In contrast, games in the city-building/ management genre, most notably Will Wright's SimCity series, actually cast the player in the role of the bureaucrat (or, perhaps more accurately, the bureaucracy writ large). Adams claims to have based the game - or at least its premise - on his own real-life experiences (" Bureaucracy", n.d.). Described by its tagline as "a paranoid fantasy", Bureaucracy features an inventive "blood pressure" mechanic too much frustration or too many mistakes elevate the player's blood pressure to the point of a fatal aneurysm. In this game, a simple change of mailing address goes massively awry, pitting the player against the machinations of a faceless bureaucracy and an increasingly absurd set of obstacles, including a ruthless tribe of cannibals. A prominent early example is the aptly titled text adventure Bureaucracy (Infocom, 1987), designed by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams. Nevertheless, a handful of games have explored the byzantine inscrutabilities of modern bureaucracy.
"Bureaucracy", after all, is seldom a word associated with play or fun rather, it conjures to the mind images of long lines, red tape, and forms filled out in triplicate. Keywords: bureaucracy, iron cage, Max Weber, Papers, Please, morality, rationalityĮven against the thematically diverse landscape of electronic entertainment, the promise and perils of bureaucracy are unlikely inspirations for a videogame. In this sense, Papers, Please offers a nuanced exploration of the disjuncture between morality and rationality that not only defines Weber's perspective on modernity, but also shapes much of the contemporary debate on immigration. Moreover, the moral choices presented to the player represent opportunities to subvert the iron cage, albeit at significant risk to the protagonist. This article argues that Papers, Please successfully replicates the monotony of bureaucratic work in videogame form, trapping the player in what sociologist Max Weber termed the iron cage of bureaucracy. During gameplay, these duties are complicated by several moral quandaries: Should the inspector allow individuals in need to cross the border without proper documentation, or should he faithfully enforce Arstotzka's laws? These decisions shape the game's outcome, with possible endings ranging from the inspector's imprisonment to the overthrow of the Arstotzkan regime. Papers, Please casts the player as an immigration inspector, processing paperwork at the border of the fictional dystopia of Arstotzka. Social Sciences Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-34212 OAI: oai:DiVA.Glory to Arstotzka: Morality, Rationality, and the Iron Cage of Bureaucracy in Papers, Please by Jess Morrissette Abstract Utbildning, datorspel, samhällskunskap, ideologi, frihet. 48Įducation, Video games, Social studies, Ideology, Freedom. Place, publisher, year, edition, pages2017. In the end the definition of freedom is up to the player to choose since it is defined by their actions in the game.
Liberalism was used as a tool for showing the player how to combat these undertones of fascism. Lastly the game uses some of the chosen ideologies very more hiddenly in the game and it was later discovered that it was very dominated by fascist undertones even though the government in the game was describe as a communist state. It also became very clear that the game had very much control over the player’s choice over which ideology to stick to, since the game could frequently punish the player for making the wrong choice. The definition of the ideologies that was based on the model used for the analyses was not fully used correctly in the game, and the ideologies in the game had a different definition of these. The study shows that the game Papers Please uses these ideologies in the gameplay, but in different ways. This model breaks down the chosen ideologies: liberalism, socialism and fascism into the factors of agent, obstacle and goal to explain their definition of freedom. As the main tool for the analysis a theory based model will be used. To analyze this game a method has been constructed which uses the parts: playthrough, picture analysis and a text analysis. This study looks for the usage of ideology and the definition of freedom according to these in the video game Papers Please.
2017 (Swedish) Independent thesis Basic level (professional degree), 10 credits / 15 HE credits Student thesis Abstract