![]() I don’t intend to comment on bugs, user experience, and mere technical aspects. What I’d like to outline here is a series of issues related to the high-level design of Prison Architect. A skyrocketing prison population created a dysfunctional public-private industrial complex syphoning taxpayer money that could be used from crime prevention and education. The America justice system disproportionately and purposely targets minorities, which make up about 60% of the population behind the bars, according to the Center for American Progress. Incarceration is out of control and has more than doubled in the last 20 years, according to numbers crunched by the advocacy group The Sentencing Project. ![]() It turns out, things are fucked up in a big way around here. When I first moved to the U.S., I couldn’t understand why everybody within activist and progressive circles was so obsessed with prisons. ![]() market and the visibility of American prisons in media, but with great markets come great responsibilities.īefore it ships, can we help Introversion make a not completely cursory and stupid simulation? What’s the big deal with the prison system anyway? The choice makes sense considering the size of U.S. Introversion decided, nevertheless, to set their game in a nation modelled after the U.S., using dollars as currency, bright orange suits for inmates, licence plate workshops, electric chairs and so on. ![]() There is no doubt that the prison system in America is beyond exceptional, housing 25% of the world’s inmates (with the US representing only 5% of the world’s population) according to figures from the American Civil Liberties Union. Thus, as Brits, they may see the world in a different way. In the same interview he also admits that, in the U.K., incarceration is not a major issue with huge class and racial implications as it is in the U.S. Introversion’s co-founder Chris Delay is aware that they are dealing with serious matter, and, in an interview with Eurogamer, promised a nuanced product: “We didn’t want to pick a tough topic like prisons and just make something completely cursory and surface level stupid.” But what gets included and what’s left out of a model is decided by the designers, and ultimately determines what a game ‘says’, regardless of the author’s intentions. They can only aim to capture a limited set of features. It goes without saying that all games, simulations in particular, are simplifications of existing systems. It’s the way a subject is treated, the way a real-world phenomenon is translated into a playable model that is susceptible of criticism. I’ve been tackling controversial topics in my games before, and I believe there’s nothing inherently wrong in the choice of a subject. After hearing concerns about the very existence of a prison simulator, I decided to play it extensively and to start a conversation (in the comment section below) about the political and ethical implications of the game. One of the reasons developers pre-release games is to create a community around their titles and involve players in the development process. More than 300K units have been sold for a total of over $US10 million. Prison Architect is available as a paid alpha, a model of crowd-funding that rewards pre-orders with access to early versions of the game. The gameplay is reminiscent of sim games from the ’90s, most notably Bullfrog’s Theme Park and Theme Hospital: a mix of construction, zoning, research, resource and staff management. Prison Architect is also tackling a dark subject, a subject that deserves special attention and defies any ‘it’s just a game’ kind of dismissal.Īs the name suggests, the player is in charge of designing (but also managing) a private penitentiary.
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