Watch Dogs 2: 6 Important Social Observations
3. Apps Are An Essential Element Of Our Lives
Apps are inescapable. In Watch Dogs 2, Marcus has apps for everything. Need a car? App. Want to know what's that music playing in the background? App.
And that's just fine, him being a hacker and all, but he also uses the Research App to monitor his self-improvement. The app allows you to not only improve the player, but more importantly, see who he can actually become, which is again, a very neoliberal notion.
In The Wellness Syndrome, Carl Cederström and André Spicer criticize self-improvement apps, as instead of motivating, they eventually make people depressed. For neoliberalism, potential is key - who you are is not important, it's what you can become that is most promising. The book quotes a Financial Times respondent, who compares his life-logging to a start-up company, putting his humanity into question.
In WD2 by collecting points and developing RetrO, you're obviously progressing in the game, but you're also responding to that social impulse of self-improvement.