Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5.2
Stamping a seemingly endless series of border documents in
Papers, Please
.
This may not sound fun at all, on the surface—but
Papers, Please
manages to thoroughly
express the workings of an unjust system that you find yourself trapped in when you play.
You've got to decide whether to prioritize helping mistreated and threatened border-crossers
or preserve your own family's health and wealth. The shape of the game—the difficulty and
balance of costs and payment—always holds out the possibility that if you're good enough at
your job, you can get away with some purposeful “slip-ups” to help people. Just as surely, your
power to act is limited by the fact that you're only
one cog in the machine.
Lucas Pope playtested
Papers, Please
extensively to fine-tune the workings of the game's fic-
tional injustices. As one of the participants in the web forum where he posted early versions of
the game, I took part in that process and saw the game get better at eliciting the kinds of feel-
ings and experiences he was aiming for. Do all games benefit from playtesting, though? There's
an argument that can be made that the goal of some games is less about persuading the player
to respond, feel particular things, or make certain kinds of choices, and more about expressing
something that the creator
wants to say—regardless of whether a particular player is willing to
hear it.
When we playtest and iterate a game, we make changes that attempt to adapt the game's form
and the possible spaces that can emerge from it to the psychology and behavior of players. If
we're making a game that's intended for young children, for example, we might change the
controls so that they're easier for players with less developed reflexes and motor skills, or we
might adjust the difficulty of the game differently than we would for an experienced gamer. We
move the game away from purely being about our own expression to adapt it for an audience.
