Near-Future Games: 4 Video Games and Board Games That Saw the 2020s Coming
The games in our archive, ranked by score, with what each one got right about plagues, enhanced bodies, home robots and a city that watches back.
The best near-future game we've reviewed is Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, the board game where a twelve-month outbreak is written onto the board and can't be undone. Next is Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a video game about a world that rebuilt its bodies and then rented them back. After those come Detroit: Become Human and Watch Dogs.
Four games is a short list, and we'd rather say so than pad it. Each one has a score, a Nearness reading and a prediction ledger. Games are worth reading as forecasts because they make you act inside the premise. You don't watch someone close a city, you close it. You don't read about an arm that needs a subscription, you keep buying the drug.
Their record is mixed in a useful way. The hardware mostly hasn't arrived: no android has woken up and no cyborg arm beats the original. The arrangements around the hardware have. A device that depends on one company's solvency, a robot with a person hidden inside it and a profile on every stranger are all on sale. For the same pattern in other media, see cyberpunk books, films and games and sci-fi about surveillance.
You play a team of specialists against a spreading disease across a campaign of twelve months. You tear up cards, stick panic on cities and write on the board, so nothing can be taken back. The designers never claimed it was a forecast, but it matches 2020 on three counts: disease spreads along travel routes, closing a city is a casual move at the table and a heavy one in life, and the strain mutates past your tools. It leaves out the slow, bitter argument over who shares samples and vaccines. Cooperative play invites one dominant voice, and you get one campaign per box.
Adam Jensen is rebuilt with augmentations after an attack on his employer, and almost every room can be solved by stealth, force, hacking or talk. The cybernetic arm is still a way off, since real devices restore what was lost. The game's sharper bet is the terms: a body that depends on a drug you must keep buying. Second Sight's retinal implant left users with a device in their heads and no one to maintain it after the company wound down. The boss fights and the conspiracy are the weak parts.
Three playable androids, a flowchart of consequences and a story that moves on if any of them dies. Its labour pressure has begun: a Stanford study found employment among 22 to 25 year-olds in the most AI-exposed jobs 19% below where it would have been, though a Yale and Brookings analysis found no wider disruption. Robots at home and driverless taxis are also on sale. The awakening, the game's centre, is the furthest from us. The civil-rights imagery is laid on thickly. The likelier story it missed is the machine that works because a person is hidden inside it.
Aiden Pearce turns Chicago into a set of switches through his phone, and the game makes you the watcher. Its joined-up city never arrived, since real cities are a drawer of vendors who don't talk to each other. The weak default on a roadside box did: researchers took over nearly 100 traffic signals in 2014 with permission, and a Jeep in 2015. Chicago's own risk-score "heat list" was shut down in 2019. It is a good first attempt held back by a dour hero and ordinary driving and shooting.
What is the best near-future video game?
Of the video games we've reviewed, Deus Ex: Human Revolution scores highest at 8.0, with a Nearness reading of ARRIVING. It is the one to play for the question of who owns a body once it contains a product. Detroit: Become Human scores 7.1 and Watch Dogs 6.9. Each review has the full ledger.
Are there any near-future board games worth playing?
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is the one we've reviewed, and at 8.4 it's the highest-scoring game in the archive. It suits a group that will keep meeting for a year, because a legacy game is a consumable: you get one campaign per box.
Did *Detroit: Become Human* predict real androids?
Partly. The game is set in 2038 and our review reads it as NEAR. The labour pressure, robots at home with a human "Expert" on call, and driverless taxis are all in the 2020s. A machine that wakes up and demands rights is not, and the survey of consciousness theories we cite found no current system to be a strong candidate.
Where can I see how accurate each game is?
Every claim is tracked on the P(n) Board, with a weight for how pivotal it is to the story. The reviews link to their individual ledgers.