“After work I usually hop over to the Cafe on 8th, where I watch people pass by the window. They all have a momentum I can observe from my seat without fear of loitering because coffee is the price of admission.

“Even more exciting is walking on the city streets and looking up at the apartment windows. Most of the time only a bookcase can be seen, but when it occupies an entire ten-foot wall, your heaviest emotion is envy. Sometimes I’ll take the long way to get somewhere, and these rescued minutes of mine are spent between avenues, catching glimpses of the apartments. What is the lighting like in the mornings? How comfortable is it to come home at night? When the owners look out their window, do they want to be glimpsed by people like me? I acknowledge their status even from my incomplete view down on the street.

“Creepy? Perhaps. At least there is no touching involved.”

Imagine a game where the majority of its world is a street between two city avenues, where every room in every building is populated with furniture and objects. Each room in a given apartment building has the same blueprint, each room decorated in the owner’s style. Every owner can be interacted with, every owner has a personality. Sims-like behavior within a first person adventure.

You start off in a neighborhood whose only sign of wealth is a neon sign advertising good fried food, fast free delivery. Your main HQ is a one bedroom dump. Thank your construction job that pays shit, because if it didn’t, why are you living in a toilet?

This room lives in isolation, is merely a point on a map that you fast-travel to so you can store your items or advance time. You don’t work everyday which is why you have to call in, and even if there is work open, you can decline. Dialogue trees allow you to pick your excuse, ranging from “no” to “my asshole won’t stop vomiting.”

The times you accept, you fast-travel to a construction site – an apartment building where a month’s rent is equal to ten of your paychecks. Your work objectives cycle; one day you might be installing lights, another will have you working on flooring. The gameplay during these segments plays like a first person shooter but instead of gunning down baddies, you are putting up walls with a nail gun. You even have an inventory screen similar to a Deus EX or a System Shock 2. After all, it is unreasonable to think construction workers have utility belts?

On days off you can go to that place between two avenues. At one end is a cafe; a drugstore at the other. A couple antique shops, a doctor’s office, a flower shop with a brick facade. The rest is apartments, the tallest one ten stories.

During the day you might be able to glimpse what is beyond the apartment windows; it’s during the night when the owners are home is when you get the best view. Sometimes all you see is a bookcase, a framed print. Sometimes you see someone pass by the window. Linger at the right time and you might see the same person wave to the doorman and then exit the building. But don’t loiter too long because the doorman will get suspicious.

Perhaps after a while you begin to notice something about the people who live here. That man with the checkered necktie looks up from his Blackberry whenever a female passes by. The kid in the blazer-hoodie combo likes to walk with his left hand in pocket. The woman in the cafe has a habit of hooking behind her ear a tendril of hair whenever she looks at her watch.

What other fidgets do they have? What are her habits when she has company? What is her routine? Perhaps you spend more time at the cafe, which is where she spends every other night between seven and eight. She likes to read, prefers to look down at the book flat on the table. Sometimes her phone rings. The cafe is loud with chatter yet maybe you are only concerned with her conversations.

You know her apartment is on the second floor. The color of her living room is white, while the study has a red velvet color. Well, from the street it looks like the study. Does her kitchen have an island? What color is the hardwood floor? Do they creak? What part of the couch does she like to read on? These are the questions you want to know, but you simply can’t walk up to her door and activate it open because it’s locked.

You can activate her and start a dialogue tree. Pick the right choices -based on your eavesdropping, her books or other possessions – and she might become friendly. Continue the relationship and you might be able to ask her out. Charm her and she will invite you upstairs. You’re on the other side now.

Every film fits in a genre, carries with it certain elements. A romantic comedy won’t ask you to digest anything heavier than love at first sight. Someone will die in a horror movie. Action-adventure, we have explosives.

Games carry expectations also. Level-grinding in JRPGs; dialogue-trees for the west. 3rd person action games, we usually don’t have to be told that the right analog controls the camera. Adventures games won’t ask us to drive to the target’s location and kill him without being spotted.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that when you’re not at work, you don’t have any objectives. There are no flashing indicators. Look around, there are no arrows telling you who the apartment owners are. Perhaps you’ve also noticed that your inventory screen carries over from the job segments. After all, is it unreasonable to think you carry a shoulder bag?

In first person shooters, if you’re in a location occupied by story-time NPCs, your currently equipped weapon will most likely either lower, not appear at all or be disabled when the crosshair hovers over the NPC.

Perhaps then you notice you can not only equip items from your inventory but use them without any constraints. And where are these items coming from? Well, you can buy stuff from the antique shop. Or the drug store. Roses from the flower shop? The other location you can take items from is the construction site.

You have to ask yourself, “there must be a reason why such mechanics are in place, why this particular camera has been chosen for this game.”

And then you have to ask:

“What kind of monster are you?”

What makes you feel uncomfortable? For me it’s 70’s movies, especially the foreign ones. There is something about that decade that makes me nauseated and terrified. The graininess, the colors; even the oranges and yellows, all dark and dirty. The image that sticks is of a living room; beige walls, brown ceilings, door frames of a darker shade, and a white fur rug underneath a glass coffee table. The owners – lying on the floor – dying. The woman’s right hand clutches the fur rug. It isn’t white anymore.

