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Papers, Please
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2018 · Film · short · 10 min
Directed by Nikita Ordynskiy
An official adaptation of the award winning game "Papers, Please" by Lucas Pope.
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12 comments on Hacker News
I'm assuming he's referring to sitting up an environment where citizens are incentivized to report other citizens for crimes, leading to reduced trust among everyone.
He could also have referenced 'Papers Please', or any movie about East Germany.
And for those who have played, or just are intrigued by it, let me also recommend the official short film PAPERS PLEASE (major spoilers alert):
https://youtu.be/YFHHGETsxkE
Made by fans of the game, and later accepted as official canon by Lucas Pope himself.
For anyone curious:
Lucas Pope, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Pope
> He is best known for experimental indie games, notably Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, both of which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize alongside other awards.
Papers, Please was a really nice concept, executed well. It even inspired a few other games, like Contraband Police, which recently came out and is pretty okay (like a 3D spiritual successor, sort of).
Toby Fox, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Fox
> He is known for developing the role-playing video games Undertale and Deltarune for which the former garnered acclaim and he received nominations for a British Academy Game Award, three Game Awards and D.I.C.E. Awards, the latter known as the video game equivalent of the Academy Awards.
Both Undertale and Deltarune didn't seem too impressive on a technical level (e.g. not going for flashy graphics like many modern titles), but the world building, the gameplay mechanics, the character writing and everything else just felt really, really nice and on point.
I guess both of those devs are a good example that projects with a good concept and even better execution are still likely to be quite successful. Personally, I'd definitely also throw the Outer Wilds game on top of this pile as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Wilds
Here's a documentary about its making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbY0mBXKKT0 (spoilers)
However, such success won't be likely for the majority of the developers out there, which is to be expected. Not that people shouldn't make games that they are passionate about, just that they should set their own expectations accordingly.
To be fair, the only thing they have in common is the author. They are different in pretty much everything else, and absolutely unique experiences.
(This is the only time I can share this with you, but beware, spoiler alert. Papers Please - The Short Film: https://youtu.be/YFHHGETsxkE)
This reminds me of the very typical discussion about the value of mathematics and the "descendants": physics, chemistry etc. :-)
If the ultimate purpose is to "do some work", movies and videogames definitely do:
- movies require (in theory) around 90 minutes of undivided attention, which is definitely "work" (how many people can watch an entire movie without peeking at the phone?); additionally, they can be intellectually and/or emotionally stimulating - videogames are essentially, in general, structured challenges, which is "work" again: analytical, creative, reactive...
I'd say that quality of an escape, if we want to set this concept, could be better defined by the human experience added by it.
Alcohol doesn't really add any valuable experience (assuming one even remembers it).
Books, in average, may give the most valuable experience because they may be the most selective medium (due to the attention required).
TV, in average, may give the least, for the opposite reason.
Movies are definitely an infinite human capital. There's lots of garbage, of course.
I find hard to make any generalization about video games, as it's a very diverse medium. Farmville and co. "fare" in the ranks of trash TV, however, games like "Papers, Please" make a very significant experience.
This is exceptionally callous way of looking at things. Video games are certainly a medium for discussion: "Papers Please" is a discussion point on legal immigration for example. (Its not true across the board: "Prison Architect", is NOT a discussion point on prisons).
I'm not one to play "political" games, but IMO, they are no different than political or personal movies, poems, or letters. Video games are just one more medium of which society can use to connect and communicate with other people.
Have you played the "This is fine" flash game? Its actually a deeply personal + political discussion point as well.
https://namsang.itch.io/thisisfine
These games aren't necessarily designed for maximum enjoyment, they're optimized for maximum discussion and community connections.
Apparently the breach is now being proxied by the fired private operators through government offices. Can this cashless money flow be traced? Even burner mobile phone numbers are linked to the same compromised national identity database.
Who could benefit indirectly from the breach? Could the Indian government turn to Facebook and WhatsApp for help with identity profiling? Is Facebook Indian data held in Indian data centers?
This story will find its way into future documentaries on the history of "Papers Please".
> in February 2018, the UIDAI terminated all contracts with common service centres as well .. Henceforth, only banks and government institutions like the postal service can enrol Aadhaar users. As a consequence, tens of thousands of young men, with rudimentary education but great familiarity with the Aadhaar system, were put out of work.
> In interviews, out-of-work operators claim they can still use the hacked enrolment software to generate enrolment ids (the first step in the Aadhaar registration process) and have tied up with sources working in authorised centres who complete the registration process for a fee.
> ... creates a whole new set of problems and could defeat many of Aadhaar's purported aims, such as reducing corruption, tracking black money, eliminating fraud and identity theft. It also means that the Aadhaar database is vulnerable to the same problems of ghost entries as any other government database
> the Indian government has sought to make Aadhaar numbers the gold standard for citizen identification, and mandatory for everything from using a mobile phone to accessing a bank account.
