Everything looked correct: he had his VISA; it was not expired; and it was issued in a valid city for ANTEGRIA. You were going to approve his papers until you took a closer look at him and his visa photo. You use the inspection hardware, and it flags his face and the photo as a discrepancy, prompting you to interrogate him. He says that the photo is of him. He could be lying, but the game system doesn’t provide any further information for how to proceed — no way to determine the truth. You choose to believe him, not wanting an old photo to deny him. But when you approve his papers, you get hit with a citation. You wanted to know the truth, but the game didn’t care. It only needed you to deny him.
After a day of work, the game shows you the state of your family. You move your eyes to the right — family freezing. The previous day, you didn’t have enough for food and heat, so you chose food. You look to the left — you only processed 5 people, just like yesterday. You look to the middle — you have to choose between food and heat again. The next day at work, you notice that you are moving faster — using the inspection hardware a lot more efficiently, wasting no time denying once you stop the discrepancy, quickly pressing next and checking the clock as you go. You get another picture discrepancy from a guy, but you immediately deny him. No inspection, no hearing his side. Your family will get heat and food. You stopped wondering if he would tell the truth. There wasn’t time.
Ian Bogost introduced the idea of procedural rhetoric — games make arguments through their rule systems, not just their stories. Thomas Nagel argues that individuals operating within systems are insulated from personal moral responsibility by the system itself. Papers, Please is where both ideas meet. It argues that personal responsibility cannot survive a system that only needs your compliance — and proves it by making conscience expensive and indifference profitable.
When you first start playing, you aren’t immediately told anything about your salary or how much money you make for each person you process correctly, nor that you are timed. You do, however, suffer the consequences of taking your time. If you spend your day carefully double-checking a person’s papers for discrepancies before approving or denying them, you lose time. Not knowing this on the first day, you see it directly when you receive your earnings and realize you need to cover things such as rent, food, and heat for your family — you don’t make enough money; they get sick, starve, or lose a roof over their heads. Instantly, the first crack in your personal responsibility is made, and the next day, you’re faster. Why? You’re spending less time checking and focusing on each individual. You start caring less about each person’s situation — only their papers. The system didn’t ask you to stop caring. It just made caring too expensive.
The guy with the picture discrepancy comes after this point of reduced empathy. Despite having the ability to flag the discrepancy and hear his justification, you already know the game doesn’t care about the reason — you are going to deny him anyway. You don’t bother consulting your conscience. There’s no reward from the system for doing so, only time lost and money unearned. You didn’t need the system to punish you into compliance. You just needed a reason to value your time over someone else’s life.
If you ever fall short of the mandatory expenses, you are detained, your family sent back to their village, and you are told you will be easily replaced. While Papers, Please presents a fictional Soviet-bloc country, it emulates many real-world organizations and the feelings of replaceability it instills in its employees. It makes conscience expensive and indifference profitable. Just like in the game, many of the people in these public service positions of power aren’t villains; they have a conscience. They are working people with families to care for. The game makes you live out their lives and the decisions they make every day, spanning hours and what occurs over months or years. You begin to feel that personal responsibility is irrational. But the game knows something darker — that feeling itself is what the system was designed to produce. The system sits in the corner smiling, as it will get what it wants regardless of whether you choose conscience or indifference. If the cog doesn’t fit anymore, it will find one that does. Papers, Please doesn’t ask if you’re a good person. It already knows the answer doesn’t matter.
