> ...but it’s ludicrous to pretend that it makes for a worthwhile study of the 21st-century American prison...

But not quite as ludicrous as writing up a profile based on the assumption that it was supposed to be. It's pretentious post modern critique at its worst. Political and cultural criticism is fine, but demanding that things tangentially related to the game's focus be shoehorned in is absolutely ridiculous. I don't see how this is different than criticizing Super Mario Bros. for failing to properly address the realities of life as an working class Italian American.

I don't think Super Mario Bros' subject matter is comparable to Prison Architect's, and so I wouldn't expect the same kind of articles written about it.

If you play the game and have listened to what the developers have said, you'd see that these aspects were not a good fit and the developers specifically wanted to distance the player from these realities. The world outside you is a black box from which prisoners flow in and out. How that happens is completely out of your control and knowledge.

Bogost's article would not have been particularly interesting or revelatory without the context of a popular, recently released game. Context which he shimmed in to bring attention he wouldn't normally have gotten.

Also, I agree, I too get the vibe that Bogost wanted to talk primarily about the state of American prisons, but this didn't bother me because I wasn't expecting a game review with a final score and a "buy/do not buy" recommendation, and I found some of his points had merit.

It's a point in the sense of being the dogmas of a pundit who disguises his propaganda using the form of a game criticism.

> I don't think Super Mario Bros' subject matter is comparable to Prison Architect's, and so I wouldn't expect the same kind of articles written about it.

Personally I would be mildly surprised to NOT find a kotaku article that uses a mario game as a flimsy excuse to make some completely irrelevant point or sensational hook that the writer (or editor) wanted to make anyway.

> I think he has a point about the absence of race and racism as gameplay elements being very conspicuous in a game about prison.

According to you. The idea that a game about prison HAS to address race is the dogma. That's the preaching. That not only has nothing to do with making games that are fun and entertaining, but it also has nothing to do with a true artistic culture (rather than a circle-jerking pseudo-intellectual culture of criticism)

PS http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon1022hm.html

I'm confused. Are you saying you think that race isn't a crucial part of prison life? Or are you saying it is, but that it's dogmatic propaganda for someone to point out racism is absent in a computer game about prison?

> According to you. The idea that a game about prison HAS to address race is the dogma.

Well, I didn't write the article; I merely said I think the author has a point. No, no game HAS to do anything. But it's conspicuous when it does/doesn't do certain things. This can be discussed because it's an interesting aspect. That's all.

In the same interview he also admits that, in the U.K., incarceration is not a major issue with huge class and racial implications as it is in the U.S.. Thus, as Brits, they may see the world in a different way.

Note the presupposition: Incaceration in the US has class and race implications. That is the dogma. That is the "message." The next several paragraphs discusses the state of prisons in the US, linking to biased sources with sensational language like "out of control."

Now, you could claim that this tangent is needed to establish the relevance of the subject, but the manner it is presented strongly points to the fact that this is simply a propaganda payload. There's this:

The America justice system disproportionately and purposely targets minorities, which make up about 60% of the population behind the bars, according to the Center for American Progress.

Again this is propaganda. Question-begging. This isn't part of some kind of intellectually open enquiry about prisons, video games about prisons, or even prison simulations. This is one-sided preaching about a subject completely unrelated to videogames.

> Well, I didn't write the article; I merely said I think the author has a point

You did phrase a portion of comment in a way that took responsibility for the idea. Obviously incarceration in the US is racist, right? We're talking about how a videogame designer chose not to focus on this obvious truth about how incarceration is racist especially in the US.

PS to whoever is downvoting me: I have made my post less sarcastic. I will endeavor to be more respectful however it is worth anyone's time to study propaganda and how it works, so as not to be so easily fooled. It's important to be able to recognize it and not excuse it with "oh he's just pointing out <etc.>"

I'm not sure I agree. Not all question-begging is propaganda, nor is all propaganda question-begging. In fact, in this case it's not question begging at all. Question begging refers to the act of assuming the conclusion of what you're trying to prove, which is not the case here. The author is not trying to prove that "incarceration in the US has class and race implications"; this is a given, a premise of his argument. He is instead trying to say something about Prison Architect and how it depicts prison. It's also written as an opinion piece, not a peer-reviewed publication, and as such doesn't source many of its assertions. I've no problem with that, because I don't read this article seeking proof of anything.

