Thursday 18 January, 2018

OPA #2

For some reason I kept getting the same issue of the second tutorial level, or maybe I was just misunderstanding something so I gave up after getting stuck two times. I decided to move to the sandbox mode and started up a small prison. I remember the game was a lot less challenging when I originally played it. It started quite easy at first and I got a good start by building all the necessities and I was keeping all the prisoners happy and well fed. As my prison expanded and I had more high threat prisoners I had to pivot a lot of my resources and technology to building guards and checking for contraband. While the story chapters showed a morally grey system and had key prisoners, I found it hard to sympathize with the npc prisoners. They were just too inane and similar for me to care about each individual and they often acted very irrationally by attacking my guard or trying to break free in hopeless situations. I found that the best option was harsh punishment in solitary or just by killing the problem prisoners and then asking for more. While this is an extremely immoral act I feel like the simple graphics and overhead management style view really desensitize me towards my actions.

This is a great take on the game! It would be really interesting to see a comparison of how you weighed your treatment of the prisoners in story mode versus sandbox mode. It sounds like in story mode the prisoners have more of an identity and are easier to sympathize with as opposed to the mass of prisoners in sandbox mode.

Thanks! That is actually exactly what I wrote my OPA on. I think that the sandbox mode encourages players to act for monetary gain to make a social comment on the cruel practices of the ceos of private prisons.