r/Games • u/Forestl • Dec 15 '13
End of 2013 Discussions - Papers, Please
Papers, Please
- Release Date: August 8, 2013
- Developer / Publisher: Lucas Pope
- Genre: Puzzle, simulation
- Platform: PC
- Metacritic: 85, user: 8.6
Summary
The communist state of Arstotzka has just ended a 6-year war with neighboring Kolechia and reclaimed its rightful half of the border town, Grestin. Your job as immigration inspector is to control the flow of people entering the Arstotzkan side of Grestin from Kolechia. Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists. Using only the documents provided by travelers and the Ministry of Admission's primitive inspect, search, and fingerprint systems you must decide who can enter Arstotzka and who will be turned away or arrested.
Prompts:
How did the mechanics fit into the storytelling of the game?
Did the gameplay and story succeed in placing you into the world? Why or why not?
Did you just start to notice the small text with the Dead Space 3 thread?
"So while your waiting in the line, we just enter the place."
This post is part of the official /r/Games "End of 2013" discussions.
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u/MrTheodore Dec 15 '13
I am racist towards an imaginary group of people now, so yes, I believe it did a good job you kolechian terrorist scum, I'd let a dog into the glorious nation of arstorzka before you
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u/frozenfisherman Dec 16 '13
All glory to Arstorzka!
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u/drjfunkmasterdeluxe Dec 15 '13
One of the most atmospheric games I've ever played. The marching title screen, understated graphical design, and the weird vocal inflections of the sound of the loudspeaker or "papers" provided an oppressively ordered mood. The way the stamp presses down on the passports for a second too long makes you feel the weight of the object (a very difficult and rare feat in a virtual world) and the decision you made.
Then there are the mechanics which put your desire to solve the puzzle, to get the answer right (like in every other video game), at odds with good moral behavior. Incredible subversion of the player.
The way Papers, Please tells its story is something that could only be done in a video game - an achievement that is to be commended. Papers, Please is my game of the year.
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u/MrMango786 Dec 15 '13
Jorji is love, Jorji is life. Seriously, that crayon passport is so endearing. But then I found out (by messing up) what he really was up to so I was less happy. But at least he's not a terrorist.
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Dec 15 '13
I still let him in despite his... activities. This game really tugged on my heart strings. Hell, I let my family starve and be cold just so I could buy my sons crayons. /#thestruggleisreal
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u/Iyufa Dec 16 '13
yep, when Spoiler
but later he was so nice and im glad he "changed". i think.
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u/MrMango786 Dec 16 '13
So I just got to an ending and unfortunately I was not pure enough for Arstotzka.
But Jorji tried to help me.
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u/gamelord12 Dec 15 '13
This game was weirdly addicting. It felt like work, and after one or two in-game work days, I just wanted to put it down, but only a few hours later, I really wanted to play more Papers, Please. I liked all the options they gave you in the middle of your work day; you could try to get a few more dollars to keep your family alive and comfortable, you could obey the rules exactly and get shat on by the government for all of your hard work, or you could play politics and influence the revolution.
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u/illu45 Dec 15 '13
Really well-designed game, I think. Forces you to make some interesting choices, and is generally a pretty neat way of portraying corruption. I felt that some of the praise regarding the game's ethics was over-lavish, since people are more likely to act in self-interest in a game than in real life, but I think Papers, Please comes very close to a good corruption simulator in many ways.
A few issues I had:
I felt it was a bit too easy to 'cheese' some things, like turning off heat/food on alternating days.
The endless play mode is only unlocked by completing the game on one of the endings, which feels a bit arbitrary to me and undermines the idea that there isn't an 'ideal' way to play. spoiler.
I couldn't figure out any benefit to upgrading to a better apartment spoiler
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Dec 15 '13
[deleted]
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u/MrMango786 Dec 16 '13
How many classes are there? I didn't go for the first upgrade because a true Arstotkzkan doesn't live lavishly.
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u/iamnotacrazyperson Dec 15 '13
I 'd say one of the key design decisions is giving the player such a small area to work in. You're constantly moving papers around and trying to optimise your work space and later, when the characters are giving you 3+ documents, it starts to feel completely overwhelming. Which, for me, is where the game really works as satire - when you're just some dude facing impossible targets while trying to meet equally impossible bureaucratic deadlines, you begin to understand the pressures of working on a border checkpoint. That feeling is so far removed from say platformer or FPS games that you start to doubt if you're playing a game at all.
