Down in central Brighton, where the city meets the sea, and resting under the latticed shadow of a burned-out hotel, there’s a traffic crossing where someone has stuck a set of plastic googly eyes on one of the green men. I don’t know how long these things last, but if you’re around in the next few days you can probably still see it. I noticed it because I was out with my daughter and she always notices these things: a green man who stared back at us while we waited to cross the road with the rest of the human throng.
Noticing things is having a bit of a moment just now. Have you noticed this? There are best-selling books telling you how to pay attention more effectively. On TikTok you’ll scroll and stop on videos of rainfall on city streets, seabeds stained with the ripple of surface water overhead, fleeting shapes forming and unforming in the sun-rimmed clouds. Tagline: the art of noticing. Here you’ll find beauty and riches, here are gifts that are only available if you’ve first taught yourself to see them.
And then there’s Flock, and Flock feels very much of a piece with this sort of thing. It’s a game about wildlife and it’s a game about collecting stuff. But it’s also, serving as bedrock for all of that other stuff, a game about noticing. Its world is there to reveal itself to you, but only when you’re ready. Only when you’re in sync, only when you’re properly attuned.
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