Episode 08: User Experience in Papers, Please

Unlocking Games

After our discussion of Papers, Please’s lessons in instructional design, this week we found the game’s interesting and sometimes counterintuitive applications of user experience and design principles. There’s friction in almost everything you do in this game, but why isn’t that annoying? And just how does Papers, Please handle abstracting analog objects into digital representations? Why did we keep playing despite such a high cognitive load? This is our second episode of a three-part series. We’ll conclude our Arstotzkan adventures next week, when we examine Papers, Please’s moral choices and emotional impact. Papers, Please is available on PC, Mac, Linux, and iPad. At the time we recorded this episode, the iPad version was broken and didn’t factor into our discussion.

Show Notes & Links:

• How to Game Friction for Better UX
• Mass Effect’s terrible inventory management system
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal
• Affordances
• Zotero
• Video review of Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor

Other games mentioned in this episode:

• Mass Effect
• No Man’s Sky
• Betrayal at Krondor
• Steel Battalion
• Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor