4.10.2024
Villains in Cyber City Tycoon Reflect Real-Life Cyber Threats
The characters in Cyber City Tycoon are robots, each with their own distinct appearance and personality, reflecting the way they operate. By their very nature, the game’s characters teach something essential about online scams, as each character must be either charming, convincing, or otherwise persuasive in their own way.
A great example of this is the character Ro Mans, who carries out romance scams. He has a romantic, slightly sugary appearance that hides a ruthless desire to exploit a person’s need for love. Meanwhile, Banknote Benny, with his fake bank, tries to come across as a trustworthy authority figure, whose questions and requests should be answered without hesitation.
What all the characters in the game have in common is their different ways of trying to prevent people from stopping to think. Their priority is to create a desire to act first and think later. Cable Fraudulent News Network broadcasts fake news that looks like real news but is meant to be something else. The illusion of credibility is used to feed the recipient deceptive messages instead of real news.
Urgency and pressure are effective tools to make people act against their own interests. That’s why, for example, Dixie & Dusty, the ransomware duo, come with bold threats, always accompanied by instructions to act quickly, or else…
Secrecy also plays a role in the tactics of the characters in Cyber City Tycoon. MemeGorgon spreads memes that hide darker intentions under a layer of humour. Memes are often seen as harmless, but in fact, they are widely used for malicious information manipulation.
What all the characters have in common, both in the game and in real life, is that they make us believe what we want to believe. We all have emotions that these characters exploit in their scams. By seeing the world from their perspective in the game, players can better understand how they operate. This, in turn, helps players recognise the danger when they faced with similar threats in real life.
Follow our project’s progress on LinkedIn @Cyber Citizen. The next blog will be out next week.
“I’m patiently trying to make you as impatient as possible”
“I’m patiently trying to make you as impatient as possible”
“I’m patiently trying to make you as impatient as possible”