We live in a hyperconnected, technologically turbo-charged world of mass surveillance and "digital shadows" that is so subtly controlling, that it makes the notion of Big Brother seem quaint.

In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the only person watching you was the government. In today's society, the millions of digital eyes found in laptops, video game consoles, tablets and smartphones and a person's growing trail of data and information left online, are the realization of a more insidious invasion of privacy, a willful Little Brother.

Where the overt surveillance of Big Brother was examined in a 1940s book, today's troubling Little Brother is scrutinized in an upcoming game from developer Ubisoft Montreal.

Watch Dogs plays with the notion of information warfare and civil liberties by dropping a gamer into the shoes of a modern-day hacker vigilante. The game takes place in a re-imagining of a real Chicago already replete with surveillance cameras. The game's Windy City has been turned into a place where computers track a web of surveillance cameras, use of free WiFi hotspots, traffic patterns and conversations to improve policing, public safety and life through technology.

In Watch Dogs, due out in November, the player can walk down the street and instantly pull data from any cell phone, or peer through windows using security cameras, laptop cameras, cell phone cameras.

"As with any new technology, we need to consider what privacy issues arise in exchange for a more efficient city," said Kevin Shortt, lead story designer. "Watch Dogs hopes to challenge people's views in this regard. Our protagonist, Aiden Pearce, gains illegal access to this central operating system (ctOS). While his objectives are noble, his methods should raise questions.

"There's a lot of valuable and important debate on privacy and surveillance with no easy answers. It's a discussion that will go on for years and we hope Watch Dogs can help generate more discussions."

Senior producer Dominic Guay believes that video games are intrinsically better equipped to spur these sorts of meaningful discussions than are books, TV or movies.

"You have authorship in both a movie and a game," he said. "Yes you have a level of interpretation in how you see a movie ... but if you're going to be part of the action or engaged in it you can actually experiment. You can answer the same question in two different ways and see the answers to both. So it offers a lot more opportunities for someone to get engaged in not only the story line but more of the meaning behind it.

"That's the goal. It's not necessarily something video games have mastered yet, but I think we are getting there."

Watch Dogs is riddled with those engaging moments. A player has the option to digitally spy on anyone they run into in the city. They can see at a glance that this person is an underpaid school teacher, this person is a short order cook with HIV or this person beats his wife. They can choose to ignore that information, or not even to seek it out, or they can try to get involved.