This is not a discussion about whether or not there should be games about prison.

There shouldn’t be. I mean, I heard The Suffering was fairly decent, but I actually played State of Emergency 2, and its prison made you watch an unskippable in-engine cutscene every time you completed each button-y part of the mission to push the four buttons in each corner of the cell block. Meanwhile, as you were being treated to yet another view of a row of doors opening and prisoners aimlessly running back and forth, the regularly spawning guards would continue their mission: run to where you were and fire a shotgun into your face. Conincidentally, the cutscene was just long enough for them to get within point blank range of you.

But games set in a prison just aren’t a good idea— even before amateurish game design gets involved— because you’re at the breeding ground of the post-modern knock-knock joke: a reference to anal rape. Research has shown that there’s only two ways Larry the Cable Guy could be less funny: if he was named Larry the Prison Sex-Referencing Guy, or if he was 90% of the game designers making games today.

That’s decided, then. What’s up in the air, and what this article is about, is whether or not prisoners should have videogames while in prison. Game Politics recently highlighted the debate.

Reading that, it’s readily apparent that the decision makers haven’t thought about the ramifications very much.

On the one hand, you have the governor who banned games from his state’s prisons because prisons are “punitive institutions”. And my response to that is, “punitive to who?” Once the guy who got some kicks smashing someone’s face into a somewhat reparable pulp outside a bar gets paroled to make room for some dude who got caught selling pot to sorority girls, do I want him to be coming off of four to eight years of bench presses and 50 lb. curls? Or nothing but Gran Turismo and World of Warcraft?

On the other, you have the pro-gamer wardens that offer games as a privilege. Seems like a good idea. But these game libraries would likely offer sports and tycoon games. Prisoners shouldn’t be playing these games. It’ll only remind them that if they were better at sports or rich, they could have gotten away with whatever it is they’re in jail for, and build further resentment for society within them.

It’s a complex issue with no easy answer.

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