currently thinking about the subtitle of the new touhou game
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pretty good summary of the touhou community tho
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not technically a “videogame” thing i guess but close enough.
actually given all the creepy storytelling subtext of Petscop and the basis of it kind of being shaped around newly developing early 3d in games and the fact that Ace of Base was kind of like the early progenitor of current pop music trends and had that one ex-neo-nazi member sent me down a weird mind spiral that i have yet to get out from.
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update:
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Interesting thread on Papers Please
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i mean my very uncharitable take on this is that any media with any level of subtlety will be misinterpreted, and gamers aren’t exactly the most discerning group.
i would also bet a person unfamiliar with games would be more likely to “get” papers please because they don’t have preconceptions about what a game is and what’s possible within the medium. the large majority of games don’t force you to critically engage with the story. game stories are just setting and style and a vehicle for occasional emotions and the “playing” part of the game is largely disjoint from the “story” part.
if the intro to papers please had white text fade in slowly that said “this is a game where your choices matter” a much higher % of gamers would be primed to understand it, but that’s at uhhh a pretty high cost!
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a lot of what people refer to as puzzles in videogames are literally dancing about architecture
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i think they are probably doing fascism ironically for the lols, which is probably a pretty helpful option to consider when thinking about why people actually become fascists
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also the average person doesnt think having strict border control is fascism let alone a lets player. the aesthetic lets you know that this is bad because bad guys are doing it (its like the eastern bloc! ive been primed to hate this!!) and you can just ignore thinking about anything else…ahhh…gameing…
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Fascist have historically been very “lol, haha, wink-wink” about their beliefs in the pre-genocide stages.
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I guess on further reflection, the core-gameplay-loop-focused viewpoint on Papers Please is overly narrow if it’s the only way someone approaches the game, but it’s not necessarily a wrong interpretation of what the game is about. After all, the game contains a secondary endless mode which is purely about enjoying the experience of paper-shuffling, rules-abiding efficiency. As I recall, when it came out I did multiple runs roleplaying different personalities, and one of them was of course the bureaucratic loyalist.
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Totally – I had the same thought. Being extremely detail-oriented, I enjoyed the mechanics of Papers Please and I think Pope does too. The complexity curve is very well-tuned, and the way the game tries to trick you makes you feel clever when you spot it.
And I think that’s an intentional bureaucratic theme – sticking to the rules and procedure and having power is satisfying (to some types of people more than others) and it directly gets in the way of helping people.
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Maybe one way to put it is that the core choice of the game is whether you pick the satisfaction of channeling power or arrogating power. Or put another way, whether you think “living virtuously” means conscientiousness, discipline and following Kantian universalism as codified by a nation-state, or do you believe that one must make ad hoc calls based on the feelings and partial evidence right in front of your nose.
In some ways this choice would be even more interesting to me if the state apparatus were not so obviously malicious. In a democracy it wouldn’t be clear that the latter way to go is the right one: it’s favoritism and it’s really only a short step away from corruption.
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I keep watching this
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TBH, I assumed papers please was about Eastern Europe largely because it’s dripping with Soviet aesthetics? Everything from the font to color pallet to the rest of the graphic design looks Soviet bloc.
I admittedly haven’t played it, so maybe this is less the case than the title font and screenshots I have seen would imply in actual gameplay, but the aesthetics don’t scream American border to me.
it’s intentionally a pastiche – the naked scanners that they make you use on people didn’t exist in washed up soviet republics and were obviously a response to that technology being popularized in american airports
(also genuinely great imo, one-offs that good don’t come around very often)
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I’d be curious how many Americans have interacted with the border in the last decade or so. It’s striking how much law enforcement is out - every few miles at least. And even crossing into the zone that’s within CBP’s jurisdiction is a tense highway checkpoint for anyone who isn’t white.
Hence the pastiche. What would say US border that isn’t literally Mexico?
The stories of the immigrants are also clearly LatAm → US economic/familial migration narratives.
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oh right I forgot how CBP has arbitrary jurisdiction over something like 20% of the population that lives near enough to the borders
love it
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Some undocumented people have to make the decision to go through the checkpoints to get to hospitals north of their jurisdiction because the ones at the border can’t handle certain procedures. Risk detention/separation so your kid might get careflighted to San Antonio.
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The ocean also counts as border so it has jurisdiction over everyone in the major us population centers!
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