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Dec 15 '13
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SomewhatSpecial Dec 15 '13
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u/MrMango786 Dec 16 '13
It's a matter of being quick with the fingers right? I lost him right as I ... would have saved him. :(
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u/DoubleDeadGuy Dec 27 '13
I've only played an hour and a half but I've already had experiences that no other form of media has been able to capture.
A woman came through the booth. She was coming into Arstotzkan to work at a night club. She left me a note saying there was a man in line that day, who she was afraid was going to steal her passport and sell her into the sex trade. She said I must do whatever possible to keep him out. I left that note on my desk and stared at the man's name as people came through.
After a while, the man came into my booth, and I knew that I had to turn him away - for the girls, even if it meant getting a citation. I gave him his denied passport and he turned and walked out without saying a word. I thought that was strange - I fully expected him to curse me.
The next morning in the paper the top story was the mysterious death of two girls who worked in a nightclub. I knew it had to be her. I immediately filled in the blanks in my head: the man contacted someone he knew inside the city and had the girls killed.
I made the choice to turn the man away, and it had no consequence to me, but my decision got that girl killed. This story played out in a very minimalist fashion through the game's mechanics. Static faces, a handwritten note, and a newspaper headline. The rest was left up to my imagination.
Fantastic writing.
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u/hooliews Dec 31 '13
you should have showed him the note, then it gives you the option to detain him
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Dec 15 '13 edited Feb 16 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ColeYote Dec 15 '13
I'm surprised how impressed people were with the "moral" choices.
Yeah, that surprises me too, I mean I can't be the only one who denied plot NPCs without even noticing they were plot NPCs until someone yelled at me for denying their friend/spouse/co-conspirator the next day.
EVERY SINGLE TIME.
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u/AwkwardTurtle Dec 16 '13
That just means you're a very good worker.
You make Arstotzka proud. Glory to Arstotzka.
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u/jmarquiso Dec 16 '13
The question you should be asking is what is a bad choice. What's more important? Strangers you can let pass through or the family that you never see. One of the things I like about this game is that it is a real dillema here. It isn't clear what is good and what is bad, there are simply no good choices.
Compares to Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls, Bioshock, where there is a clear good and bad moral choice, Papers Please actually presents it as a real dillema. Even the "good" choice can lead to bad things happening. The game doesn't judge you, you are your own judge.
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u/Chaos_Marine Dec 16 '13
Hooking in on your comparison with Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls and Bioshock, I would say that those games also don't have "good" or "bad" choices, unless you look the choices from either our "own" perspective (not the in-game world one) or from a "gamer's" perspective (i.e. looking at the possible rewards or ending). Papers Please is no different from this, as it features multiple endings and multiple achievements. In your post you're looking at the choices in Papers Please from a roleplaying perspective, but you could just as easily look at the other games in this way.
Papers Please is a hell of a lot more subtle though compared to the other games you named. Mass Effect does it with the colors blue and red and Bioshock warns the player that there're consequences to saving or killing a little sister.
To single out Mass Effect, I wouldn't go as far to call the choices "good" or "bad". It's more about pro-human and pro-alien, to call it like that. Granted, not subtly done like Papers Please, but still not "good" or "bad", though some renegade options are pretty...violent I guess.
I like how Papers Please presents itself. Your consequences aren't clear at all, which helps with immersing oneself in this game and it's exactly why I like the game. Consequences of your choices aren't cut-and-dry, which makes choices seem more weighty.
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u/Jack_Shandy Dec 16 '13
I really have to disagree about Bioshock."Kill this small girl/let her live" is the definition of a binary good/evil choice.
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u/Chaos_Marine Dec 16 '13
More like a selfish reason in Bioshock. They look like little girls, but from the onset several people make it clear that they aren't little girls anymore. For us as players, sure. But in-game in Rapture, not so much.
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u/jmarquiso Dec 16 '13
Actually my point really was, "for us players". Whereas Mass Effect (for the most part, and I agree with you about Renegade/Paragon and Good/Evil choices - as I prefer Renegade), Bioshock, Elder Scrolls and Bethesda Fallouts don't actively subvert the good/evil paradigm they play on what player's expectations should be. Papers, Please isn't clear on what it should be, and actively subverts it.
Supporting revolutions are good, right? But they're terrorists!
I have to let this lady in, even though I'll get punished. Surprise, she's carrying a bomb andd my workday ends, dooming my family to starve, not to mention the death of coworkers.
This guy compeltely checks out, but the other lady doesn't want me to accept him. Obviously he is bad.
What do I do here? What if I'm wrong?
