|
Thursday 18 January, 2018
For my final gamelog of Prison Architect, I simply played through most of the third campaign mission. This mission focused on the topic of prison rioting, tasking the player with cleaning up the riot, and handling the immediate aftermath. This mission played the most on the game side of things and a little less on the story. You are tasked with rebuilding the prison after, as well as directing riot crews and paramedics through the prison to bring it back to order. This is my favorite mission thus far due to this freedom.
From an ethical standpoint, there was not too much of a statement about rioting itself, but there was an interesting statement made about prisons in general. A hostage situation takes place, and reveals details about the prison in doing so. The original riot started due to a set of judges being caught extending harsher sentences for bribery. It turns out this goes all the way up to the Mayor and Warden of the prison. They want longer sentences since they make more money for each prisoner kept in prison, through keeping costs low and pocketing the remainder. This is an interesting implication that plays well into the idea of for profit prisons.
From my perspective, a for profit prison seems like a poor idea. It incentivizes poor treatment of prisoners to maximize profits for a private company. This is a good example of something that a more impartial government might do best to manage. Although the gameplay suggests this might result in similar flaws via corruption, at least the incentive to mistreat prisoners is not necessarily baked into the business model.
Back to the overall gameplay involved, I enjoyed moving the riot crews through and cleaning up the prison. I liked that another gameplay oriented moral choice appeared in the form of firing crews which would shoot on sight, and were a more aggressive alternative to the riot crews. However, this seemed half-baked as you only received one and were unable to call more making it less of a moral choice and more of just a showcase of other paths riots may take. That said, it was still a fun idea, and could be seen as necessary if the prison riot is getting out of hand and already costing many lives.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Prison Architect, and plan to continue playing in my own time. I look forward to playing it more to fill out my future analysis as well. I do feel like maybe it could have been handled with a little more tact, but for just some random game about prisons it does a great job of handling it with care and interest, while also keeping the gamer engaged.
|
