Abstract
Papers, Please, a work simulation role-playing video game released in August 2013, achieved unanticipated critical acclaim from a variety of media outlets. Its accolades include Best Game of 2013 (The New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, Destructoid, and PC World), Top Indie Game of 2013 (Forbes), Grand Prize (IGF 2013), Best Strategy and Simulation (BAFTA), Cultural Innovation Award (SXSW Gaming Awards), and so on (see Papers, Please 2013). Popular press reviews of Papers, Please struggle to make sense of its unlikely popularity. The twenty-first century globalized world system is characterized, in part, by transnational flows of people, controversial immigration policies, and fear of terrorist incursion. These circumstances have resulted in heightened surveillance practices and escalated border security. Sociologists recognize that borders are contested social spaces and often sites of cultural, structural, and physical violence (Anzaldúa 1987). As such, Papers, Please demands its players contemplate the consequences of the seemingly arbitrary geopolitical borders that maintain boundaries of inclusion and exclusion making it a useful pedagogical tool for exploring these issues. As game designer and scholar Ian Bogost argues, engagement in certain video games involves the development of a certain type of literacy. “Not the literacy that helps us read books or write term papers, but the kind of literacy that helps us make or critique the systems we live in” (Bogost 2008:136). If we take Bogost’s argument seriously, there is much at stake regarding the role video games play in teaching and learning in the social sciences.
Empathy Games
Part of what makes Papers, Please sociologically interesting is that it epitomizes an emerging video game genre wherein mundane and highly repetitive tasks of day-to-day work life are carried out by the player. These types of games, commonly referred to as “empathy games,” feature premises opposed to traditional video game genres such as first-person shooters or action adventures (see also: Cart Life and Everyday the Same Dream). In contrast to the overt hyperviolence of these popular genres, empathy games force players to navigate the fraught existences of others by challenging players to contend with precarious physical, economic, and social circumstances. By requiring such a gaming experience, empathy games, such as Papers, Please, create a unique platform where important humanist questions of agency, empathy, and social change may be expressed.
Papers, Please: Summary and Review
In Papers, Please, the player is an immigration officer stationed at a border outpost controlling the flows of people attempting to enter Arstotzka, a fictional Soviet-esque state set in 1982. Increasingly complicated sets of immigration policies are wired to the station from the Ministry of Admission indicating who may legitimately enter Arstotzka. On the surface, the player’s task is simply to cross-reference each entrant’s paperwork (passports, work/travel permits, etc.) to determine whether or not their passage is legally recognized by Arstotzka. As a seemingly endless line of people snakes its way offscreen, the player is forced to process as many immigrants as possible. The player’s family depends on efficiency as they are rewarded with resources (e.g., money, food, and medicine) based on how many people are accurately accepted or declined. The gameplay is straightforward: simply cross-reference paperwork and allow people to enter or not based on an increasingly convoluted set of state-mandated rules.
“Video games make arguments about how social or cultural systems work in the world—or how they could work, or don’t work…When we play video games, we can interpret these arguments and consider their place in our lives” (Bogost 2008:136). When playing Papers, Please, moral, affective, and cognitive dissonances emerge, as one begins to see more clearly the brutality of the regime you represent. For example, a young woman appears before you, clearly lacking sufficient paperwork for legitimate entry. She desperately claims, however, that a man farther back in line is going to kidnap and traffick her if she is not allowed into Arstotzka. If “winning” the game means strict adherence to state immigration policy (and, thereby, keeping your family alive), then it also means foregoing the freedom and safety of others. Moral distinctions of right and wrong have a long history in role-playing games; these distinctions, however, usually have a particular moral clarity. This is not the case in Papers, Please. Through its web of moral dilemmas, Papers, Please asks players to reconsider the meaning of “winning.” Do you obey state authority at the potentially ruinous cost to human life in order to keep your job and feed your family? Or, do you challenge the dehumanization of the oppressive state apparatus you represent? Depending on your choices, players end up at 1 of the 20 endings ranging from the death of the player and their family to destruction of the border station. There is overt violence in the game, but it is not a propulsive element. It is, rather, the ubiquitous and constant symbolic violence that resonates at deep affective levels. There is nudity in the game, but it is not for sexual stimulation. Instead, forced body scans and strip searches reinforce ways that oppressive state policies strip people of not only their clothes but also their basic human rights.
Papers, Please permits players to occupy various roles along a structure/agency continuum. At one end, the role of the player can be understood as the subject of a ruthless state apparatus. At the other end, the player’s character can be considered as a social actor with power to affect meaningful social change. The game also presents the complexities of authority and power relationships by placing you as both the powerful “border keeper” and the powerless, replaceable wage laborer. As Papers, Please clearly demonstrates, video games can serve multiple purposes besides entertainment and education. They can confer meaningful humanist messages and prosocial video games can inculcate empathy (Greitemeyer, Osswald, and Brauer 2010). Although the game does not make clear political or ethical statements about issues like immigration policy and border security, it does challenge us to see shades of moral complexity in worlds often divided by physical and cultural boundaries.