Review: In Not For Broadcast, the truth is crushingly relative

Warning: Spoilers for Not For Broadcast ahead.

Simulators have always been a major part of the gaming market— Farming Simulator, Cooking Simulator, Powerwash Simulator and now newsroom simulator, though this one is called Not For Broadcast. The control room of a news show is such a good premise for a simulator that the only question it raises is why we got Goat Simulator first.

In Not For Broadcast, the player finds themselves behind the switchboard of the (unspecified) nation’s top news program, the National Nightly News. Running the control room means switching between camera angles, loading and cutting to commercials, battling broadcast interference and censoring language, among a variety of other challenges. I’ve run a switchboard in real life (though not for the national news), and the game controls felt remarkably similar to how it really works— aided perhaps by the fact that all of the footage we’re cutting between was shot specifically for this game, including all four available cameras when the broadcast is off-the-air and dozens of commercials.

The game has three difficulty levels— intern, broadcaster (the recommended difficulty and what I played) and showrunner. Regardless of the level, the game starts straightforwardly and increases in complexity as it goes, adding secondary tasks like running a fan to keep the server from overheating while complicating the existing ones. After each segment, players get a grade, based on how interesting the shot choices were, how much interference got through and if the appropriate language was censored.

It’s a very well-made game, thorough and satisfying, while making you work to get that satisfaction.

But, it’s also so much bigger than that— and not just because the file is nearly 50 gigabytes large. The first broadcast of the game takes place the day after the representatives for Advance, a fictional political party that ran in opposition to wealth hoarding, has been elected to office. The remainder of the game is made up of further broadcasts, interspersed with story segments that hint at our character’s personal life, over the course of the first 2,602 days under Advance.

By day 2,602, the nation has fallen into a relative dystopia— elections have been “suspended,” food comes in uniform shipments and people are voluntarily ending their lives in “Transition Centers.” Maybe we’re in crippling debt, maybe our family is in shambles, maybe we’ve lost our spark for work. I say “maybe” because Not for Broadcast pivots directly into a choose-your-own adventure where the choices go from how to direct the segments to how to frame the news and even which segments are important to show— by a certain point, we as the press have to decide what the news is. In the words of lead reporter Jeremy Donaldson, “I mean, it’s not sophisticated, but what a metaphor.”

Released in 2022, Not For Broadcast never directly parodies any real-world politics, but it is rooted in the tropes. The personalities featured on the National Nightly News include an egotistical actor, an out-of-touch rapper who wants to run for office, a boy band introduced on a talent competition show and the like. As the leaders of Advance give their acceptance speech in the first broadcast, Donaldson quips, “I mean, a lawyer and a TV personality running the country? Seriously?”

That’s what makes this game feel so sharp— by keeping the story connected to themes and patterns that are familiar, but disconnected from any dated real-world events, the stakes always feel alarmingly real. Perhaps because, in a way, they are. This is the battle that newsrooms are currently having. As politicians increasingly ignore facts they find inconvenient to placate to their supporters, as objective truth becomes a matter of debate, the job of the press— to report, in a balanced manner, the reality of what’s happening— becomes increasingly more important.

The CEOs of every major social media platform sat with President Trump at his inauguration and Elon Musk increasingly became a bigger player in both worlds as he used X posts to decide DOGE policy. The White House “rotated” major news institutions— specifically, the Associated Press, after they refused to update their style guide to rename the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America”— out of the press room for online influencers more in line with the right-wing talking points the administration is delivering, suggesting that staying in line with the messaging of the administration is the most patriotic option. Trump has called questions he doesn’t like “nasty,” threatened outlets that contradict him and labeled the press as “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.”

In Not For Broadcast, the channel we work for becomes government-owned. The National Nightly News transforms from a leading source of information to a spineless chat show, peddling whatever Advance tells them to— unless we decide not to. The censor button changes, at one point, to a crossed-out dialogue icon, since we’re now expected to censor language and any ideas contrary to official messaging.

Our choices expand. Do we run their propaganda segments? Do we allow channel interference messages from growing opposition party Disrupt? Do we undermine the hosts through editing? The consequences of these choices and similar choices in the story segments are very direct. They determine our personal wealth, the state of the world, even who lives and who dies— it’s nearly impossible to play the game without being directly responsible for at least one character’s death.

It’s hard to explain how exactly this game made me feel. There’s an undercurrent of uneasiness through the whole thing, aided by the masterful score— an orchestral suite with a BBC-meets-dystopian electronic beat. I felt remorse over choices I made, dread over what might happen next— but also a morbidly curious desire to play through and find out what every branch of the story could be.

The cast of the game brings everything to life. Paul Baverstock’s portrayal of Donaldson as a journalist so committed to the truth that it almost gets him killed (or does, if you play the game a certain way— especially poignant on the heels of ABC News firing Terry Moran over a social media post critical of Trump and Chief of Staff Stephen Miller) makes him arguably the best character in the game. Andrea Valls’ Megan Wolfe, Donadlson’s co-anchor who’s more willing to adapt to what Addvance is asking, flies under the radar but adds so much to the tracking of the story’s development. Claire Racklyeft rounds out the cast, playing Prime Minister Julia Salisbury with a fake smile loud enough to make the skin crawl.

None of these characters have a lot of personality or growth, but they have enough well-chosen moments of each to make the personal consequences fill in emotionally as the large-scale changes intellectually horrify. It’s bleak, both in the game and in real life— which sets up a choice, both in the game and in real life.

In a possible ending, Donaldson and Wolfe make a final appeal to the audience at home.

“You’re good people, and you are sensible people. You know the difference between right and wrong,” they said. “So, stop whinging and do something. Take responsibility. Because, if you don’t, it’ll all be left to these clowns. And that’s the worst circus of all… Have a transformative night. And then make tomorrow better.”