You can't really say the term "hacking" anymore without drawing some sort of comparison to Anonymous, the hacker group that hacks for fun and for its own political agendas. And very successfully, in a lot of cases.
So it was only natural that people would think of the famous hacker group when it was announced that Watch Dogs would feature hacking as its primary feature. And rather than try to shy away from the comparisons, Ubisoft Montreal is embracing them.
"Yes. [Anonymous] was a source of inspiration, we wanted to have this organized and disorganized organization with a celtically set structure, which is something we see happening, [in the game], when a couple of people get together and something is happening in the background," Watch Dogs brand content director Thomas Geffroyd said in an interview with Examiner's Game On blog. "That was the highlight of this approach of biological chaos in a numerical universe. So yeah we were really inspired by [Anonymous]."
Geffroyd goes on to say that the team tried to paint hackers in a somewhat good light for once, rather than the bad rap that hackers have gotten because of cyber criminals.
"I think the community is as wide and diverse as anything else, so you have some black hats, who are crooks and trying to do harm, but there is a huge part of the hacking community that is made up of security guys trying to fix things or testing devices to make sure they work well," Geffroyd said. "There is a huge part of the hacking community that is helping us everyday."
Obviously Aiden Pearce isn't some basic IT Joe Schmo trying to make it in the world today, but he is at least pursuing a noble cause with his hacking antics rather than just tormenting people. Not sure if his stealing random people's money is all that defendable, though.
At any rate, it is cool to see the inspiration behind a game. Check out the full interview at Game On for more.