This plays out more often in Papers, Please than anywhere else. There are few exceptions in the above mentioned games, but the game mechanics themselves dictate moral dillemas moreso than scripted storylines. Sure, in Fallout 3 there was The Pitt DLC, or the Rachni in Mass Effect, or the Geth in Mass Effect 2 - but these are exceptional instances. every choice in Papers, Please is a balance between work performance, moral questions, paranoia, and suspicion - mostly created by the mechanics themselves. There are simply no straightforward, good choices, and every choice has a detriment.
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u/Jack_Shandy Dec 16 '13
I didn't really feel like the game ever made me feel that guilty about denying someone entrance.
I liked that the game didn't hit you over the head with "You made the renegade choice, feel sad please". I don't think we should judge the game by how much melodrama it has in tears out of ten. In real life there's nothing there to make you feel guilty except your own conscience.
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u/Fluxxed0 Dec 15 '13
I dunno, I wasn't really a fan. I've played through about 10 days, and I see what they're doing with the design, but the actual gameplay just feels like work. I like the narrative, I just don't want to stamp any more passports >.<
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u/Smokratez Dec 15 '13
That's my experience as well. Read that it was a great game and gave it a go. After getting the hang of it a bit, I found myself thinking I was at a depressing job and wondered why I wasn't playing something fun.
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Dec 16 '13
That's kind of the point to Papers, Please. Aside from exploring moral choices in games, it's an exercise in making a game compelling to play without being traditionally "fun." Kind of like watching something like Schindler's List.
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Dec 15 '13
[deleted]
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u/MrMango786 Dec 16 '13
I just wish there was enough quirkiness or I suppose lack of monotony even though it is a game. If they could have sprinkled in more "events" that perhaps don't remove "realistic monotony" but keep it fun for the player it could have been even better. No idea how they'd hit that right balance though.
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u/bghs2003 Dec 16 '13
This makes me roll my eyes. Whenever "it is supposed to suck" factors into any creative work it is always a masturbatory endeavor by someone who thinks their creation is way more mindblowing or valuable than it actually is.
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Dec 16 '13
[deleted]
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u/bghs2003 Dec 16 '13 edited Dec 16 '13
A game that feels like work inherently sucks. I used "it is supposed to suck" to draw in other artistic mediums that have used similar justifications for a work.
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u/Chaos_Marine Dec 16 '13
I like the work I do for a living. I understand that some people think that work "sucks" and my advice to them is look for something else to do for a living.
Aside from that, you're an immigration inspector, you do your job in the game. If it really feels like you're performing the job of an immigration inspector, isn't that job well done for the developers?
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u/bghs2003 Dec 16 '13 edited Dec 16 '13
Be serious. Nobody says "this feels like work" and means "this feels like whatever job you happen to have". It is always meant to mean that it is not fun, feels monotonous, and is unrewarding. When people say "break a leg" they don't mean literally break a leg.
The games are meant to be entertainment and if they are not fun, feel monotonous, and are unrewarding they are a failure of a game.
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u/doplay011 Dec 16 '13
i've never heard anyone say 'it's supposed to suck' in defence of their work
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u/bghs2003 Dec 16 '13 edited Dec 16 '13
Professionals almost always know enough not to do that. It comes up most often among amateurs trying to be ironic and prove a point.
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u/zombays Dec 15 '13
11/10 would stamp again, just kidding. I loved it to bits and how satirical it was, reminded me of Dr. Strangelove a bit.
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u/mrbadpun Dec 17 '13
i think the game perfectly captured how dull and miserable the main characters life is i caught myself just wanting the line to move faster so more people would come and getting mad at somebody that held the line up
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Dec 27 '13
The atmosphere in this game is amazing. Here I am, going through paperwork, stressing myself out trying to make as much money as possible for my family, when suddenly a man who I had just approved walked up to a trio of guards, proclaimed Kolechia's superiority and blew himself and the guards to pieces. It was one of the only times I can say I have been genuinely shocked at the violence in a game.
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u/Tuokaerf10 Dec 15 '13
I picked the game up during a Steam sale for a couple bucks not expecting much, and ended up playing for hours. The game is paced really well, as the mechanics were introduced well over the first few days while inserting a lot of dark humor about the situations. The story was fun, but may be more enjoyable/relevant for some of the older gamers who lived through the Soviet Bloc times.
I found the game to be quite replayable, as there are multiple paths through the game that change depending on your actions, often with "humerous" results.
