Tuesday 16 January, 2018

For the first OPA #1, I played Prison Architect. As one of my first times playing the game, the experience was very different from the usual games I play. I come from the esports scene where I play multiplayer games competitively, so moving to a game where I play alone and have to pay attention at every moment during the game as to see nothing bad happen. The first time playing the game was very cool, I got to start building my own prison. I started off by using my money and grants to build a small prison that could hold only a few prisoners just to start gaining money while building more infrastructure. My initial thoughts were that the graphics were a little lacking for a game that has been out for a few years. I thought that maybe the graphics would be nicer but it didn’t matter because it made up for the graphics in the gameplay that it provided. I thought that the gameplay was fun to mess around with as I got to run my prison and basically at will decide what prisoners get to do everyday and how I want to allow them to live. In terms of ethics, I think that the question proposed to you when playing this game, is what do you want your prisoners’ lives to be like. As the overall “control” of the game, you get to decide whether or not they eat multiple times a day, if they are allowed to go outside and even if they are allowed to leave their cells at all. As a beginner, I was faced with a lot of challenges thinking about this as I didn’t know if I wanted to be the type of warden that was hard-assed and not let anything happen, or to be the warden that allowed the prisoners to essentially be free even though they are serving time for crimes that they have committed.

Good job Aditya! You make some interesting observations in this gamelog, especially where you talk about the moral dilemma you had with making the death row center. The theme of in game benefits (for example, getting more money for more death row inmates) versus the player’s personal objections to this create an interesting tension within the player. Consider diving deeper into this with a question such as, would you get the same satisfaction from the money that the death row inmates brought in if you were a prison warden in real life? Is the fact that Prison Architect is a game change how one would approach this situation or is the same rationale used in real life as in the game?

Clay