ABSTRACT
Recent cyberpunk game Watch Dogs allows players to manipulate their own digital environment by interacting with the data network that underpins the game world. The game posits Aiden Pearce as the cyberpunk archetype of a marginalized protagonist, but it is Aiden's ability to manipulate the game's made-from-data-world, and consequently transcend the physical rules, which determine both his movement and perception. The game's layering of multiple digital realities in rendering an algorithm-driven city, however, forms an integral part of its updated cyberpunk imaginary: namely, Watch Dogs reflects a world in which the flow of data is not only overwhelming but all-encompassing, transforming cities, movement, behaviors, bodies, power, and the very definition of our being.
