My thoughts on the theme of the game

The central theme of this game’s story is “commodification”. I wanted to explore the rarely explored intersection between spanking and the “free use” kink. And when you start to build a narrative around that theme, it quickly becomes a narrative about the commodification of people. And thus, the concept of CCI was born.

The final confrontation of the main story lays out the ultimate form of commodification, but to avoid spoilers, I won’t say anything more about that here. However, the story is also full of other forms of commodification. The most obvious example would be the Practice Facilitation employees, who are often simply called “resources” or referred to by the only part of their bodies that is of any value to CCI.

These employees are expected to behave like furniture, which in turn makes it easy for them to be treated as such. We can see that shift in mentality with Megan, who starts out initially hesitant to treat other humans in this manner but eventually comes around to utilizing them as resources.

We can see a direct relationship between the degree to which Discipline Technicians utilize Practice Facilitation employees and the degree to which they treat them as commodities. Mary and James work with them basically every single day and are therefore the most dismissive of them as humans. By contrast, although Megan becomes noticeably more comfortable utilizing them, her job requires her to do so to a much lesser degree and she therefore retains her capacity to empathize with them.

But the commodification of humans in this game extends well beyond Practice Facilitation. The disciplinary services themselves are the same. CCI seeks to supplant traditional spanking punishment practices with their own more “professional” services, thus taking the relational and emotional aspects out of it. For those on the receiving end, rather than being punished by someone who cares about their well-being, they are punished by someone who sees them as revenue.

This is why domestic tasks are the first ones available to new Discipline Technicians, since these tasks are more compatible with human empathy than some of the later types of tasks. However, Megan manages to hold onto some degree of empathy throughout. In fact, it is her ability to form bonds with these people that allows her to progress to the final confrontation of the game.

Most notably, the ability to commodify people implies a degree of power over them, which reaches its peak in the waking world with the judicial tasks, in which the people being punished are considered to be actual property. The financial incentives of this business model lead to a corrupt system that prosecutes people for the sole purpose of selling them to CCI at taxpayer expense and then getting secret kickbacks.

Even if Megan succeeds in her career advancement and rises to the top of CCI, there won’t be any long-term change in the culture. This is just the nature of power, regardless of who is in charge. Power corrupts. I have previously explored the theme of abuse of power in other contexts, but I wanted to explore what that looks like in a corporate setting this time.