Thrik

Prison Architect

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I've only played the introduction so far, but it does definitely walk the line between some pretty serious shit and the implicit silliness of the art style. I feel somewhat silly putting this in spoiler tags, but who knows, someone might not want to know.

The introduction/tutorial level has you adding a death row to an already built prison, effectively. You install an electric chair execution chamber and a nearby cell and transfer a prisoner out from general population to it. The CEO (only name given for the tutorial instructor) is constantly telling you that it's not your place to consider the rights or wrongs of the prisoner's execution, it's what the law has decided and your job is simply to create and maintain the facilities the law requires. Meanwhile, "polaroids" of this man's crime, and later confession to a priest and so on, are shown with hand drawn art at a much higher detail level than the game's usually abstract representations. The last art interlude is his execution, though when the switch is thrown the screen just fades to white.

It's worth noting that at no point during all of this are any jokes made or is any attempt made to lighten the tone. It's played completely straight. The only thing that's silly is the default art style of the game. So perhaps it's not meant to be a lighthearted game at all at this point, perhaps the art is the way it is just because that's how Introversion games look. That said, I don't know what the standard game is like yet so perhaps the tutorial is a bit of an outtake.

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$30 for an alpha, eh? I've actually never played any of Introversion's stuff before. Tough to swallow despite how rad it looks.

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I've only played the introduction so far, but it does definitely walk the line between some pretty serious shit and the implicit silliness of the art style. I feel somewhat silly putting this in spoiler tags, but who knows, someone might not want to know.

The introduction/tutorial level has you adding a death row to an already built prison, effectively. You install an electric chair execution chamber and a nearby cell and transfer a prisoner out from general population to it. The CEO (only name given for the tutorial instructor) is constantly telling you that it's not your place to consider the rights or wrongs of the prisoner's execution, it's what the law has decided and your job is simply to create and maintain the facilities the law requires. Meanwhile, "polaroids" of this man's crime, and later confession to a priest and so on, are shown with hand drawn art at a much higher detail level than the game's usually abstract representations. The last art interlude is his execution, though when the switch is thrown the screen just fades to white.

It's worth noting that at no point during all of this are any jokes made or is any attempt made to lighten the tone. It's played completely straight. The only thing that's silly is the default art style of the game. So perhaps it's not meant to be a lighthearted game at all at this point, perhaps the art is the way it is just because that's how Introversion games look. That said, I don't know what the standard game is like yet so perhaps the tutorial is a bit of an outtake.

The tutorial is fucked up but as the game is developed so far such things do not return.

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That "The CEO is constantly telling you that it's not your place to consider the rights or wrongs"- part made me wonder... If you DID take it upon yourself to place judgement upon the prisoners, how easy would it be to arrange the demise of someone, and with what kind of consequences? My Dwarf Fortress instincts kicked in immediately, and even without drowning chambers or access to magma, I bet there are ways of getting someone taken out. Like, placing that child rapist in the same cell with a huge, psychotic murderer with "accidentally misplaced" bladed tools nearby. (*)

It might be early to speculate, but would it be possible for the player to create a horrible, vigilante justice prison, or would it result in a "game over" after your prisons "Safety rating" equivalent drops too low / funding gets cut / other failure criteria are met?

(*) Also, can you see the background and crimes of the criminals at all, or are they just random faces and prisoner numbers?

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Well, I hate this fucking game.*

* It's alpha and I really hope some things seriously change because as far as mechanics and gameplay go, I love the hell out of it. It's totally Dwarf Fortress-like and tons of fun. I don't like the art, both styles, but I can live with it.

What really makes me feel strongly about hating this fucking game is the presentation in the tutorial and I'm concerned that they are going to be heading in that direction for the final game, because its awful.

Are they trying to make a statement about Prisons? Criminals? Society? Etc... Maybe they are, maybe they aren't; either way, they aren't doing a very good job at handling tone.

The juxtaposition of gameplay and "narrative" might be an attempt at making us think about the actions we're doing in the game and such... ex: "Oh, I'm having so much fun playing Dwarf Fortress-like, but here's some needlessly shocking bullshit that will make you understand WHAT you're actually doing here."

It's not subtle, it's not subversive, it's a needless point to make(I guess that isn't true, I mean if they want to make it, by all means go for it), it's not my cup of tea nor do I want it.

Remember the level in Startopia where you had to run a space prison, it was god damn great and I really think the tone of this game could learn a lot from that.

The juxtaposition between both art styles is from a visual stand point is ugly. I'm really focused on visuals in games, so I judge things a bit too harshly, but I can put up with the little marshmellow people or I can put up with poor comic book art; I can't do both. Especially when the poor comic book art is meant to be overtly in your face and shocking for the sake of it.

