The video game that criticizes its own audience
The recent growth of technology, especially the internet, has raised an incredible amount of debates and fears about its effects on people and consequences on society in the short and long term. Although there are quite a few works in the art world that deal with the problems or results of the information society, in the medium of video games, it is not a concept that has been explored in many titles. Of course, there are works like "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," based on the novel of the same name by Harlan Ellison, which, like other titles, delves into the idea of AIs taking over the world and human extinction. Most video games always take the post-apocalyptic side of the technology revolution, acquiring fatalistic and existentialist tones in most cases.
However, I had never seen a game that dealt with the consequences and current problems of society, instead of a dystopian future. This is the case of the video game "Needy Girl Overdose," which defines itself as an interactive visual novel, presenting a critique of the internet and the figure of the streamer, wanting to present mature and dark themes despite its cute aesthetics, based on Japanese anime.
This video game puts us in the skin of P-chan, our avatar and direct representation within the game as it has no gender or face, to serve as a direct bridge to Ame, the true protagonist of the story. And this is quite important because the whole game is based on Ame's relationship with the player and depends deeply on us getting fond of Ame, as technically, according to the narrative of the title, we are her partner.
The purpose of the game itself is to get Ame to fulfill her dream of being a streamer, giving you the direct orders of what to do to spend her time in pursuit of getting a million subscribers. You can do different activities, such as hanging out together, researching in forums, watching movies, or, of course, streaming.
The target audience for this game is apparently the gamer and otaku community, seeming at first glance (if you do not read the description of the game) a romantic title to have a good time. However, "Needy Girl Overdose" characterizes Ame as an adult with psychological problems and a childish mentality. She had a hard childhood because of school bullying, a bad relationship with her parents, and an incredible internet addiction that led her to become a "Neet," that is, a person who has left school and does not work and usually dedicates herself exclusively to her hobbies.
It is almost funny how ironic it is that the target audience of this title is the object of criticism and mockery in it, as the game takes the opportunity on numerous occasions to show the selfishness, arrogance, and the need for attention of the protagonist, as well as the avoidance of reality to which Ame herself voluntarily submits.
This character in itself is a critical commentary, mainly towards certain "social tribes" of generation Z and later, showing the consequences of the information society on the personality and education of a young girl. Not only through its script, which we will talk about in more detail later, but also through its game mechanics.
As we said before, you, as a player, decide what Ame does. Each of the actions you do has a time cost, and you have a limit of 30 days to reach your goals. The activities you do will not only serve you to have new ideas for streamings but also have a direct impact on the statistics of Ame.
"Needy Girl Overdose" is played in a similar way to "Reigns." In "Reigns," you make decisions that increase or decrease some of your resources: military power, religious power, money, and population. If any of these resources reaches its maximum or minimum, you lose the game. Ame works in the same way as your kingdom in "Reigns," but its statistics are stress, affection, and mental state. Each of the activities you can do with her positively or negatively affects more than one of her stats in most cases. If you stream, it raises stress and lowers affection; if you spend time with her, it lowers stress but raises affection; if you take drugs with her, it lowers stress and raises her mental state, etc. The large number of actions you have at your disposal, the 30-day time limit, and the fact that each action affects different stats make "Needy Girl Overdose" a stressful experience due to the difficulty you have to manage her emotions, making this an unpleasant experience is actually a wise move as it exemplifies the fluctuating mental state of a person with psychological disorders and insecurities with a dependent relationship towards your person, portraying a toxic relationship of self-imposed emotional submission in which you are complicit.
During the course of the days, Ame will talk to you on the phone (despite living in the same house), being the main way in which the narrative develops, talking to you at all hours and scolding you if you do not answer. Messages, most of which you can only reply to using stickers, not only continue with the idea that Ame has a deep dependency on P-chan but also make a satirical comment on the almost parasocial relationships that are established between young people, communicating primarily through images. A situation in which I myself find portrayed. The narrative of this title develops mainly with text messages in the in-game equivalent to WhatsApp, in addition to what Ame speaks in streaming and the tweets she puts in the equivalent of Twitter. Each of the three forms gives rise to different comments and subtexts about the person/internet interaction.
