When the curtains of the dictatorship fell, Albanians found themselves in poor economic and social conditions, contradicting what they first trusted blindly and then accepted fearfully for a very long time (Fevziu 2017). My submission as a player to the Paper, Please system is analogous to how my parents submitted to the Albanian communist dictatorship the game existed only inside its own frame of reality, albeit not lasting forty-six years as the dictatorship did. What was not as apparent was my voluntary participation: as a player I tend to ignore the conditions through which I am immersed inside the game (Pope 2013).īy ‘voluntarily participating’ in the game, I acknowledged its structure and submitted to its system, and, consequently, entered a frame of reality which, for the duration of the game, was a construct I accepted as real. While playing with the four defining traits in mind, the goal, rules and feedback appeared very obviously on the screen. However, the penalties and fines that condemned my mistakes constrained my moral decisions I was forced to separate a family due to their lack of paperwork. My performance was rewarded with increased pay proportional to the number of travelers that I had assessed, which helped me provide food, heating, and medicine for my family, thereby also functioning as a subplot for the game. My goal was to review the documents of each traveller, allowing only those who met the requirements set by the government to cross the border.
Assuming the role of an immigration officer in an office situated at the border of East and West Grestin, I was challenged to process as many immigrants or returning Arstotzka citizens as possible. The fourth trait, the voluntary participation, requires all the players to acknowledge the goal, the rules, and the feedback, and is the trait that allows multiple players to be immersed in the same game (McGonigal 2011).Īiming to investigate these four traits, I played Papers, Please, a single-player game set in the fictional dystopian country of Arstotzka. McGonigal explains that the goal evokes a sense of purpose in its player the rules limit the possibilities of achieving the goal, thus encouraging the player to think strategically and creatively while the feedback system assesses the performance of the players and discerns their proximity to reaching the goal. In her book Reality is Broken, game designer Jane McGonigal reveals that any game, at its core, is structured upon four defining traits: the goal, rules, feedback loop, and voluntary participation. They are constructed worlds and fictitious narratives that players navigate, which also conceal incredible operational complexity. At their core, games are ludic infrastructures that come to life through this constant interplay (Gidding and Kennedy 2008). Gameplay is an intensive process that happens under the circumstances of exchange between a player on one hand, and the physical and virtual elements that structure a game on the other. These two platforms categorise me into a user profile according to the data they collect from me and, in return, they offer a service tailored to what I need, or at least, what they think I need. Right now, I am scrolling through the endless newsfeed on my Facebook homepage while my Apple Watch reminds me to stand up for a minute. Meanwhile, inside a memory from the distant past, Liljana and Arben are completing their military training in the Albanian mountains, because the Party has advised them that their training will someday be beneficial in case of a potential attack from across the border. He has to follow every instruction, as any error will lead to a penalty. Each new day brings a novel political occurrence that alters the rules outlined on his desk. The immigration officer of Arstotzka is reviewing the documents of the immigrants and returning citizens that are trying to cross the border.
? The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. “Inside a Game: Using Games as a Metaphor for Deconstructing the Oppressive Nature of Reality.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 9 (1): 1-7.