Moral Choices in Videogames/Reality

What's the most realistic character you could imagine in a videogame? Mario may be an "every man" because he's a plumber, but he can jump super high and explores a magical world stomping on turtles. In Papers, Please the player character may not have a name, but a bureaucratic desk-worker is the most relatable character I could ever think of. Working a daily shift analyzing documents and filing papers for a government agency with constantly changing rules is probably the most realistic core gameplay I could ever think of. Although Papers, Please may not be visually (or even narratively) immersive, its gameplay definitely is.

As expressed elaborately in the Johnson article, Papers, Please complicates each of the player's decisions in the game by stacking different physical and moral rewards/punishments for each person the player admits or denies. For example, the player must choose to grant entry to a refugee with an expired document and be docked pay that will support their struggling family or deny the refugee, effectively sentencing them to death. In most videogames with moral choices, the player is offered a binary decision. In Bioshock the player must choose to selfishly harvest the Little Sisters or to selflessly rescue them. By choosing the former the player gets more Adam to spend on combat upgrades. Choosing the latter gifts the player with useful abilities, but less Adam. Either way, the player receives a reward. The "punishment" for harvesting the Little Sisters is receiving a different ending cutscene.

The difference in moral choices in Papers, Please is the lack of a moral binary despite the binary decision making. At its core, Papers, Please asks the player to do one of two things: admit or deny. However, in many cases there is no "right" choice. If the player acts selfishly, they are doing so to support the character and their family. If they act selflessly, they do so at their own expense and at the expense of the state. Sometimes the moral choice is not obvious. When confronted by the secret society, the player does not know if helping or hindering them would benefit the people (or the government) of Arstotzka, or if it will lead to violence and death. Similar to real life, there is no true "good" or "bad" choices, as there is nuance to every decision. The realistic bureaucratic position of the player emphasizes the "realistic" morality of the world of Papers, Please.