This article advances the research areas of ‘media, migration and global communication’ and ‘games studies’, and offers insights for scholars, educators and game developers who are interested in addressing the internationally significant issue of migration through their professional work.įor undocumented people who become eligible for a U.S. Our deeper, comparative analysis of three migration-related video games-Escape from Woomera (EFW Team, 2003), Papers, Please (Lukas Pope, 2013) and Everyday Racism (All Together Now, 2014)-enables us to evaluate the contextual knowledge required and the issues raised for each migration-related video game to achieve its goals. We develop the concept of ‘transcultural understanding’ to explore how such migration-related video games can structure the development of players’ understanding of, and capacity to respond to, the contexts of cultural diversity. This article provides a comprehensive, worldwide overview of the major video games that have addressed the phenomenon of migration, and the political, social and cultural issues that migration raises. Based on this analysis, I propose to move beyond this distinction between entertaining and serious to focus on what is particular about videogames in general, that can make them into more efficient tools to disseminate ideas and provide players with more opportunities for experiential learning. Finally, I will show how two commercial games produced mostly for entertainment purposes (such as Tropico and Papers, Please) can be more effective at mounting a procedural argument and, plausibly, at influencing players’ opinions on a particular issue than a “serious game” (such as ICED!). ![]() This article revises current research on procedural representation to offer a detailed analysis of a representative selection of digital games dealing with this particular issue (Border Patrol, Tropico (I-IV), ICED!, Rescate: Alicia Croft, and Papers, Please). In other words, my goal in this article is to explore to what extent videogames can be effectively persuasive in the way they manage to create a computational representation of the experience of migrating, and its associated consequences, independently of the legal or illegal status of such displacements. The main purpose of this article is to analyze how a representative selection of computer games, set mostly in a Latin American context or at the US-Mexico border, are capable of mounting arguments about immigration policy by making good or poor uses of what Ian Bogost has conceptualized as “procedural rhetoric” (Bogost 2007). As I hope to illustrate, migration is an inherently gendered and racialized experience. Drawing on literature from the disciplines of game studies and feminist geography – the latter specifically in relation to migration politics – I conduct a feminist analysis of Papers, Please's constructed narrative of global migration. Specifically, I examine the game's take on notions such as immigration, nationalism, and the gendered and racialized migrant subject. In this paper, I analyze the ways in which Papers, Please functions as a critique of migratory policy and enforcement. As relations between Arstotzka and its neighboring countries become more tense over the course of the game – even resulting in terrorist attacks at the border checkpoint – players are continuously confronted with additional challenges and regulations they are expected to perform, with limited time and resources – a tongue-in-cheek reference to the bureaucratic issues that continue to plague immigration policy and practice. ![]() In addition to the dozens of immigrants vying for admission, there are also smugglers, spies, and terrorists attempting to cross the border. With only each traveler's documents and the options to inspect their papers, search their body for concealed contraband or weapons, or fingerprint them at your disposal, the player decides who will gain entry into the country and who will be denied. ![]() Gameplay is centered on checking and verifying immigration documents of the NPCs who wish to enter Arstotzka. Released in October 2013, Papers, Please is an independently-produced game in which players are an immigration officer working at the border checkpoint in the fictional, Soviet-esque country Arstotzka in the year 1989.
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