Imagine a game where you play a torturer for the government. The intro opens in a room with two chairs, one of which a man is strapped to. He is terrified, unable to take his eyes off the rust-colored hammers and pliers on your left side. On your right is a calfskin attache case, with brush metal instruments fit snug in their compartments.

Your goal is to get a confession. Use the construction tools to be brutal. Use the instruments for precision. Whatever style you choose – perhaps you choose both – the scenario will end the same way every time: Cassandra, a colleague, will ask you to step outside because she has to tell you something.

“We fucked up. This man is innocent.”

Your in-game character will walk back inside the room, will either apologize or close the attache case and leave. As the player, you have to look inward and answer one question: did you enjoy torturing your victim?

As the game progresses, you transition between work and home. You’re a family man; your wife Madeline and daughter Zoe know you work for the government and that you roll up your sleeves because sometimes your office can get a bit stuffy, not because you don’t want your cufflinks to catch on your victim’s open wounds.

When you’re not home, your bosses assign you bad guys, each one having a piece of information that, according to your superiors, will prevent the loss of innocent life while killing the ones that need killing.

You have various tools and objects you can use on your victim, employing a sub-targeting system for focused punishment. Deprivation is another option – perhaps one has a high tolerance for physical pain but loses the threshold when he’s being starved. Sometimes pulling up that second chair and asking questions in a calming voice will do the job. Offer a cold smile that says this is my cooldown period; if I don’t get what I want when this smile fades, you’re going to beg me to feed you a bullet. And if you do too much damage, well, that’s what medkits are for.

Perhaps you – the player – cannot tolerate this kind of violence. If that’s the case, there is always the option to dodge your responsibilities and ask your colleagues for help.

Perhaps there is an especially uncooperative case, a Mr. Moncrieff. He is high priority, but the only things coming out of his mouth besides teeth and blood are screams.

When you’re not putting the cursor over tools, you are home playing husband and father. It’s a change of pace and intensity, allowing the player to relax and not worry about health meters, time limits and such. Perhaps there is a scene where Zoe comes home way past curfew. Your wife demands an answer, to which Zoe responds with an unoriginal “just out with my friends, ok.” Zoe storms off. You step inside her room, pull up a chair, and in a calming voice ask her to tell you the truth.

“We were hanging out at my boyfriend’s place.”
“Who’s we?”
“Natalie, Emma, the usual gang.”
“The thing is, how come this is the first time I’m hearing about this boyfriend? Does daddy have to get his baseball bat?”
“Jesus, dad. Lighten up. Alex’s father and uncle were hanging out with us, so we didn’t drink or do any drugs, ok.”

At work, you begin to think of ways to break Moncrieff, which has the added headache of being an off-site assignment on the other side of the country; this also means you cannot ask your colleagues for help. They say he’s one tough turd. Medical reports say a good many of his bones have been broken at least once, and he has had numerous surgeries to prolong his existence. You begin like you always do – applying either charisma or bruises.

When both options fail, you investigate his personal life and come across a childhood friend he hasn’t spoken to in years. You put on your hat, flip your collar up and shadow this woman. You create a situation where an accidental bump turns into a friendly conversation which turns into a casual friendship by proximity – like having someone you regularly talk with while doing laundry but never see outside this routine. After you’re satisfied, you return to Moncrieff.

“Alma says she might go back to school. She also recalled for me her childhood ambitions, that she was going to grow up to be a famous painter while her best friend would become a famous violinist. I’d be surprised if you could still play after we’re done here. The thing is….”

The game will never judge you, will never take your decisions and place you on the appropriate binary path. You can make choices that affect how you complete cases, but only one story is being told. For the people who like torturing the bad guys, they may believe that every time flesh is split open secures our country’s safety. For those players who cannot stomach the atrocities, while you cannot go against your superiors, you can ask for help. Your colleagues are not heartless. They are your friends, and know you must be going through a difficult time.

After all, you did torture an innocent man.

For the players who feel uncomfortable, the Moncrieff assignment may have taken a lot out of you. You question the actions of your colleagues and your own. Perhaps you feel we have gone too far. You formed a friendship under false pretenses, and you ask yourself if you were ready to have a third chair in the room. Can you continue doing this? Have the punishments you’ve inflicted been a necessity or a pleasure? Are there better ways to get a confession? Does anyone truly deserve this kind of treatment?

The phone rings. It’s Madeline. You tell her to slow down, what’s wrong.

“Zoe said she was almost attacked by Alex’s father and uncle. She was walking home and they came up to her and they cornered her and she got away before they could…please come home.”

Hours later, Cassandra picks you up from the airport. Instead of taking you home, she takes you to work. Easy, babe. We have a surprise for you.

She takes you to the room from the opening scene. Inside you find two men strapped into chairs.

“I stopped by your house to drop off your air mattress,” Cassandra says. “Your wife told me everything. A couple of us did the legwork. Now all you have to do is roll up your sleeves.”

She closes the door, leaves you alone with the two men.

What do you do?