Gameplay Journal #9: Papers, Please
I bought this game a couple years ago for the hype and good reviews about the game, but never looked for game-play footage or played for myself until now. What a waste of money it was. I had a hard time trying to figure out what questions Papers Please was proposing since there were many and was confused about the historical context of the game. From Lucas Pope’s own words, the creator of the game, the game’s “goal isn’t to make a political statement, ” and “was inspired by frequent trips through airport immigration” in his travels in Japan and the United States (Webster 2013). The imagery pulls inspiration from Orwellian fiction of communist and totalitarian bureaucracy and aesthetics, but that’s really where the historical basis lies in, fiction. However, the game provides good story routes which give the player to simulate their decisions in moral problems, of doing what is right and what will keep you and your family alive. Therefore when reading Flanagan’s definition of ‘Critical Play’ as a means “to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life. These questions can be abstract, such as rethinking cooperation, or winning, or losing; or concrete, involved with content issues,” I say Papers Please mechanics do so. You are placed in the role of an immigration officer where you answer many questions about what is fair and weighing human lives over state interests of a government you may not necessarily enjoy being a part of.
However what made playing this game exhausting was the sheer banality of it and its controls. My biggest gripe with the game is the lack of hotkeys or buttons to perform tags as drags and picking up items with my ball-mouse and touch-pad on my laptop was dreadful. I probably would have enjoyed the touch and drag controls on a touchscreen enabled device, but playing the game, with the music, and repetition is not something I want to play when I am tired from a long day. Not to mention, I was having a hard time understanding the political and historical contexts of the game and its parallels to the real life. Aside from the forced labor assignment, the game reminded me of life living in a liberal democracy than a communist state. You barely had money to afford rent, food, heat, despite being selected from the government to work a very dangerous job. The job was criminally understaffed despite plenty of migrants entering and there were multiple acts of terrorism by nationalists and rebel groups. I tried looking for parallels in the Soviet Union online and there was nothing that was clearly similar to the game. It is just Orwellian fiction from Western countries during the Cold War. I can’t say I’m the person who this game is intended for, so I can’t recommend it for the lack of hotkeys, the setting, and boring nature of reading documents and checking for typographical errors.
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Works Cited
Mary, Flanagan. Critical Play: Radical Game Design. MIT Press, LTD, 2013. Webster, Andrew. “Immigration as a Game: ‘Papers, Please’ Makes You the Border Guard.” The Verge, The Verge, 14 May 2013, www.theverge.com/2013/5/14/4329676/papers-please-a-game-about-an-immigration-inspector.
