Not For Broadcast

Not For Broadcast (2020) is a narrative puzzle game where you control the National Nightly News just as a radical government comes to power. By deciding the angles, adverts, images and censoring in the show you control what the people see and determine what’s Not For Broadcast.

---

Sat in the control room chair, with footage from real actors to deal with, it's immersive and high-pressure. As you progress it becomes more than a mechanical challenge to make the right decision. Propaganda, coercion and commercial concerns pressure you to present the audience a jaundiced view of reality.

You see the different shots and angles in real time. Along with selecting the next smooth shot, you need to keep things suitable for kids by censoring swear words. Then there are considerations about removing "unapproved" information to keep the government happy. Along with this you need to balance commercial pressures. Pick and choose the advertisements to run, but take care to avoid backlash about products that don't deliver on promises.

Although for a mature audience, game-play is kept relatively light with the hammy acting and tongue in cheek characters. What emerges from the sometimes chaotic web of decisions, is that the pressures and competing agendas make your time-limited choices almost impossible. You might start with high ideals, but these are soon pressured into more practical concerns.

At the end of each broadcast you get graded about which thing you let slip out on the basis of editing, interference and censoring. You can then go back over the output as well as review the different elements you didn't use. This lets you see what was happening behind the scenes, before and after the sections you used and the different camera angles.

---

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Not For Broadcast 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 10 months ago.