By the way, I do believe incarceration has big race and class implications in almost the whole world, not just the US, so I have no problems with that part of the article.

Games are not generally produced as solely artistic works. The economic aspect is significant. Attempting to discuss and critique games as solely artistic artifacts means missing one of largest influences on any such artifact. It's like discussing architecture without admitting that materials and physics and humans impose limits.

Criticism and analysis of games as cultural artifacts is both valuable and needed. Games are like mainstream movies in this regard, where we accept that even mainstream Hollywood movies have a message that can be dissected and analyzed.

For instance, the question is not just what message a movie conveys. The question also includes why. Similarly, there are entire game mechanisms that exist solely for economic reasons (IAPs, gating, etc.) that cannot be understood through artistic lenses.

That's why reviewers can attempt to do both. Just like they do with movies :)

The problem is that videogames are relatively new and people are not yet convinced they can be reviewed as art. It's safer to stick to them being just entertainment whose content is pointless to analyze.

Yet there are a lot of board and roleplaying games pushing their boundaries regarding theme and mechanics:

You have boardgames exploring difficult themes (Train[0]) and others being defined as they are played (Fluxx[1])

On RPGs, You can have rpgs about simple themes as being a housecat (Cat RPG[2]) or serious one like rape and domestic violence[3]. In terms of mechanics, there is Dread[4], a horror game that uses a Jenga tower instead of dice.

There is no push to be considered art, but there are folks doing some really cool stuff with the medium.

What is happenning with videogames is that there are people who thing "videogames should grow up" and "stop playing around". That, in my opinion, is stupid. You don't tell a 15 years kid to "grow up". It will come out naturally. KLEt games mature on their own.

[0] http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/06/24/can-you-make-a-boa...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxx

[2] http://johnwickpresents.com/product/cat-a-little-game-about-...

[3] sorry, the internet failed me :(

[4]https://dreadthegame.wordpress.com/about-dread-the-game/

The people who seem to be pushing for games to grow up or talking about Citizen Kane moments (and seemingly forgetting about silent films) seem more interested in validation than anything else. There have been interesting games for decades; if they're truly interested in these, all they have to do is play them.

I admit is way less common, but even board games have been created and analyzed as art/philosophy/opinion. Some examples:

- Monopoly (possibly the best known example of a game whose original intent went beyond entertainment).

- Train (a game about Auschwitz: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63933/train)

As for videogames, the language of the creators themselves sometimes seems to acknowledge the relation to narrative and cinema. Some game designers style themselves "directors", and are sometimes more interested in cutscenes and "telling a story" than in actual interactive gameplay. Note I'm not telling whether I think this is a good or a bad thing :)

Of course, there are some games that tie the narrative and the gameplay together in such a way that it's hard to separate the two, such as The Colonel's Bequest (1989), The Last Express (1997), and a favorite of Roger Ebert's, Cosmology of Kyoto (1994). There are also "ungames" that eschewed gameplay in order to create more of an art experience, such as Puppet Motel (1995) and The Manhole (1988). But mainstream gaming has largely forgotten these games (as well as many others).

Modern tools can help make (admittedly small) games even by people who aren't programmers and who don't necessarily want to make money. It's been a while, but I remember the early days of the Adventure Game Studio; there were people trying to make something to sell, but also plenty of people writing pretty decent games solely because they wanted to. Also see the awesome Interactive Fiction community.

The experience of the creation might be the same, but how the creation came to be and how it is best understood are very different.

For example, when people review classic movies, they take into consideration what studios were willing to fund; executive meddling; whether the movie bombed at the box office; the political situation at the time; the moral codes of the time; budget limitations that forced directors to be extremely creative; problems between the lead actors; etc.

That said, it's probably easier to do that with classic movies about which there is a sizable body of knowledge. You don't have the same production information about a video game released last month.

It also doesn't help that a lot of critics can't make a criticism along the lines of "I don't like this because X" without injecting an overt or covert "People who like this are X". The former is criticism, the latter is always a personal attack.

Neither did Mozart.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/des...