Friday 30 March, 2018

Another session down, and though I’m really enjoying the game, I gotta say I’m kind of disappointed by the lack of meaningful moral choices. The game provides the tools to manage the prison however you wish, though it seems you’re heavily incentivized to reform prisoners through educational programs and therapy rather than punishment. Sure, you CAN create a prison with awful conditions, liberal use of punitive reform, with no visitation or chance of parole, but that’s a fast track to rioting and bankruptcy. It’s hard being a tyrannical warden in this economy. The game encourages the improvement of prison conditions through grants, which serve as side-quests that reward you with essential funds for running your prison. The vast majority of them push for the betterment of prison conditions, such as the Health and Well Being and The Reform through Education Initiative grants. Thus, as far as I can see, there’s really only one way to play the game, which makes it unfortunately linear. I’ve put about 22 hours into it so far though, so that certainly doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. I just worry I’ll be scrambling for a thesis for my OPA when the time comes… 😊

I'm glad to see you're enjoying the game. The two morality choices you mentioned for how to treat prisoners could certainly highlight some of the perks and flaws of ethical frameworks (such as utilitarianism). I recommend focusing on just one ethical framework to write about and look at how the prisoners respond to that framework.