Thursday 27 September, 2018

The game has quite a bit of content to go through to reach the end. I got the impression of just going through the same motions in answering calls with a few upgrades in the form of labor slots, pay raise, and others feels more like filler for the game then being a game that is trying to improve on what it has set up in the beginning. The investigations in the game do increase in complexity to give the impression of approaching more challenges as your days increase but unfortunately still reads as moderate flow. The story of Jack's struggles with his life seems to try and get the audiences attention with empathy, but I personally do not really feel deep connection to Jack as his character does not really resonate with me and he comes off as very rude to everyone around him. His circumstances can be stressful to be a consequence for his behavior though. The game handles many political, legal, and moral situations and the player's own morals about the law and politics can influence decisions. The game makes a point to manage your staff well because not responding to a call when all officers are out on the field lead to bad consequences like civilians dying and sometimes officers on the field die which feels awful. The calls can range from homicide, rape, abduction, domestic violence, theft, misdemeanors, and false alarms. What is interesting is that everything being called breaks the law in some way, but it does not make a statement about separating morals from law as the mafia situation is helping criminals break the law without legal consequences. Also the game has situations like those in power can determine to cut your budget or cut your staff slots because you failed on jobs or did not be a corrupt official for them in taking the blame. If anything there should be an increase for more staff if we do not have enough to respond to all calls. If I am going to make the case where this is the police is using morals and law interchangeably I am going to have to do further research as a lot of the game is repetitive in core gameplay.

Good work Sarenna! You do a great job of examining some of the gameplay mechanics in terms of ethics. One great question you ask is “just because it is illegal to fire someone without legal reasons is it morally wrong to do so?” This does a good job of separating the ethics of the player’s choices with the legality of the situation. You have some good potential themes to explore with your OPA such as Jack’s morality and the player’s empathy towards him, the ethics of firing someone without merit etc.