Watch_Dogs Game, Chicago: Hack Peoples Lives, Cameras Are Your FriendAmanda Warren There are no words to describe a personal reaction to this extended video game preview for Watch_Dogs, available on multiple systems, May 27th, by Ubisoft. Video games, for years now, have been a great covert way to train young ones into military jobs like drone operation or crime units hunting for domestic terrorists. But now everyone gets a chance to be a paranoid, trenchcoat-mask-wearing hacker vigilante theres something hiding in everyoneSecurity cameras are your friends For the first time, cameras are your friend. You can hack them to attract enemies and start messing around with them to bring people to where you want, explained the creative director, last year. Game description, see more: The Welcome to Chicago trailer boasts: At the same time, people will react intelligently to your choices and the police and media wont like what youre doing. The character has a lengthy and tragic backstory which is supposed to explain his obsession with surveillance A viral marketing scheme is underway called Digital Shadow that, with your permission, hacks into your Facebook account, collects all your activity and builds a complete dossier of you, as if you were an assassins target, explains HuffingtonPost. The game has been ostensibly highly anticipated for awhile, but its a little strange that its not only set in Chicago,but that the trailers for it are going viral in the wake of Chicagos emergingpre-crime surveillance listsandthe bloody Easter shooting spree, with the announcement of a new federal crime unit. This game isnt exactly a marketing ploy for Chicago, which attempts to boast of questionable steep declines in crime rates, but is painted in the game as the backdrop for festering criminality. Is this game supposed to give vicarious power to individuals who may feel powerless living among random crime and trusting their lives to militarized law enforcement? Can you make heads or tails of the psychologically mixed messages of a game that dehumanizes the people you manipulate or kill (but know everything about their unique identity) and says, the city is our weapon? This is what I was met with when I went to the game site for more info. No thank you. Recent articles by Amanda Warren 