The Castle Doctrine, the new pseudo-MMO by indie star
Jason Rohrer, asks players to fill the shoes of a paranoid home owner who needs to protect his wife, kids, and home at almost any cost. Even the title of the game is based on a law that states that a person has the right to use force to defend personal space or abode, which should help you understand what Rohrer is trying to create. If you look
at his official blog, you'll find out that his family was the victim of a dog attack while living in a New Mexico neighborhood. His experiences led to the creation of this art project.
In the game, players build up home defenses but also try to break into neighbor's houses, dodging menacing dogs and traps. Imagine a game that plays a bit like tower defense with permadeath: If you are unsuccessful in breaking in to a house, you have to start over with a brand-new home and family. Of course, the title has brewed plenty of controversy, especially considering that you can play only as a man and that the highest in-game payout comes when you murder someone else's wife. The game is a man-on-man murder simulation where the woman and children are all property.
Of course, Rohrer has made the case that, as in previous titles, The Castle Doctrine is a personal art game, one that is supposed to allow the player to walk around in his tiny digital shoes. It's similar to an independent movie with a specific leading man who goes through a specific experience, but many argue that the open, connected nature of the game automatically takes away from the specificity of the premise. Players cannot chat or message each other in the game, and there is no interaction on the massive scale that we've grown to love in most MMOs, but the game does shine a light on how players interact in any multiplayer game. We've all been the victim of griefing or other players' poor behavior before, but does the griefing-based gameplay of The Castle Doctrine detract from the explanation of being the victim of real-life crime?
There are several ways to look at a game like
The Castle Doctrine. Personally, I see it as yet another indie game that gets much more attention than it deserves. Games like
The Castle Doctrine garner mainstream website coverage from sites that hardly poke a nose into the massive world of indie games. You'd be
hard-pressed to find a major website (other than this one, of course!) that covers indie MMOs, unless they come out in a small storm of controversy like
The Castle Doctrine has. In other words, the hype is generally larger than the game.
It's also obvious how much of the game and its backstory could be taken the "wrong" way. I have as much of an issue with the creator's real-life shock at seeing people who openly carried firearms and at large dogs chained in neighborhood yards as I did with the fact that he was literally placing a price on digital loved ones. The whole project feels like the result of a bad high school field trip to the rougher area of town or like watching an episode of
Beyond Scared Straight. Rightfully, many players have taken issue with the fact that the only way to play the game is as a man who is protecting his "property," as though no one else other than a man can know how it feels to be the protector or the one who is responsible for a family. While I can see how the creator is trying to tell a
very specific story through what is very basic gameplay, his success in the gaming world should have taught him about how multiplayer games can differ from a single-player experience.
