A conceptual game – the new frontier for art
Now if you mess up paperwork (or deliberately let people through because you feel sorry for them) you incur fines, and because your pay is so low, the fines may prevent you from buying food for your family or medicine for your sick son. supplements, press documentation, forged governmental seals, and you begin to encounter asylum seekers, drug smugglers, bribes, and tons of out of date paperwork. Until the world starts to pile on requirements like work permits, I.D. numbers and information match across the papers. You approve or deny based on whether paperwork is current and all the I.D. “Papers, Please”, the newest game by Lucas Pope is described as a “dystopian document thriller.” In this starkly grim role-playing narrative you are a border control guard in the fictitious - and vaguely Eastern European-sounding - country of Arstotzka, and your job is to approve or deny peoples’ identity papers. If Kafka had made a video game instead of his novels, Papers, Please would be that game. (Maeve Griffin introduces us to a video game that pushes a player’s buttons and forces them to make decisions at a border crossing in Eastern Europe.–the Artblog editors)