Night Call shows us Paris in the present day. Neo-Cab takes place in a not-exactly-distant neon future. Cloudpunk takes place in a time inconceivable to us. But each story is the same: the way things are is utterly fucked. People are stratified and kept in their place in society not by choice, indeed often by force, and with no other options. Those above dump their refuse and bad decisions on those below. Class solidarity is suppressed because everyone up to a certain point is “just trying to make ends meet” and the poisoned system is allowed to metastasize to a point of unsustainability. In the process our friends and family get hurt or killed and nobody bothers to notice. Even our very unimportance is leveraged against us by everyone from our real-world bosses threatening to fire us, knowing we need the job more badly than they need us, to the shady deuteragonists in the kinds of narratives games like Night Call and Cloudpunk employ.

I might just be sleeping badly.