Liel Leibovitz explores the Orwellian effect of Papers, Please, a simple online game that establishes the player as “a bureaucrat at a border-crossing in a fictional totalitarian state”:
The metal gate goes up. Your station is open for business. People come streaming in. The rules, communicated by the government in the beginning of each level, are simple, telling you just who is to be let in and under what circumstances. The reality of your job, however, is infinitely more complex: What, for example, would you do with the mother whose papers are not in order but who begs you to let her in so that she could reunite with her long-lost son? Or the woman who begs for sanctuary from persecution in a neighboring state? The married couple, he with his papers in order and she without?
The questions aren’t just theoretical.
Each transgression from protocol will cost you dearly: With every act of kindness comes a steep fine, which means that heating bills go unpaid and medicine for loved ones unobtained. Each level ends with a short statement of your personal finances and their consequences. Without heat and medicine and food, children and spouses and parents get sick and die.
But for many, I suspect, such deprivations will never come to pass. The most terrifying thing about Papers, Please is the temptation to excel in it, to be the best border guard possible, the most well-oiled cog in the machine. This, after all, is a game, and like most games it invites its players to gradually hone their skills. By the time you get very good at examining passports for forgeries, work permits become mandatory as well. You learn to read different kinds of documents. An elaborate handbook is on hand to offer guidance. Mastering the technicalities is a tedious and time-consuming affair, but its rewards are immense—in the game, as in life, control brings with it a sense of order and peace.
Previous Dish on morality-based gaming here.
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