Faceminer is a narrative sim about building a data-harvesting empire
What if a software suite could data mine every face in the world? What would happen if you were given control and asked to expand it? Faceminer is the realization of that dystopian nightmare.
Set in the late 1990s, complete with the charmingly retro OS aesthetic, you set about your work with frugal efficiency. The game tasks you with collecting and harvesting biometric data of people on a planetary scale and gives you access to increasingly advanced collection tech as you progress.
Similar to games like Papers Please, your objective is to collect as much data as possible, make money, improve your software, and then expand your hardware. Of course, all of this comes at a significant cost, and you have to ensure the result is profitable, or there will be consequences.
All of this is easier said than done. Utility bills will overwhelm you if you don't make enough money, and your cooling systems will fail if you don't care about them. If you are crafty, you can use some crooked carbon emission schemes to turn the tide in your favor.
As you slowly get the hang of the game's systems, you rise on the corporate ladder from a rookie to a hardened veteran who can scrape biometric data and sell it increasingly fast. Data brokering moves fast, and poor prioritization can lead to costly mistakes.
The game slowly unravels the narrative through the corporate messaging system, where you indulge in office gossip and read messages to learn more about your shadowy organization.
True to form, the game uses Nvidia's FFHQ dataset to generate faces. Faceminer is ultimately about the dangers of mass data hoarding and surveillance and why it is probably a bad idea to let a few people in power have control over it. You can check out the game here. Faceminer is currently 20% off as part of an introductory discount.
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