Dystopian, or just merely bleak? Paper's Please

The faded colours and muted sounds wash over you as the steady thumping of rubber stamps lulls you into a false sense of security.

Accepted - you don't notice the mistakes, perhaps there are none.

Denied - you notice the date, the mismatch of photo ID, the wrong Passport numbers.

You do not break out of your rhythm, instead steadily keep up with the pace that you've set yourself - more than 15, better if it's 20. But those are goals that you do not think about in this medley. You keep to the task at hand. You ignore the pleas, you do not see the end to a the line, you do not worry about what happens within your country's walls.

All is put down to the simple query of "Papers please."

Recently I've been playing Papers, Please, a dystopian paper thriller, that locks you into an endless (well 31 day) cycle of accepting and rejecting entry into Arstozka - as well as whatever story elements sneak their way past border security.

And it's a great. Not just because of the tedium of bureaucracy (which somewhat paradoxically is one of it's highlights), its variation of plot, or the complimentary aesthetic, but the steady decline (for the player) into simply being a cog in the machine of Arstozka.

Much like Hotline Miami, or Spec Ops: The Line, the game coerces the player into a subtle devaluation of human lives, towards viewing them as simply objects of monetary value. Faces, by the end of the game, are made into no more than bar-codes for you to scan, process and move on.

The game does this in two ways: the mechanised interaction of immigration, and the motivation of your family's well being. For the time being we'll focus on the motivational aspect, as while the game mechanics are the actual game part, the storyline, or character imperative to continue in this bleak existence is based upon the family.

Family

Every day after your shift, you are presented with a table of sorts listing the money that you earned, and the various costs of food, rent, heat, and whatever else pops up. To the right there are four circles, coloured green just like the text with the words "Ok," imprinted within them, underneath lie their names. Wife, Son, Mother-in-law and Uncle. These are the four beings that rely upon your bureaucratic efficiency to protect them from the threat of starvation, sickness, or homelessness (the player's character, interestingly enough, does not suffer from sickness, or hunger, only bankruptcy). These are the people that need your job, that you accept and deny immigrants and other foreigners. These are the people that you agonise over whether to keep fed, or warm, because you don't have enough money to pay for everything. These four green dots, provide all (or at the very least most of) the emotional motivation  that encourages players to keep going for 31 days.

Mitigating the harshness of Arstozkan life as well, it is possible to raise the player's family's quality of living with various extra costs, alongside the necessities of food, heat and rent. Failure to do so results in either the death of one of your family members (due to sickness), or your imprisonment.

This game mechanic is the motivation for succession in the game, the suggestion for self improvement  and the reprimand against laziness. It works well as an emotional tool, especially when you consider that you never actually see your family, instead they're all represented by one word states "Ok," "Sick," "Cold,""Hungry," or even, if you've forgone food, or heat, enough times "dead." A very impersonal emotional tool, if you think about what represents them, but an effective one nevertheless. It works towards the players self interests and allows for the player to rationalise their behaviour for denying people entry into Arstozka.

Border

Overlaying this emotional motivation is the border guard interaction, where you actually interact with people. Here you provide asylum to people fleeing persecution, put a halt on smugglers, pass through diplomats - all provided they have the right papers. Unfortunately this means that a lot of entrants are denied based upon incorrect paperwork; whoever issued them made a mistake, the entrant wasn't able to renew his/her passport, etc. At the start of the game, this isn't so much a problem, if you're feeling particularly generous you can allow people in regardless of the state of their papers - maybe their words convinced you; a mother anxious to return to her son, a citizen forgets their ID card. In any case you can let them in, you'll suffer a penalty of course (no fines for the first two, then five for the next two, then ten, and so on), but you'll have the satisfaction of helping out other individuals. Soon though, money becomes tight, and the opportunities for "letting one slip," become smaller and you start to begin moral triage. This person hasn't explained themselves DENIED, this person isn't convincing, DENIED, this person... hasn't offered anything DENIED. It becomes a form of self preservation, and slowly, stamp by stamp, you begin to care less and less about these people, and more about what they represent - money.

In a way the whole endeavour becomes a metaphor for a bleak life, an unending march to the promise of a brighter future, while forever becoming harder and harder to progress, until your corpse is just another one of the hundreds trampled in the entry line to Arstozka. Never mind the warning about dystopian governments, or the moral analysis of  boarder security operations (trusting people vs. the harm that they can do) - Paper's Please, for me, was a waring about emotional priorities; between an impersonal family, who you prioritise for, and entrants who, wear the effects of that prioritisation. You are, for most of the game trading lives (this presumes that on denial their lives will suffer), for the lives, and then happiness of your family. But why does my family (your family, the family) deserve any of that? Compared to what goes on at the border, there's less of a bond with them, than with the strangers that you process. At least there's conversation.

Of course there may be technical, and game mechanic consideration that could easily be the reason for this development in the game. Certainly some emotional interaction with the family is addressed in Paper's Please, in the form of gifts received from the family of photos, or pictures - but I shy away from this, as it is based upon you spending money on extra things. In this you're still trading in lives, for a family that you know little about.

The Use Of Agency in Dragon Age 2 and The Walking Dead

Agency is often lauded as the one special feature of videogames in that it allows for the player (ie you) to determine their avatar’s fictional fate. 

But is this really a black and white case which all games seem to have in ample quantities? 

I would say no, as the agency depicted from one game to another is radically different, and enact different expectations in their players, both heightening and lowering expectations of the games plot, character abilities and the enjoyment of the game.