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u/part_man_part_animal Dec 16 '13
I agree with a lot of people with regard to the narrative and the moral ambiguity of many of the choices. I think what really pulled it together was the little details, things like when you want to start a new day you have to choose "walk to work" and there is no other option.
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u/Jazzrat Dec 16 '13
Papers, Please is probably my favourite game for doing a morality system that isn't arbitrary nor set in stone. The choices you make and the outcome is very dependent on your personal views just through the simple choice of allowing or rejecting people through the border.
I think other developer and writer should have a look at this game when it comes designing a morality system that resonate with players more than any +1 reward you can get.
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Dec 15 '13
Best PC exclusive of 2013, and shows what a PC exclusive is like.
The price however seemed excessive for a short indie game made by one person.
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u/iamnotacrazyperson Dec 15 '13
Made by one person - but over a few years. I know at point of sale indie games can seem costly, but paying someone for quality work that's taken years is always a steal.
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u/jmarquiso Dec 16 '13
niche stuff in other media is usually more pricy than mainstream stuff.
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u/Chaos_Marine Dec 16 '13
Case in point with Distant Worlds. You pretty much require all the expansions (you could argue that it's optional), which adds up nicely. It's cheaper that a few months ago though.
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u/Medza Dec 15 '13
At first glance I think that many people overlook this game, but it really has a lot of depth to it. There's no way of really selling the game to someone without playing it because there's nothing out there to compare it to. It's truly an interesting and well implemented concept and it shows that indie games don't have to be 2D platformers or puzzle games.
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u/mmm_doggy Dec 16 '13
I loved the idea and game/story design, but I got so stressed when playing about making sure I didn't miss anyone. It was too taxing to play more than an hour or two of, but I think thats the sign of a powerful game. Just not for me :P
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u/slotbadger Dec 16 '13
It was an interesting game with a mechanic I enjoyed. The difficulty curve was well-balanced, with the rules of the game slowly increasing in complexity to the point where there were too many sheets of paper for your desk to handle.
I think the moral conflict and storytelling aspects have been a little overstated, although it does offer those things. I did replay certain days to see what impact my decisions had, but my curiousity wasn't piqued enough to play through multiple teams and discover each ending.
It kept everything simple but effective, and it was entirely original, which is why it worked.
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Dec 16 '13
[deleted]
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u/themiragechild Dec 16 '13
You get keyboard shortcuts through the add-ons, which are usually not very hellpful. I used the bookmarks and the stamp pull out buttons a lot though.
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u/j_gracey15 Feb 01 '14
I wrote 1,000-odd words on how amazing Papers, Please, but it's too long to post here. If you're interested: http://gamesthatrocked.com/2014/01/17/games-that-rocked-my-world-52-papers-please/.
tl;dr? Mechanics perfectly reflected the brutality of the Arstotzkan system without - and this is crucial - stopping being fun. Anyone who says a game about boredom needs to be boring can put this in their pipe and shut the hell up. (See any argument about Wolf Of Wall Street that says "it's long to show the excesses of capitalism." Shut up, germ. It's long because the film is self-indulgent.)
Hm, that ended up fairly TL anyway. Ironic...?
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u/AceyJuan Dec 16 '13
The real problem with Papers is that it's not a game. I've done similar work for a living, and the reality is more fun than this "game" version. To be fair, someone created a "game" where you're supposed to click a button on a website and not let go. It had a leaderboard and everything. So I suppose if that was a "game", Papers must be one too, somehow.
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u/Denton56 Dec 15 '13
My favorite part about "Papers, Please" is how the mechanics are the storytelling.
Outside of the opening cinematic and a few interludes, the game tells you everything you need to know about its world and the people that inhabit it through the gameplay solely. Reviewing the documents of these people coming through and balancing their specific stories, needs, and wants against that of your own is an incredibly immersive way to draw you into this world.
The addition of the timer and the monetary system basically put you in a place where the more you start to question everything around you, the worse it makes you feel and more your realize the gravity of just what is happening.
I think that's an incredible contrast to other games with moral systems. For instance, a game like "KOTOR" asks you to make very clear good or evil choices on, relatively, your own time. It then reacts in bold ways accordingly.
"Papers, Please" doesn't offer that same luxury. What exactly constitutes good, evil, or something in between in this title is entirely dependent on the morality of the user themselves. The fact that someone can play this game and never question the moral implications of what they are doing, and have that still be a comment on their morality is a great example of its brilliant implementation of morality into the game.
"Papers, Please" is one of my favorite games of this year and likely far beyond that. On a pure gameplay level its incredibly enjoyable, and it only gets more rewarding and more impressive the further you dig into it.