Papers,+Please

Cristina Osborn Educational Game Review: Papers, Please

**Game Description: ** //Papers, Please //Beta was created by Lucas Pope and is currently a work in progress. It is a single player game where the player has been selected through a labor lottery to work as Inspector at the Ministry of Admission at the Grestin Border Checkpoint in the country Arstokska (Identity Principle). The first day of work begins on November 23, 1982 and takes places in the Inspector Booth. The goal of the game is to approve as many people as you can in a day without making mistakes that cost your family money. The game ends if all of your family members die. []



**What I learned: ** The first day of work, you are only allowed to approve citizens to enter the country. All foreigners are to be denied. You inspect their documents to ensure that the information is current and valid. You can consult your Rule Book before making a decision. Each day, new rules are added based on the events of the world. As the complexity of the process increases, so does the amount of time it takes to approve someone.

I learned about the processes required to admit people into the country depending on their status. As the days went on, I had to look at multiple documents for each person and verify information, such as:
 * Name
 * Gender
 * Date of birth
 * Weight
 * Valid permit
 * Expiration date
 * Appearance

Click here to take a Virtual Tour of Papers, Please

In this game “time is money.” A large part of the game’s mechanics is that you are on a strict time table. There is a clock in the bottom left corner that shows how much time you have left in the day. You work until 6:00 pm. I didn’t know how much time I had left. I only noticed when the people in line went away. You only earn income based on the number of people you approve in a day. Income is vital to supporting your family. At the end of day, you see a summary of your money and your family members’ health status. If you lose money, your family members’ health begins to deteriorate. If they all die, you lose and the game ends. This mechanic is important in that it pressures you to get through as many people in line as possible while trying to avoid getting citations and making mistakes which cost you income if you get more than 2 warnings. By the end of day 4, my family members were cold, sick, and hungry and I knew I needed to work faster to earn enough money for them. I unknowingly accepted a bribe because I was trying to work quickly and strategically received 2 citations without losing pay in order to sustain my family. Unfortunately, at the end of day 6, two of my family members died. I tried accepting everyone on day 8 regardless of the rules, but I racked up so many citations that I ended up with very little income. At the end of day 8, all of my family members had died and the game was over.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The kinds of teaching: **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">News bulletin at the beginning of each day with new rules and information (Text Principle, p.106)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Rules added to Rule Book which can be consulted as often as needed (Ongoing Learning Principle, p.68)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Ability to inspect for discrepancies and be told if there is or isn’t one, such as if the symbol of a work permit is valid (Situated Meaning Principle, p.105)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Citations issued for mistakes; Two warnings are given, but after that mistakes start costing you (Probing Principle, p.105)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Summary of income and family members’ health status at the end of each work day (Achievement Principle, p.11)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Ability to practice skills often, at least until all family members die (Practice Principle, p.68)

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Reflection: ** <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">This is an interesting game because you aren’t playing a traditional “heroic” character. You are just a person trying to get by. Not only are you trying to follow the rules, but you have to support your family which means sometimes letting people in and breaking the rules. Very quickly, the game presents you with a lot of decisions, such as: whether or not to follow or break the rules, lose money to do the right thing for a person, or do something wrong, but earn money to provide for your family. Through these decisions and the actions that take place in the game, you could start to build your own narrative of what is happening in the game. I wanted to play the game again to see if I could keep my family members alive. I wonder if it is even possible and what kind of decisions I would have to make as a character to make that happen.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">This game was not designed to be an educational game, but it could be used to help students understand more about the process of admitting people into a country, but also as an exercise in morality, ethics and decision making.