At least at this point in development, if they actually have a message or point to make, I'd like to see it executed better because I may be able to tolerate it more... but for now, it's really, really, dumb.

Give me the gameplay without the presentation or narrative the alpha eludes to wanting to accomplish and I'd love the hell out of it, but for now, I really dislike the direction the tutorial implies the game will go.

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I'm pretty sure the sandbox mode is going to stay so I'm not sure what you're mad about. You can even skip the tutorial.

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Ooooh I did not know this was out! Despite having a just-ridiculous backlog at this point, and the price tag, I'm really leaning toward picking this up. I'm just so curious to see how all the systems work.

The tutorial stuff you guys mention sounds a lot like the "shocking" sections of the Call of Duty games where they seem to almost be making a point about the brutality of war but then fall short and just make something that seems pointless and awful. When you first step into the AC-130 I actually thought it was a really interesting experience because visually it was indistinguishable from actual gunship footage coming from Iraq, and it kind of put you into the shoes of those operators albeit at a very significant distance. But they never try to actually make any cohesive statement out of it and it gets reduced to gameyness once the shock wears off and I think ultimately fails to say anything significant.

Perhaps this is whats going on with the more fucked up aspects of Prison Architect. Because I can totally see some interesting things coming out of trying to simulate prison systems, that force you to think on the situations millions of people have to deal with each day. But the thing is, most of what I see in the trailers is more of a comedic - dwarf fortress style random crazy - variety. And if the serious stuff is just served to you and not commented on besides that blunt CEO letter... it could be failing to make the player think in a similar way the COD guys did.

I guess I really have to play this and see!

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I'm pretty sure the sandbox mode is going to stay so I'm not sure what you're mad about. You can even skip the tutorial.

Well, I played the tutorial to learn how to play the game, I cannot un-play it and was giving my opinion and reaction to the content that I saw. Don't like my opinion? You can skip reading it. : P

If it's the direction the entire game will be going, sandbox or not, I probably won't support that game and just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject, that's all. I love introversion and I've enjoyed all their releases so I'm a bit surprised to find an strong dislike towards presentation in this... but this is also the first alpha version of theirs that I did play, so maybe Defcon and Darwinia were also as rough on presentation... who knows.

Game play is still neat though.

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Introversion games always tend to be a little weird like that. Defcon, in particular, could be pretty unsettling at times, what with the casualties resulting from nuclear war and the entirely cold way of presenting that data.

I haven't played this game, YET, but it doesn't really sound at all offensive so whatever. I want it. Give it to me. When I have time, anyway.

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Well, I played the tutorial to learn how to play the game, I cannot un-play it and was giving my opinion and reaction to the content that I saw. Don't like my opinion? You can skip reading it. : P

If it's the direction the entire game will be going, sandbox or not, I probably won't support that game and just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject, that's all. I love introversion and I've enjoyed all their releases so I'm a bit surprised to find an strong dislike towards presentation in this... but this is also the first alpha version of theirs that I did play, so maybe Defcon and Darwinia were also as rough on presentation... who knows.

Game play is still neat though.

I think not supporting the game because they made some questionable decisions about storytelling, but you like the core gameplay is... well.

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Defcon hit a high watermark in shocking subtlety. It would be hard to get there again. Plus, this is the first time that they've actually hired an artist. Let them play around. One way or another, I wish they were more resolute and deliberate with their decisions—or rather that the final impression of whatever they settle on is strong.

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Cool interview with the Introversion Software guys here:

http://www.electrondance.com/

They're definitely considering the moral implications of the game, which is good. The host also totally called out the fact that even after being introduced, ethical dilemmas tend to succumb to repetition in the game world.

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I think not supporting the game because they made some questionable decisions about storytelling, but you like the core gameplay is... well.

well..a balanced opinion about modern video games that are judged both on gameplay mechanics, presentation, and narration? Well yes, then I completely agree.

Look, it'll probably end up being a neat game, but my instant reaction to what the tutorial implies the end product will be was disgust.

If it goes there, so be it, I won't play it and life moves on, but I decided to share my opinion because that's what people do on a forum. Not much discussion is coming from it other than "don't like? don't play it" so I'll move on and comment on something else when it gets updated.

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This game is hard. I'm looking forward to getting over the hump of the learning curve. I waste so much money on weird door situations. 

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I just posted this in the comments to an RPS article(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/12/prison-architect-diary/)

 

Huh… I didn’t think I had any problems with this game, but this write-up sounds like it operates under some right-wing fever dream idea of what happens in prisons. It’s propaganda for why we need the prison system to be like it is.

