This is a bit of a tangent, but the parallels are there. Whenever I see people play Papers Please on Youtube or on GB (the Quick Look and the UF), the people playing turn into complete assholes. Some of it is for show - on the QL they made plenty of jokes about sending people packing, but I get a feeling players let the authority go to their head. I can't say people are abusing authority - the game is very strict on what is allowed and what isn't, and the goal is pass as many people as possible to get your pay, but the players usually dismiss anyone who even looks remotely suspicious. This is probably related to the timer, and wanting to process as many as possible. What I'm trying to say in this long-winded paragraph is the game is a great psychological study in how people would act in this specific situation, and the game becomes so much more nefarious for it. It's fascinating to watch.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I know what you're talking about. I have played this game for about 4 hours and it's hit me many times how I really dislike the way it makes me look at a human being. It gives you the power to say yes or no to anyone and then slowly takes away the reasons to say yes. I hate that I comply with them most of the time.

I do like the fact that (mild spoilers) If you held certain people in bad situations they reward you.

I can't think fast enough.

I used to work at an entry control point (ECP) on a large military base in the middle east, and my job was not at all dissimilar to what seems to happen in this game.

Along with other soldiers, I would check IDs and perform body/vehicular searches on foreign workers who were employed to do jobs on the base. There were hundreds each day, and that doesn't even include all the truckers who just showed up to drop off cargo.

If anything was even remotely out of order or seemed odd we'd turn them away. In select circumstances workers were detained pending further investigation but that was ultimately the military police's decision.

Haven't played Papers, Please yet and I'm not sure if I want to, because 95% of the time working at the ECP was a brutally boring experience. But at least in my case it was clear that people act more harshly when they have something to lose. The workers' jobs - potentially their livelihoods - meant very little to us compared to our personal risk and the base's safety.

I'm not comfortable with the idea that Papers Please reveals people as "power hungry assholes" in the same way that i'm not comfortable with the idea that shooters make people violent killers.

Stable people can still tell the difference between fantasy and reality and usually when someone is play-acting a "power hungry asshole" i usually take it as a mockery of authority through imitation rather than personal reflection.

I feel like mechanics trump morality in this game to an extent where it doesn't really say much about the player when he does dickish things. The game rewards you for following the letter of the law, and punishes you severely for rebelling, which obviously makes sense to the story, but in a game it's not as big a deal to fuck over a randomly generated NPC to get closer to a win state. The only real repercussions are "earn money/lose money". Then of course you get roleplayers who are intentionally writing a character in their head as they play, and may make an effort to play against instinct.

Now, if you gave this game to a non-gamer and said "Here, try this, don't worry about winning or losing", then you'll probably get a much more honest view of their personality.

That's a gigantic stretch dude.

I would counter- whether you pass or deny someone- you will get hit with a warning (or fine) if you do so wrongly. So in a lot of ways its not player choice whether or not you act like a dick. Sure, you have 2 warnings before you actually get fined and that is up to you if you want to press your luck. I think there in is the only place you could potentially say you have any choice in the matter as for the most part either you properly allow someone or deny them. If you get it wrong because one thing is off (like height which, for me, is the thing I've had the hardest time spotting) you get in trouble.

So really, much like life, it's you or them. And not even just you, you have your family to account for as well.

The game is an interesting dilemma and I feel properly shows how difficult it is to make judgements of people. I can draw direct parallels to my real job in internet tech support. Often people call with issues with their computers. We may know the answer or have an inkling how to help but we aren't allowed- there are many reasons for that. We can potentially get fired if we do. If I got fired I would lose my house and not have any way to keep up my end of the responsibilities I have.

So, ya compassion is an option but when it comes down to it I'm not losing my job or potentially in essence my life to break the rules. It's pass or fail.

I'm with the sentiment that it is only a video game and we can probably act that in a certain way due to the way the game is structured and it doesn't necessarily reflect on how we would actually act in real life BUT I am glad that we are having these discussions. It is affecting us in a deeper level than we would have compared to if this was just a matching/puzzle game like Bejeweled or Candy Crush for example and at the very least this self-awareness though does make it a great piece for actual self-reflection and also how we can view certain things in different parts of the world or in different times in history.

Gotta get a new CPU for your brain - maybe get some DDR5 up in there.

I was referring to how the mechanics and rules change the person playing it, making them a cynical bastard. I haven't played it yet, but I expected that there would be some reward, either financial or ethical (Paragon points?) for letting in people with expired passports who were coming to see their kids or something. That would make this a very different game, I think.

I guess a more appropriate comparison would be the Milgram Experiment.

I'm gonna nerd out here dude, but one was research the other is entertainment.

...cause I'm a stickler for semantics and truth when it comes to psychology.

...cause I'm biased and shit.

Shut up.

Wait, what? Which one was which? I'm fairly sure both were scientific experiments... unless you're thinking of the Adrian Brody movie... which I wasn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Both are classified as experiments.

I can see where you're coming from, but it's not really relevant to me. Naturally Let's Players do dickish things for entertainment value. I did dickish things (especially near the end) to feed and save my family.

