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Review
Smart Theory encounters a common problem in game design: How do you simulate an unpleasant experience without driving away your audience?
The previous year's IFComp entries included Savor, which described repeated, excruciating pain, and Accelerate, which expected you to actively participate in atrocities. Smart Theory is following a similar path by asking you to endure a training session that blends all the worst aspects of motivational seminars and religious cults.
The writing is smoothly implemented and effective. It was fun to see how the “first rule” of Smart Theory was applied in the story. This entry works as a kind of power fantasy — you can mock transparent nonsense and criticize sloppy thinking.
However, the whole thing felt too plausible. A shamelessly inflated sense of self-importance is part of every management training course; they all discuss overpriced-but-revolutionary new paradigms. Attempting to debunk their transparent nonsense is just as futile inside Smart Theory as it is in the real world.
If you view it without irony, Smart Theory is interchangeable with a lot of the overpriced self-help literature that currently exists. That can be read as a declaration that there are no new ideas in this space, but it feels simultaneously correct and tedious.
