When I first started playing “Papers, Please”, I felt guilty rejecting people. When I had to deny their entry, I was met with pleas or anger, and it was painful watching them be forced to walk away. But when I let my emotions rule, I quickly received a pink slip with a citation on it and money from my own family was taken. After a few of these citations, my hesitation began to disappear. I carefully inspected the rulebook, learnt from past discrepancies that I missed, interrogated people, and became more concerned about missing an error than sending someone away. This is the essence of what “Papers, Please” demonstrates: personal responsibility is not erased in a procedural system, but the system can train people to understand their choices as obedience or duty rather than moral decisions. Through Bogost’s idea of procedural rhetoric, the game exemplifies Nagel’s argument about public roles, showing how an official remains personally responsible while feeling morally insulated by rules and procedure.
Bogost’s idea of procedural rhetoric helps explain why this game is so effective. He claims that unlike other media that uses story and speech, games persuade using systems. He states that procedures “structure behavior” and “dictate how actions can and cannot be carried out,” especially in official systems. “Papers, Please” exemplifies this by giving the player a clear bureaucratic process which they must follow, and are penalized when they don’t. When playing, I found myself falling into the rhythm of checking the daily updates, checking passports and supporting documents, interrogating, then stamping, all while constantly referencing the rulebook. If I made the wrong choice, I would promptly receive a citation.
Nagel highlights the moral issue here, and he argues that people in official roles can become morally separated from the actions. This is very clear in “Papers, Please”: when I started playing as myself, my concern was “should I help this person?” But as I took on the role of the inspector, my thoughts shifted to “is this person’s documents valid?” This is why the game’s systems strengthen its argument. Instead of just telling a story about a harsh border guard, it makes us participate in the conditions which make the harshness feel okay. Procedure is not fully negative, as it can protect against falsely denying someone or can lead to catching real threats, but it also shifts what we see as important. The person’s story starts to matter less than the date or their passport number.
I particularly felt this tension when I encountered the character Dari Ludum. In this level, one of the women handed me a note saying she is afraid that Ludum would force her and her sister to work at the Pink Vice brothel, and asked me to help her. When Ludum arrived, I found that his papers were perfectly valid and there was nothing in the rulebook that I could use to justify denying him. This revealed the flaw in the procedure of the game – it only takes into account the validity of the entrant’s documents, not the human emotions or complications surrounding them. In other words, the choice that felt morally right was wrong according to procedure. Like Nagel says, “one is only following orders or doing one’s job” becomes a dangerous excuse, as in this case, following the rules exactly is putting the woman at risk. “Papers, Please” makes this excuse feel very tempting, but it is far from innocent.
The other complication in the game is that accumulated citations take money from the player’s own family. Each time I wanted to choose compassion, it meant less heat, food, or medicine for my wife and son. In this way, it could be argued that the game slightly weakens its own argument. Because the inspector’s family is directly threatened by each mistake, the player can sometimes feel more just trapped than actually morally responsible. However, this enhances the larger point that “Papers, Please” doesn’t ask if personal responsibility is easy under unjust systems, but rather it asks if difficulty cancels responsibility. The answer to this is no – the player still chooses, even if the game makes it clear why harmful choices can feel rational or necessary.
The game’s point is that procedure can become a substitute for judgement. Its systems strengthen its argument because it makes the player feel the subtle shift from moral discomfort to acceptance. Although I had the choice of when to deny people, the game trained me to think of those choices through the lens of accuracy and caution rather than compassion. This is the game’s take on personal responsibility: unjust systems can morally insulate us but this does not negate our actions. By the end of the game, the issue was not that I lost my choices, but that I had learned to call the more cruel choices the correct ones.
