This is not a threat: Conspiracy For Good

Abstract

In the summer of 2010, the pervasive game Conspiracy For Good, conceived by Tim Kring and sponsored by Nokia, pitted players against the fictional Blackwell Briggs, a global corporation bent on using a private security force and CCTV network to surveil British citizens in the name of fighting crime and terrorism. In the game, players were recruited to join a ‘conspiracy for good’, in which socially responsible individuals organized to thwart the villainous corporation's proposed overreach. In this article, I explore Conspiracy For Good's potential to define and orient the subjectivities of its players, and in particular to place in its players in specific relationships to surveillant practices. The game scenario identifies surveillance as troublesome in the hands of the overtly malevolent Blackwell Briggs, but simultaneously a powerful tool for resistance of corporate overreach in the hands of consumers. By positioning game sponsor Nokia on the side of right in the game's melodramatic central conflict between concerned citizens and a powerful corporation, the game also stages an inversion of the 2009 revelations that Nokia Siemens Networks equipped the Iranian government with technology enabling the monitoring and interception of individual communications during protests over the disputed 2009 presidential elections.