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damnlyons's Prison Architect (PC)
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| [March 30, 2018 12:45:27 AM]
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Another session down, and though I’m really enjoying the game, I gotta say I’m kind of disappointed by the lack of meaningful moral choices. The game provides the tools to manage the prison however you wish, though it seems you’re heavily incentivized to reform prisoners through educational programs and therapy rather than punishment. Sure, you CAN create a prison with awful conditions, liberal use of punitive reform, with no visitation or chance of parole, but that’s a fast track to rioting and bankruptcy. It’s hard being a tyrannical warden in this economy. The game encourages the improvement of prison conditions through grants, which serve as side-quests that reward you with essential funds for running your prison. The vast majority of them push for the betterment of prison conditions, such as the Health and Well Being and The Reform through Education Initiative grants. Thus, as far as I can see, there’s really only one way to play the game, which makes it unfortunately linear. I’ve put about 22 hours into it so far though, so that certainly doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. I just worry I’ll be scrambling for a thesis for my OPA when the time comes… 😊
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| [March 28, 2018 10:59:56 PM]
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I’ve just completed my first session with Prison Architect, and boy do I like where it’s going. The premise of managing a prison is a fantastic foundation on which to place all kinds of moral dilemmas. At the very beginning of the campaign, you’re tasked with building an execution facility for a prisoner named ‘Edward’, who murdered his wife after catching her cheating on him. While you can’t do much about his sentence, even if you were so inclined as to spare him, the game does give you optional objectives to improve Edward’s cell to make his last moments more comfortable.
There seems to be two ‘sides’ to the morality in this game: those who favor punishment and those who favor reform through educational programs and therapy. At first, the two sides seemed pretty black and white, but as I got further into the session, I was happy to see the lines blur a bit. For instance, I decided to lower the quantity and quality of food the prisoners got in order to make enough money to expand various reformation programs. Do the ends justify the means? Well, in this case, yeah probably seeing as their hunger was temporary whereas the life skills they’ll learn are permanent… that’s what I’ll be telling my prison’s investors anyway 😊
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damnlyons's Prison Architect (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 28 March, 2018
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