Tell me I'm wrong, please?

 

Afterwards I looked up some stats online. According to a Slate article, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/06/murder_rate_in_prison_is_it_safer_to_be_jailed_than_free.html, the homicide rate in jail is about 3 to 100,000 inmates, or two thirds of the national homicide rate in the US. There were about 2,266,800 inmates in the US in 2011, which tells us that around 70 people are murdered in prisons annually. There are around 4600 prisons, so the expected chance that someone is murdered in one prison in one year is about 1.5%.

 

Meanwhile, this game (and obviously all prison-centered fiction) would lead you to believe that the only way to stop people killing each other is to chain them up and leave them to rot.

 

EDIT:

Oh!

Around 100 people were killed in the series Oz over six years, so that prison accounted for about a quarter of all prison homicides for those years.

 

http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pjdc0009st.pdf

Heart disease (26%) and cancer (23%) were the leading 

single causes of illness-related deaths in prisons, together 
accounting for nearly half (49%) of all prison deaths 
between 2001 and 2009.
Liver disease was the third leading single cause of death in 
prisons, accounting for 7% of all deaths.
Deaths due to intoxication, homicide, or accident were 
the least common causes of deaths, with none accounting 
for more than 2% of deaths in prisons.
It's weird, I wouldn't normally have a problem with this game. It's harder for me to accept it because it's a simulation, so it makes a statement about what people are like and how they behave. If it was just a narrative, it could be about individual nasty people. But it seems to be about how all people are nasty, which isn't true.

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Does the cartoonish nature of the simulation not suspend disbelief/discomfort? I mean, obviously not a direct comparison but Rollercoaster Tycoon always had a disproportionate number of people throwing up from literally every single ride as a visual means to communicate that a ride may not be engineered just right. Obviously prisons are a more sensitive subject of simulation than theme parks, but killing is an overextended example of violence, which is probably a lot more prevalent in prisons but far less easily tracked than homicide and a lot more difficult to convey in art/animation of the spartan/stylized style of this game.

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Does the cartoonish nature of the simulation not suspend disbelief/discomfort? I mean, obviously not a direct comparison but Rollercoaster Tycoon always had a disproportionate number of people throwing up from literally every single ride as a visual means to communicate that a ride may not be engineered just right. Obviously prisons are a more sensitive subject of simulation than theme parks, but killing is an overextended example of violence, which is probably a lot more prevalent in prisons but far less easily tracked than homicide and a lot more difficult to convey in art/animation of the spartan/stylized style of this game.

 

I'm a bit put-off by it, but I also ended up reading a lot of the sensationalist articles that came out around the time of the initial release. I've never played the game myself.

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Ideally, the game would make you feel like the prisoners must be treated as dangerous animals rather than people; and then somehow put that view into undeniable fallibility. This game has the potential to attribute behaviors to circumstantial necessity. In my culture, most people assume that criminals are "bad people". I view this as a method of dehumanization that makes abuses and traumatization more likely.

I'm not sure if I've posted this one Idle Forums before, but the Stanford Prison Experiment had a huge influence on the way I see these things:


 

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I haven't played Rollercoaster Tycoon, but games like Theme Hospital are just nuts along with being cartoonish. None of the diseases are real, crazy stuff happens all the time. That's not what Prison Architect is modeling. The cartoony graphics represent completely down to earth if brutal stuff. There are no whacky escape attempts or hijinks, just rape and murder.

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I'm not saying that Prison Architect is attempting to be whimsical, I'm just suggesting that maybe the visual impact is exacerbated by the relative abstraction of the art style. I suggest this not having played the game and only having watched LPs (three or four hours of them, for what it's worth), so I could be totally off base. I just want to differentiate what I'm saying from "it's a cartoon, murder and rape are lol topics when treated in a specific goooooofy way!"

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I only just realized you could get grants in this game. The tutorial is atrocious.

 

Now that I've got an actual prison going and not just a closet full of 30 angry men, it's become a super interesting experience. It's like an ant farm, watching the tiny bits of script react to the walls I shape for them.

 

I get strong civ vibes from the constant push and pull between placating and brutalizing my population. Entertain them to keep them happy, give them phone calls, family visits, tv, and when that's not enough and they inevitably become violent: send in the guards and the medics (and the janitors to clean up the mess).

 

It's both sickening and oddly distant. Similar to how you get satisfaction out of the mechanics from Paper's Please while also feeling discomfort that those mechanics led you to send a fictional character to their deaths.

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