I'm not really a fan of Kotaku either. They really don't have a claim to being a moral authority. It's practically 'the internet' of games journalism, in that it includes all types of content (from the highbrow to the downright stupid, trivial, sexist and not even games.)
I get the guy's gripe and yeah, in some ways you feel a little weird playing PA if you have any sort of liberal leanings. But it's not a white washing, or a thoughtless cheerleader for the Prison Industry. It's....
A goddamn simulation! And a good one, at that! The statement it makes is the statement
the player intends to make. A good simulation covers as many angles and extremes as possible, and when the dots are all connected between various simulation mechanics, you arrive at the outlook the player wanted to express. That covers everything from the newbie who is hopelessly floundering amongst the game mechanics, and is basically the model of inefficiency, to the experts who understand the mechanics and manipulate them to arrive at increasingly different results. That's both the guy who runs a gulag hellhole as a political statement OR like a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass....to the guy who runs a Utopia where every prisoner has an apartment (one of the maps already shown on Steam) because he believes prisons should help people OR because he wants a safe testing ground to observe and experiment on these people.
A good simulation makes room for all these things. If the people making the simulation are decent people, then it's reasonable to assume they prefer good outcomes just as much as you do. (And perhaps the occasional desire to indulge in a nihilistic simulation.) And PA is already doing that pretty well.
To take DF as an example, I actually get a lot of joy from watching my personally named dwarves succeed, get better and be happy. I savescum for this reason, because that's what the game is primarily about to me. I play PA much the same way by default, it just lacks some elements to make you more attached to all occupants of the prison, staff and inmates.
I think the article writer may not really get simulations the same way, or want them to work in less interesting ways. I haven't looked through his games but what they said about Unmanned sounds like a guy who designs a game to make a specific political statement or strike a specific tone. And while I consider myself left-leaning, the kind of game it
sounds like he wants is a terrible one, one that points out all the worst of prisons in America so it can be an incessant drum beat of hunger strikes, protests against execution, rape, corrupt staff taking advantage of inmates and outright murder. That's pigeonholing a game to serve a political goal and it's what wrecks simulations. LCS is a little like that, but in his own way, Toady built a scale between violent and non-violent liberal action. To fully realize the simulation would have been to do the CCS in reality.
Anyways, they seem to be taking it alright. And in the process of talking about what the game doesn't yet do, we're getting a look at some longer term goals that I didn't really know about. Dunno if they've talked about them before.
-Linked offenses, rather than seemingly random ones.
-Better, more nuanced prisoner personalities.
-Drug addiction, status effects for them and motivating prisoners to steal for drugs.
-Longer term psychological effects on prisoners from their experiences.
-Rehabilitation and Drug Treatment.
-Decision-based Parole hearings.
-Prison life affecting recidivism rates.
I mean, when it's all said and done, that's a pretty bloody brilliant simulation. Such openness. So connected. And this is why I love Introversion.
They get it. Chris says "[The Drug Simulation] isn't in the game because we haven't given the players any tools to deal with it.
It's a pointless simulation."Remember how fun Prison Tycoon is??
Oh man. Do I. 3 hours of work for literally no pay off. Just watching guys walk in a line and guards occasionally run over to clean up.
I guess I shouldn't really be surprised by this writer's reaction. Other forums I've mentioned PA, I get a
distinctly different reaction than what we see around here. Some people are thoroughly creeped out by the idea of playing a prison simulation, because their minds automatically go to the kinds of possibilities that the writer seems to want: i.e. the worst examples the US Prison Industry has to offer. (Yes, that's a DF Forums brag on the sly.) It's kind of a sign of the times I guess that people with good intentions (social justice) are in this industry but they lack the ability to hold any kind of cognitive dissonance when it relates to gameplay. To me, DF wouldn't be as sweet if my dwarves weren't so detailed and could face such horrible ends, possibly by my hand. Likewise, PA wouldn't be as interesting if I couldn't both make my prisoners better people or grind them down into subhumans. The former is currently a bit lacking but there's little doubt it's coming.
At least the guy's article has gotten them to talk more openly about their later development plans and made some good calls for better representation of some mechanics.
Lol, toward the end, I dunno. My opinion of this writer has changed slightly. He sounds like a A#1 candidate for LCS. His bit about affecting the laws in the area your prison exists is along LCS's line of thinking. Personally, I'd be all for that, since Chris and Mark already view it as a scale.
Mark "We need to change the tag line from Prison Architect: Build And Manage A Maximum Security Prison, to Prison Architect: ITS NOT IN THE FUCKING UNITED STATES." God I hope they do that for the next alpha update video.
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Topic: Prison Architect - Version 2.0 Release | It's over! *weeping* (Read 246883 times)