The developers of Prison Architect have read our guest writer Paolo Pedercini's tough critique of their game. They... liked it! And they've recorded a video addressing Pedercini's concerns about how their game does or doesn't bleed the reality of the real prison system into the game.
Is it possible to create a prison management game without trivializing or misrepresenting the issue of mass incarceration? As video games mature and tackle more serious topics, players and developers should be aware of the values embedded in their systems.
Prison Architect continues to have the best alpha updates: "Alpha 11 brings a host of new features, bug fixes and improvements, not least of which is hearses to take away the unfortunately deceased." Details here. Reasons to play it here. (Warning: Presumably-NSFW cursing at the start of the video.)
The somewhat-wonderful, somewhat-demented interactive incarceration simulator Prison Architect always gets the best updates.
I'm already on-record about how fascinating Prison Architect is. Seriously, it's SimPrison—or ThemePrison, if you will—made by people who seem to be damn near fearless about making video games about uncomfortable topics.
The most interesting decision a video game has given me the opportunity to make this year involved the interior decoration of a prison. The choice, which I was presented just yesterday: Did I want to put a window in the cell of a man on death row? Or save the money? Either way, he was going to die the next day.
Proven countless times over the past several years alone, video games are a form of entertainment uniquely suited to communicating serious subjects in an interactive fashion — far more effectively than reading a book or watching a documentary. Unfortunately Apple wants nothing to do with that sort of communication, so…