For the rest of this post I will set up what agency is (because there are soooooooooooo many different types and descriptions of agency), and analyse the types of agency present in both Dragon Age 2 and The Walking Dead, setting myself up for an argument to why Dragon Age 2’s ending was more disappointing and less emotively driven than The Walking Dead’s ending.

Note: I do realise this is a subjective opinion, but yet at the same time there are reasons for my opinion and I’m expressing them. Note too that I did enjoy Dragon Age 2, except for its usage of agency and where the  plot fell (WHICH WAS IN A BAD PLACE) at the end.

Note Note 2: There will be spoilers, but to be honest I don't think that anyone reading this will care that much about spoilers for games that are no longer recent.

Agency

Agency is, for the purposes of these games, narrative choices that affect how other in-game characters react to a player's character, as well as choices that determine the player's morality. For more discussion about agency refer to the previous post.

Dragon Age 2

In Dragon Age 2 agency is expressed as it normally would in any Bioware game, you express choices based upon (usually) two different characters’ points of view and decide upon that how to deal with a particular issue.

Agency and disposition in a side quest.

For the most part this exists in a fairly formulistic way, good options are highlighted in blue, bad in red. In later instalments of Bioware games there is a deepening of the impact that these choices have upon your companions. In Mass Effect some alien factions wouldn’t join your cause, in Neverwinter Nights 2 some characters’ specific side quests wouldn’t open up, it goes on. For the most part the agency or choices offered to players are signposted with a lot of exposition, in-game cinematography, and a highlighted UI (showing good as blue and bad actions as red. Furthermore when the particular option is chosen the effects thereof are shown almost immediately with different “good,” or “bad” points assigned to the player with a notification.

For the most part this display of agency is “empowering” of the player in that everything the player does has immediate feedback, and goes the way that the player expects the events to go. In essence it’s a sort of wish fulfilment for the player. Certainly the player has to work towards these goals and do the hard yards of killing x amounts of enemies to get abilities which then affects their character and the plot. But in the end the choice becomes earned, and subsequently the result of that choice is earned as well.

This rarely goes bad for the player.

There is no other option!

That is at least until the end of the game when you are given no other actions, but to accept the fact that there needs to be a war between the two magic groups the Charter and the Apostate groups (due to some terrorist activity by a group member that would otherwise listen to your advice). Even though you’re clearly given the options to try and circumvent it, there is no way that you can prevent the war, or stop your companion from becoming a terrorist. This didn’t feel in line with the games previous indications of agency, and while the non-agency can be explained away by saying that it’s a narrative device (The game has to end this way), the denial of agency felt false. Especially since at other points in the game you are given full control of your agency.  This ruined the game somewhat for me, the game had lied to me.

The Walking Dead

In The Walking Dead, agency is whole other kettle of fish. Agency is presented as it would in other games, the player has a list of possible actions and the in-game character does those actions. You tell Lee to do something and he’ll do it, to the best of his abilities.

Including slipping over on blood and backing away very slowly from zombies.

The key difference here though is that the agency that is attempted by the player isn’t all encompassing – just because you decide to do something, doesn’t necessitate that the action will be successful, your character only has so much control of the events that surround him.

(For the above picture since the formatting is playing up) : One of the first pivotal moments where your agency determines the future result of the game - choosing between saving saving Shawn or Duck – except not really, Shawn Greene (Hershel's son) will die either way.
  

Regardless of Lee’s actions in certain sections, there is no possible way for him to circumvent some situations, because his agency isn’t all encompassing. Lee while certainly directed in the same narrative arch that the Shepherds and Grey Wardens were, is further hampered by his own abilities, and the characters around him. Lee’s inability to stop Shawn's death, Larry’s or even the suicide of Katjaa, are events that in other game universes would simply be a matter of fact. Added to their impact is the agency that other characters have over Lee’s survival, he doesn’t dictate the group, he can only guide, each character is their own unique agent, that as often as not, will go rogue.

The game conditions you with this by firstly denying full agency when an apparent choice is given (the above example of Shawn and Duck), and thereafter only providing the barest hints of choice. Many players, myself included, were not accustomed to this and when this denial of agency was encountered, tried to circumvent it by trying the same scenario again – it took me 20 minutes to realise that there was no way that I could save Hershel’s son. The thing that mattered though was that I could try to prevent that, I was given agency, but only to the extent of Lee’s abilities.

Mass Effect 2 seems to try to supply these complex characters in the idea of the loyalty missions in which Shepherd could win their loyalty over by completing a mission concerning the individual’s backstory. But all of these missions were clearly signposted and easy to navigate, the characters in The Walking Dead were not so logical in the opening up of their loyalties and past histories, instead you have to deal with unstable characters.

Regardless, The Walking Dead through its denial of agency, and actions of their individual characters conditions players to acknowledge their limitations in the game and narrative, as being part of the game world, and so when actions weren’t able to be performed in the Walking Dead, I was much more ready to accept them. Dragon Age 2, on the other hand, alongside other Bioware games, seemed to have narrative agency loss in arbitary circumstances causing immersion and characterization to break, as the situation would appear to be similar to other ones in which my character had control.

Conclusion

 The Walking Dead through its entire arc acclimatizes you to the available actions within the game, whereas Bioware games, Dragon Age 2 in particular does not, and as such, suffers from it. With this acclimatization comes a more ready acceptance of loss and lack of control, repercussions become more personal, loss actual - Dragon Age 2 attempts to do this, but without the preamble making it's ending unexpected and unfair to the player.