I thought the game was more about trying to live a normal life (or survive) amidst being dragged into undesirable situations as the world around you dissolves into insanity. When I first "helped" the order I did so by mistake and not because I was some patriotic/idealistic young man. And it ended up being huge trouble that I just couldn't get out of, having to burn all the money they gave me and constantly fear it would affect my family one day. THAT is what Papers Please means to me.

No those two were research. Papers, Please is entertainment. Comparing them seems nuts. But I'm biased about this shit so you know.

I think the parallel kinda works when we also think about our bias on what we think our role as an immigration officer should be like. But yeah, it doesn't really work when your sample is the people with the express intent of showing their playthroughs to an audience.

Oooh...

Hopefully I don't come across as an asshole, but no shit, Papers Please is a game. That doesn't in any way diminish its effect on the human psyche. I don't think comparing actual experiments to this game is nuts - hell, Lucas could have labeled it as a 'social experiment' and no one would bat an eye.

Much like Grammar Nazis, I understand wanting to categorize everything in their little boxes, but don't let that blind you to the truth... man.

I did notice one interesting effect on myself when playing the demo - taking pride in executing the rules as efficiently and accurately as possible, without giving too much thought to how just said rules are. This is a potential personality flaw with me that I'm aware of and something I monitor in real situations, but it was interesting to see it manifest so obviously.

That said, the game in its current state makes for a bad research tool. It's too obvious that it's a game and players will chase those high-scores, pixelated sob stories be damned.

One mechanic is interesting though: if you have not made any mistakes, the free mistakes can be used to let a person in that shouldn't be if you decide to sympathize with them, with no greater cost to the player. It could be interesting to see how many players do this and try to establish what they have in common, if anything.

There's also the possibility of modding the game into an actual research tool using the main mechanics that can be used to analyze the behavior of volunteers. If you make it real enough you could possibly see how people respond to rules, incentives and power over other people similar to the Stanford experiment. The best would be to convince the participants that they are actually picking up the slack for the ICE or another equivalent agency and see how they act. Of course, that would never get past the ethics boards these days, but it's an interesting idea.

I just want to get through the day without my family starving to death.

I think all games are a lot like the Stanford Prison Experiment. The SPE and the Milgram experiments only proved that anyone will turn into a total asshole given the right conditions. Games usually give you a framework of rules/mechanics and let you know what it's OK to do. A game like Papers Please starts you out with basically acceptable behavior and slowly increases the factors that lead to terrible behavior. It's exactly the same as Milgram's experiment where they provided the rules and environment and gave the approval for people to shock other people for making mistakes then slowly increased the (fake) voltage until someone (fake) died.

In Stanford, the students were given roles and instructed to treat the others as basically their enemies and their morals rapidly shifted to suit the environment that was made for them. This is the same thing people do in most shooters without question. In a game it's even easier because you know you're not dealing with real people, but as soon as you leave the game, you go back to your normal state.

@probablytuna: Just detain more people and make some extra change on the side.

This is sort of a different thing, but also a psychological element of the game: It's funny how some people really buy into the "Glory to Arstotzka" motto. The nationalism is kind of infectious and while I don't doubt that people say it ironically, it's interesting to see how the catchphrase is invoked.

Keep in mind that the game is severely punishing of screw ups. It is unlike a real world security job where there is leeway around the letter of the rules you've been given; both in terms of things no one will notice*, and just general common sense to account for unique situation. If you run out of money in Papers, it's game over. It also has a built in conflict of interest whereby you are paid 100% on commission based on the number of people you successfully process. The cost of living also exacerbates this to the point that one fewer person processed in a day could mean the difference between coming out even or going into the red (and thus game over).

I do have past experience on the real-world end of this sort of law enforcement scenario as well, working for a parking department at a university. And I have seen people become malicious when tasked with law enforcement, even when there is no benefit to them for doing so other than spite and ego and i don't know what. It happens. But, it does not happen to every one. Or even a large percentage. It's just something that, in supervising role, you must be watchful of. A malicious employee is not only a liability to your operation in terms of the high appeal rate they will produce, but also just terrible PR for you as well.

*- Papers Please instantly knows when you've broken a rule, the only way to circumvent that is to save up early game warning citations to break rules in late game at no cost.

I wouldn't read too much into it - it's akin to "the cake is a lie".

I don't feel any sympathy to those people who don't have their papers in order. You can brand me as an ass but leniency over these matters usually does more harm than good. But I let the woman in the locket pass as I think Sergiu and I are buddies. Talk about double standards.

I see where you're coming from generally (and i find myself saying shit like "not interested in your story"... out loud... when the people go into their sob story), but i'm role playing. In the game I've got a family to feed, and if i don't protect my own job I can't do that. So while I generally get what you're saying, this game very much focuses on self preservation. Fuck ups cost me money. Money costs me food or heat, and then my kid dies. My in-game problems are more important because they are mine.

Having seen footage of the Stanford Experiment in Psychology 101 back in college, this is actually not a bad comparison.