HomeReviewsNot For Broadcast
Premature Evaluation: Not For BroadcastWe’ll do it live
We’ll do it live
Developer:NotGamesPublisher:TinyBuildRelease:Out now (early access)On:WindowsFrom:SteamFor:£10.25, $13, €12
Not For Broadcastplonks you in the seat of a television producer in an alternate reality Britain, circa the late 1980s, in which a radical and authoritarian political party has swept to power on a wave of populism. You’re a cleaner who’s somehow stumbled into the role of almighty broadcast controller, placed in charge of a desk of sliders, dials and censor buttons, and able to switch between one of four live camera feeds on the fly. You are the unseen hand puppeteering the eyeballs of the nation during tumultuous times, with the immediate goal of ensuring that viewing figures go up rather than down, and the longer term objective of steering the government’s propaganda one way or the other.
I would hold off engraving the Emmys for the time being, but the writing and acting is just about decent enough to carry each of the three available stages from beginning to end, and the playful tone of each broadcast papers over any serious cracks in the performances. Also, full motion video in games has a rich tradition of being entertainingly ropey, and there’s really no reason to rock the boat in that regard.
The broadcasts are each consciously constructed in such a way as to give the player something to do. Interviewees seem to delight in slipping in swear words when you least expect them. At one stage, you’re editing around naked protestors as they hurl their pink bodies in front of each of your cameras. When things in the studio begin to go off the rails it feels chaotic in the control room, like your brain is being tugged in two directions at once, but it’s at these moments where your influence on the action feels particularly diminished.
Outside of the studio, the plot unfolds in a series of choice-based events where the decisions you make promise to have an effect on how the story unfolds, but the eventual outcomes of which aren’t realised in the early access version. The fictional government in charge is a hedge-betting amalgamation of several corners of radical British politics, enacting a far-left socialist policy of forced wealth redistribution while introducing sweeping new police powers, placing the player in the middle of a moral maze. Your first quandary hinges on whether to help a wealthy relative flee the country with all of his hard-earned cash. Later, when all private enterprise has been nationalised, you can choose to only play advertisements for the corporate sponsors you have a personal stake in.
This is a story-driven game about consequences, which in this version has very few to speak of. Best to wait until Not For Broadcast leaves early access before jumping into the producer’s seat.
