Indeed, the game's designer, Lucas Pope, in a VG24/7 interview states that, It represents no definite and identifiable historic agents, events or places. Papers, Please is a largely fictional game. These are the kind of dilemmas that Papers, Please regularly poses for the player. Yet the morning paper brings news of a murder at the club. You let him pass and your son lives another day. To deny him access would be to deny your ill son the $5 he needs for medicine. Do you deny access to a man who you have been told is intent on mistreating the women working at the Pink Vice club? On inspection, his paperwork is correct. This decision will be based not only on an ever-increasing number of rules and required paperwork but also on the various situations each character presents you with. You have the decision to either let them through to Arstotzka or deny them passage. Over the course of a day, a line of various characters will present themselves at your booth. For each correct application processed, you receive $5 that you can use to look after your family at home in your class eight dwelling. It is your job to ensure that the state's immigration controls are strictly administered and adhered to. Your character has been selected from the October labour lottery to work for the Ministry of Admission. A shadowy group of revolutionaries called the EZIC are working to bring down the government through a campaign of political intrigue and violent bombings. It is late 1982 and, in the aftermath of a conflict with the neighbouring state of Kolechia and the de-escalation of tensions between the two countries, the boarder has finally been re-opened. Papers, Please places you, as the player, in the booth of a border control checkpoint in the fictional communist state of Arstotzka. The game can neatly be described as a dystopian bureaucracy simulation.
Papers, Please, writes Dan Whitehead, 'feels a lot like an interactive anxiety attack.' It is safe to say that this game is not everyone's idea of fun. I will propose that the way in which the various systems of rules have been used not only encourages self-reflection in the player but also speak of the ambiguous nature of traumatic pasts. Through analysing Papers, Please, I will focus on how the rules of a game define the designer's central argument as well as how they facilitate decision-making. In this article I will review Lucas Pope's dystopian checkpoint simulator Papers Please and explain why, despite it's rather unpromising premise, I think it is worthy of being considered as one of the most interesting historical games currently available.
0 kommentar(er)
