickstarter campaign for Paranoia has reached its fundraising goals rapidly, with more than £95,000 raised as of this writing.
And who can resist the feel-good gaming that funding will bring to life: "Universal surveillance is almost here! Tens of thousands of cameras have already been installed in cities worldwide to ensure the continuous monitoring of the activity of all citizens, ensuring our safety from malefactors. Hard AI is on the horizon, and its creation will be an inevitable boon for all of humanity! The Computer is almost here! Utopia is just over the next horizon!"
Utopia indeed. As Goldberg pointed out, "satire only works if people get it."
And with the updated Paranoia, they ought to. "In terms of cyberspying, the Bush Administration over-reached itself and the Obama Administration has over-reached itself," said Goldberg. "So it's a bi-partisan game."
