Join the Panopticon with Surveillance-Spoofing Puzzle Game ‘Nothing to Hide’

Indie game designer Nicky Case was, to use his words, sitting on his ass back in the early summer of 2013—then Edward Snowden dropped his leaks. That motivated Case (NCASE, formerly NutcaseNightmare) to create a game that would gleefully satirize the surveillance state. A big fan of stealth and puzzle games (in the latter case, Braid and the original Portal), Case decided his game would be most impactful if it were “anti-stealth.” Thus, Nothing to Hide was born.

For the last seven months, Case has been writing and designing the game, which forces players to participate in their own self-surveillance to win. To do so, players navigate mazes while always staying in the line-of-sight of all-seeing surveilance eyes. A demo is already available, and it’s quite fun.

Instead of crowd-funding on Indiegogo or Kickstarter, Case created his own crowdfunding page on the game’s website. (As of the writing of this article, Case has raised $29,999 of his $40,000 goal.) Ten percent of the funds will go to groups like EFF, Mozilla, Creative Commons, Demand Progress, and Freedom of the Press Foundation because, as Case says, “we need our digital rights in this digital age.” The other portion will be used to pay voice actors and a composer, who is currently working on the Nothing to Hide score. 

Case is also making the project open-source. It’s his hope that other game designers will take the code and do with it what they like. For him, giving back is the open-source way. In a recent chat, Case went into greater detail about the inspirations behind Nothing to Hide, including his native Singapore’s “Big Brother with a smile”-style of government; and how he plans to create a crowdfunding site for open-source art and culture.

MOTHERBOARD: In crafting Nothing to Hide, were you inspired by the privacy and surveillance zeitgeist of 2013?

Nicky Case: Of course. I was always interested in digital rights, but it wasn’t until the revelations made by Edward Snowden last summer that I decided to get off my ass and actually make a little game about it. I was born in Singapore and lived there for ten years. William Gibson once described it as “Big Brother with a smile.” There is quite limited free speech there—you need a permit to write about the government in newspapers, and they try to jail filmmakers and bloggers for subversion. So, there’s quite a lot of censorship in Singapore.

I mean, it’s obviously not as bad as what’s going on in other countries, but it’s really informed a lot of my own personal beliefs on free speech, and is a big source of inspiration for my game. Singapore is also known for being freakishly clean, which is something I reflect inside my game; the artificial cleanness of both Singapore and the current web design aesthetics in new startups and new web apps.

For the uninitiated, why call it an “anti-stealth” game?

Well, a stealth game is a genre of games where you hide from cameras and spies. In my game, you’re legally mandated to be in sight of a camera at all times. So, it’s an inversion of the stealth game. 

The game can be played on multiple platforms—HTML5, Mac, Windows, and Linux. Is the goal to be on as many platforms as possible?

Yes. The awesome thing about HTML5 is that there is code library called Webkit, which lets me wrap up my HTML5 games as stand alone apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux. 

You also made the source code available. In doing this, you literally proved that there is nothing to hide. Why did you make it open-source? 

I would love to see people take the code and make their own games with it. Also, I started programming when I was 9 years old. Source code and files were openly available online and I began tweaking them, and then kind of started making my own games from there. Over time, I got more confident and learned more about programming, and now we’re here. So, yeah, this is my way of giving back to the open-source community. Maybe some day the code and art in my game will help another aspiring game developer or artist get their foot in the door.  

You’ve raised quite a bit of money already, with the end goal being $40,000. You note that you plan to give a ten percent to digital rights groups like EFF and Creative Commons. What will you do with the balance of that amount?

The money will go toward hiring actors and musicians. I’m doing all of the art and code myself for now, but I might hire other people. I’m working with a musician right now, and she did the entire soundtrack for the game. Since it’s going to be an open-source game, the traditional way of getting money for games, like selling copies, really won’t work well for Nothing to Hide. Who would buy a copy when it’s already open-source? Or, at least there would be less incentive to do so anyway.

Can you describe the game play?

The game play starts with a scroll down something like a social media feed, where there is audio and visuals. It’s kind of a unique presentation. Then it drops you into the game. From there, you walk around, and there are some cool lighting and shadow effects. It’s a puzzle game, so all of the puzzles surround line-of-sight. So, you have to stay in line-of-sight of the cameras. Then you have to move these cameras around, and then there are conveyor belts that move you and cameras, and then cameras that activate other conveyor belts. At the end, you try to meet the other character in the game. 

With mobile gaming’s popularity, right now is a great time for indie game development. In the past, you might have had to cut your teeth at a company like Electronic Arts, but that’s not the case anymore. 

Absolutely. Who would have thought a few years ago that some guy who made a game about moving around cubes would make millions of dollars. It’s shocking, right? The indie scene is really taking off, and I’m really happy about that. 

So, what might you do after finishing Nothing to Hide?

The other reason I made my own crowdfunding site instead of using Indiegogo or Kickstarter is because the other idea I had is to build a crowdfunding site for open-source and free cultural arts. The idea is to help open-source artists and coders. It’s backed by the public and built for the public.