State of Emergency - What a Dumb Edgy PS2 Game Taught Me About Life

Since the collapse of the Federal Government, and the global economic crisis 

the corporation has been building a brighter future for its citizens. Based on principles

of order, loyalty and civic obedience, the corporation has created a nation that all citizens

can feel proud of.

State of Emergency (SOE) was first released in 2002 by VIS and Rockstar games for the Play Station 2. It was the first game I played on that platform, and its aged surprisingly well, which given the pessimistic dystopian world it depicts is very worrying. In recent years there's been a lot of blogs, videos and thinkpieces about how a disposable children's show from the late 1980s-90s was actually a subversive masterpiece. This isn't one of those, while SOE clearly wears its subversive pretensions on its sleeve as the cover image makes clear, it was and is an attempt to cash in on the contemporary anti-globalisation movement by using edgy riot porn imagery and a pretty simple arcade play style.

This is a game where you can punch the head off of a riot cop, pick up that head and then beat another riot cop to death with it. And it was made by a corporation, a very large which would in later years be the subject of numerous workplace scandals from forced overtime (100 hour weeks to complete Red Dead Redemption 2) harassment from managers for years, and the LA Noire debacle, where workers who were burnt out by the chaotic development cycle and ridiculous workloads and had to leave were not credited in the game even if there work remained in the finished product. To name just a few.

That being said, this product of gaming culture of the late 90s to early 2000s, where game companies actively courted controversy as a way to boost advertising and sales shouldn't be ignored. Looking back it's quite eerie how closely its paralleled modern life despite or especially because of how superficial it was. If anything I find it damning how closely the political and economic situation has mimicked a game that looked at the battle of Seattle and decided to create a generic version where the corporate baddies were even more cartoonishily evil.

The game starts with a sinister parody of a corporate induction video about how since the global economic crisis and the collapse of the government -we've had multiple of the former and the latter while not at collapsing point yet, hasn't been doing too well lately- a corporation, or rather the corporation has replaced it. Again we haven't gotten to that point yet, but you'd be surprised just how few independent private entities exist in the world, and their number has steadily decreased since the game was released, as more of the big giants merge and take over each other has anti-monopoly laws continue to erode. Anyway this corporate dominated society looks much like the one we live in today, shops have their own unique art and identities even though they all report to the same head office and the abuses of the system, the child labour in sweatshops, invasive software to spy and monitor people through consumer electronics, the powerful and unaccountable police forces were present in the real world at the time of development, its just that they've gotten more common and more difficult to ignore.

The opening cinematic shows that the situation is cracking under the pressure, there's a riot going on and a police officer in full body armour chases a man down and beats him to the ground, and then keeps beating him while gloating about it, then a petrol bomb explodes a shop window and the game part starts. The game is several stages of the capitol city, a Mall, China town, slummish area, and the place with all the government corporate offices.  Riots have broken out everywhere, which means the stages are full of people running around all over the place. You can choose from a diverse group of characters to play as, who are part of a group of freedom fighters, since the riots have thrown the police and army off balance, you use it to carry out various missions to weaken the corporate power structure, bombing surveillance posts, rescuing people on the corporate hit list, stealing weapons etc. Once the game starts most of the context for why you're blowing up this building instead of the one next to it is handle through objective text boxes and there is also a parody of CNN type news ticker that explains more about how this society works.

And that's pretty much the main storyline game, there is also a gang presence, which in keeping with the rest of the game are superficial stereotypes. Though one interesting thing about the gangs, there is a skin head white power far right gang, they also actively work with the corporation as extra muscle and to divide and rule the population by targeting minorities for additional extra violence and exploitation. The final level has missions where the Freedom Fighters work with the black American gang to defend themselves from heavily armed white supremacists who are being supplied by the police, and then work together to take down the power structure. That ethnic minorities are only shown through gang affiliations and pretty ludicrous stereotypes isn't great but I still find it kind of eerie to what's been going on in the US recently. Big business and government aren't content to just dole out control and exploitation equally, and has in fact singled out multiple groups for additional pain, and when those groups have had enough and start to actively resist on a mass scale, instead of agreeing to back off and deal, the response has been even more violence, and in particular the official police are increasingly supported and collaborating with far right extremist groups either because of ideological and racial solidarity, or as a calculating manoeuvre to increase the pressure, or mix of all. 

But then again Black Lives Matter type activism and police brutality and racially motivated murders aren't new, and where around at the time, and history has shown that collaboration between "apolitical" police and the very political far right paramilitary and vigilante groups is quite common globally. I just didn't expect it to appear in this game where medical testing on humans means the corporation has created giant genetically modified super soldiers. 

The game ends when you blow up the corporate HQ and the final scenes show the Freedom group taking over the corporate news station that's been pumping out corporate propaganda over the course of the game.