During the Streamings, Ame takes the nickname "Kangel," disguising and making herself up as a Japanese idol, putting on a figurative mask and adopting a completely different personality, much more friendly and self-confident, to please her audience, which she rarely breaks. Continuing the topic of fakeness in social networks, but what is really interesting about the streamings is the chat that you have to moderate by deleting negative messages. The script of the chat during Kangel's live streams is incredibly well written. Each of the messages looks like a comment from a random person on the internet. They are poorly written, use abbreviations and foul language, which gives a layer of immersion and reality that the game needs to keep playing with its credibility. Likewise, Ame's dialogues are brilliantly thought out, just like the chat. She writes in abbreviations, with misspellings, using insults and expressions clearly used by the 2000s generation onwards, which in the same way, contributes to the credibility and immersion of the character as a real person. This is really important to feel the right emotions in this game.
While on Twitter, you, as P-chan, can read both her public account as Kangel and her private account as Ame, showing both sides of the same coin.
When we combine the stressful gameplay with the storyline, then we begin to see the true colors of this game and its critical commentary. A young adult, completely in need of attention on social networks, with an extreme dependence on her partner, a perfect and untouchable facade as Kangel and another completely needy as Ame, who goes to the extreme of self-harm, drug abuse, and nymphomania in order to stay on the Hamster wheel of constant dopamine stimuli, all of them directly or indirectly due to the internet addiction she had since childhood.
Although it is true that the approach to the idea of this game is incredibly striking, especially considering the times we live in, and its approach in its gameplay is correct when it comes to generating adequate sensations regarding the subtext of the narrative, the truth is that "Needy Girl Overdose" fails to get its message across.
Let me explain. Even if I defend what I said above, "Needy Girl Overdose" has about 30 different endings depending on Ame's stats and our actions during the 30 days of gameplay. Although the description of the game itself encourages us to find a good ending, being all bad endings in reality, the game fails catastrophically when it comes to achieving a catharsis or, in general, a powerful emotion with any of these. Mainly due to the fact that the endings do not unfold in the narrative bit by bit due to the very nature of this title; rather, they are the spontaneous consequence of your statistics or your actions. In other words, when day 30 arrives, you have your ending, but on the way, there doesn't have to be any kind of conversation that has led to that point. For example, even if you have an ending where Ame breaks up with you because she has little affection for you, during the other 29 days of the game, she has not expressed that lack of affection in almost any way. It is true that the lack of love for you is a direct cause of your actions, but on a storyline level, there is almost no hint of the ending you're going to get because "Needy Girl Overdose" doesn't develop the conclusion of the route during the days you play. You simply see the end results, breaking the immersion in the world and character. Also, this gets the endings to not have the impact it should. For example, although all the endings are supposed to be bad, some of them seem good or neutral due to their lack of development. Similarly, some endings that in script are positive, the game itself poses them as bad endings or Game Overs, again, thanks to its lack of development.
It is surprising how the game gets it right for 29 days and then fails in its climax due to a design error from the early approach of the development. Also, the fact that there are 30 endings is a problem in itself because although this achieves a very organic and different first experience for each player, its script suffers for the same reason, in addition to the fact that the endings themselves eventually step on each other with similar concepts diluting the meaning of them. If you take this game as an experience in which you are only going to live a couple of endings, doing only a couple of routes, then you will not see these seams as clearly as I see them. However, the game itself encourages you to get all the endings, as the game load menu itself shows you a list with clues of all possible endings and confirming the existence of a secret ending when you get them all, which, without spoilers, is tremendously unsatisfying to experience for its obtuse dialogue and its lack of depth in the message.
Even so, the end of a piece of art is nothing more than the final touch to it. Although they seem to me to be badly carried out, they have the ideas in place just like the rest of the game. And even if this one fails to develop many of the issues it wants to deal with (which are not few), "Needy Girl Overdose" is a breath of fresh air with respect to the criticism of the digital world, dealing with issues that I never saw portrayed before within the video game industry. So all in all, this title gets my respects. Plus, a tiny little hole in my heart, thanks to its way of exemplifying the flaws that unfortunately my generation has developed because of digitalization, including myself.