Technicities in Papers, Please
Technicity is defined as the extent to which a people or culture possesses technical skills or technology. According to Jon Dovey and Helen Kennedy, authors of Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media, the idea of technicity “would be a key concept for understanding game culture” because “this identity then becomes a basis for affiliations and connections with like-minded others” (64). Meaning, there are dominant and marginal identities within gaming that have different tastes or perform different behaviors.
The game Papers, Please is a puzzle simulation video game created by the indie developer Lucas Pope. The player is an immigration inspector having to process paperwork and people at the border of the fictional dystopia of Arstotzka. After having played Papers, Please for about two hours, I identified two main technicities within the game. As the game goes on, there are multiple decisions and debates between morality and rationality. Should the border inspector allow people to cross into Arstotzka without proper documentation or should he enforce the laws? Some of these immigrants beg and bribe the player to cross, saying their lives are in danger, but the player also has to think about their own family living in Arstotzka and what could happen to them if he were caught letting illegal people past the border. This is what the “iron cage of bureaucracy” means. This situation could even reach to today with the current debate on immigration.
I personally am going to play through the game three times: one the way I want to play, another fully focusing on the safety of my family and following all of the laws, and the last not caring for the laws and helping out everyone who needs to enter Arstotzka without documentation. Currently I am playing the first way because I am getting used to what the game is disciplining me to do; they showed a terrorist attack when I let someone through the border who shouldn’t have but they also showed me a newspaper article of someone I denied being killed. My family is also a constant worry because I can’t seem to feed them and have them be warm with my small pay check, making me sacrifice some accuracy for speed to get through people in order to get more money. If I make too big of a mistake or too many, however, my family and I could be punished. Not to mention that as the game goes on, I have more and more responsibilities to attempt to ensure the person trying to cross is allowed. There are 20 endings to the game, allowing for a range of decisions to be made, including one of full accuracy for Arstotzka linked below.
Papers, Please Let’s Play (Ending 20/20): https://youtu.be/DWvzPU2sgsM
Dovey, Jon, and Helen W. Kennedy. Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. Open Univ. Press, 2011.