Critical Play: Inhumane Conditions
Inhumane Conditions is a 2018 game of interrogation in which the interviewer must determine whether the suspect is a human or a robot based on a series of open-ended questions from a given list of prompts/conversation packets. This is a card game designed by Tommy Maranges and Cory O’Brien and that has been adapted to be played online.
The target user is [young] adults who enjoy mystery/invention-style games. It can be played with friends or family members as a quick, fun game. It can also be played as an ice-breaker between two strangers.
Notable Elements of the Game
Inhumane Conditions is a two-person game (player vs player) where one player is the interviewer while the other takes on the role of the suspect.
For the online version of the game, the first person to log on chooses which role to take on, making the other player take on the alternative role by default. Then the interviewer and suspect are presented with three possible penalties to choose from that the suspect would need to perform throughout the interview if needed. First, the interviewer eliminates one of the three options before the suspect picks one of the remaining two to be the penalty. The interviewer will then ask the suspect to perform the penalty 3 times to verify it's being performed accordingly.
Next, the interviewer selected one of the many interview packets, which will be the topic of conversation/interrogation (e.g. creative problem solving, hopes and dreams, etc). Before starting the game, the interviewer asks a simple starter question based on a diagram and then reveals the role of the suspect (human or robot) and her/his background (e.g. a popstar).
The objective of the game is for the suspect to appear as human as possible despite their role and for the interviewer to correctly guess the role of the suspect (human or robot) based on the responses to the questions he/she asks the suspect within a 5-minute time cap. At the end of the 5 minutes, the interview casts her/his guess (human or robot) and the true answer is revealed.
The conflict in this game stems from the fact that you as the interviewer don’t know whether to trust the suspect or not. And as a suspect, to make the interviewer believe your lies. The boundaries are the background of the suspect and the chosen interview packet.
Final Thoughts
This game was quite entertaining when played with close friends. I played this with my sister and friend, both times taking turns being the interviewer and the suspect. I felt that it really tested how much I knew them (recognizing their facial expression when they were lying as well as knowing some of my sister's answers were utter lies because I know her too well). At the same time, it was thrilling to see how much I can push a story before they questioned its validity and vice versa. Given the chance, I would try out the in-person version because I feel like that would add to the fun.
One thing I would change to make this better is offering the suspect more/diverse roles than simply human or suspect. I would also make this either a player-vs-player or a team-vs-team game where you would have a team of interviewers/investigators against a team of suspects. This could make this more challenging since you’d have people to compare notes with and it would come down to more than one person's suspicion.
But overall, this was a fun new game and I enjoyed playing it!