> Sourcing the patch is as easy as gaining access to one of thousands of WhatsApp groups where the patch, and the usernames and passwords required to login to the UIDAI's enrolment gateway, are sold for as little as Rs 2,500. Payments are made through mobile wallets linked to phone numbers that quickly go dead after the transactions are complete.
Papers, Please actually did get adapted as a short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFHHGETsxkE
IMO it's an example of how to do a game-movie adaptation right: it gets both the mechanics and the themes of the game across effectively, and it uses the medium to set up scenes that would be hard to convey in the original game (e.g. the moment after Elisa leaves)
Papers, Please doesn't have a story per se, only a setting. You don't really beat the game, you just get one of several different endings which depend on more than just making mistakes and playing "badly". Getting a "bad" ending doesn't count as losing the game.
But that's what makes it perfect for an adaptation (for a different reason you were arguing about). Its movie script won't break a plot that doesn't exist, won't mess up any character development because there isn't one (recurring characters are secondary), and all it has to do is get the setting right. Writers can go anywhere from there.
This article is weird. It sort of addresses the solution to it's problem while it's problem is also almost non-existant.
1 - not every medium is for everybody. Getting my friends to play videogames (or getting my few gamer friends to play niche/weird game I recommend) is something I already gave up. I don't dislike cinema, but most of the movies the are made simply don't appeal to me. There's nothing wrong with cinema. I'm just not that attracted to the medium.
2 - the author's friends' attitude to videogames. This shows lack of knowledge, lack of humility and elitism. Just because they don't know any games that "change you as a person" or cater to their "cultural preferences and interests" that doesn't mean that there isn't. People should be humble when judging other things. I don't like hip-hop. But I don't assume it is all bad or that I will dislike it all. Sturgeon's law applies both ways, and to everything.
3 - about the author's suggestions. I like the suggestions. I thought Skyrim would be a bit too heavy to a new gamer (specially to one who was really on the fence) but it worked! It showed the power transposing ourselves to a new world and live within it. And that Lidya story.. It was the best outcome it could happen. Sure, Kristina later abandoned the game. But the theme wasn't of her liking. But it showed her a glimpse of what is possible.
4 - I dislike the demonization of the bulk of the medium. Sure, there are a lot os FPSs and violence and twitch-reflex action games. We have Call of Duty as we have Katy Perry and Transformers[0]. And these get a lot of imitators and visibility and money because... there are a lot of people who like these things ans are willing to play for them. And this is OK. Niche stuff, out of the mainstream is always harder to find.
Finally 5 - The author is there and clearly knows videogames. If a friend wants to try videogames you should, like the author said, ask what they like or expect to see and direct them to a game like that. Skyrim is a good choice. Papers please is also nice. Maybe a puzzle game. Or a walking simulator to someone who just wants to experience a story in his own pace. And maybe you could, I don't know, give them Call of Duty. They might enjoy it. And they might even dislike everything. Because, as I said, not every medium is for everybody. but The demonization os the mainstream simply shows a clear lack of understanding of the market and an extremely "hipseristic" attitude.
[0] - I'm using these as an example of something low-brow, made for the masses. This is only my opinion and you are free to enjoy them and regard them in whatever way you want.
I think The Stanley Parable is a much better example of an artistic experience. The creator made another game called The Beginner's Guide which I thought was just as good.
Limbo, Papers Please, I Am Bread, Please Don't Touch Anything, are all good examples of games I would also consider art. These games are genuinely different and many of them are considered incredibly enjoyable by most people.
If you want something which really is just art and not much of a game, The Cat And The Coup is free on Steam. Frog Fractions 2 is also free and you can find it using Google (you have to play the whole game to understand).
For the most part I think gamers and developers are a bit sensitive about their medium, trying to argue it's "art" because it has a positive connotation. I think they should just enjoy it for what it is, as most games are designed to be fun instead of something else. That said, I think VR might try to change this. A friend of mine at Oculus mentioned how it's the very early stages, comparing VR to movies from ~100 years ago. Back then they just filmed plays, as they didn't realize what they could do with the medium. I'm sure VR will have lots of typical blockbusters following generic formulas, but I think indie developers (of which there are more every day) will build some pretty incredibly stuff in the coming years.
That's /The/ Bunk, thank you very much, :p.
As for not everyone looking at series like the Wire the same way, that's just natural. I'm sure a lot of people think Papers, Please is a shit game too. Can't argue with taste, can't steer people's priorities when it comes to TV shows either. The Wire for example needs a lot of attention and concentration to watch; a lot of people have some TV show on in the background, and only pay attention when something (or someone) draws attention to them.