Where Papers, Please often had me questioning my own values in a world of moral ambiguity, your options in The Westport Independent are pretty much “Side with Hitler” or “Don’t side with Hitler.” Herein lies The Westport Independent’s greatest failure. Some other game examples: Knights of the Old Republic, Fallout 3, Fable, InFamous. The Obvious Good Thing and The Obvious Bad Thing) that it ends up feeling like no choice at all. You’re ostensibly presented with a choice, but the options are so extreme (i.e. The problem I have with The Westport Independent is it falls into a trap I typically call “Save a Baby/Eat a Baby.” It’s a pretty common issue, particularly in video games. But it’s the constant push-pull between supporting the government and supporting the rebel factions, of telling The Truth or “The Truth” that’s at the heart of The Westport Independent. Over the course of twelve “weeks” you’ll factor in a few more aspects too, like what story gets front-page coverage, what districts of the city you want to target for increased circulation, et cetera. “Man Defends Teenager,” you probably want to play up the brutality. In “Man Attacks Police Officer,” you’d probably want to leave out the part where the police officer tackled a teenager for mere graffiti. Once you’ve settled on a headline, you can then read through the accompanying block of text and choose to exclude certain paragraphs to bolster your point. Click once and “Man Attacks Police Officer” is replaced with “Man Defends Teenager, Police Officer Presses Charges.” Click again and it goes back. Your job is to assign out articles to your writing staff, choosing not only what to cover but how something is covered. Described as a “censorship simulator,” you play the editor of an independent newspaper in an increasingly fascist country. It’s a pervasive problem.Īll this to say, at first blush a game like The Westport Independent seems like a case of right place, right time. Hell, if you watched Making a Murderer over the holidays, you saw how media coverage can (fairly or unfairly) influence the criminal justice system. And while the stakes aren’t always as dire as the Spanish-American War, it’s nevertheless familiar. (Selfishly, I of course hope you trust me, at least when it comes to talking about something as relatively unimportant as video games.) But on the whole, were I to ask you if you trusted “The Media,” chances are you would say no. That’s not to say you don’t trust any writers. But that anyone believes it-well, that speaks to the power wielded by the media, that people could believe a newspaper led the United States to war.Īmericans have by-and-large lost faith in the fourth estate, though. It’s a piece of history that’s half-truth, half-apocryphal a story to make Hearst or Pulitzer proud. Hungry for ever-more-outrageous stories, the New York World and the New York Journal exaggerated and outright-fabricated stories of trouble and rebellion in Cuba until the US military was forced to intervene.Īt least, that’s how the story goes. I urge you to keep trying to "beat" the game (essentially day 11) and see the ending.The story goes that in the 1890s, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer led the United States of America to war-not as generals, nor presidents nor members of congress, but as newspaper owners.
If you don't get the required loyalty/readership goal by day 3, try again.
So it's short, and minimal, but has effective impact on your motivation to finish the game (you'll see what I mean) Play it here. There's a certain panic and anxiety you feel as it ticks down on those final days while you fret over the choice and prominence of the articles. You need to reach certain goals by the end of some days in order to prevent bad things from happening to you. There's also fluff pieces you want to use to increase readership. Some portray the gov't in positive light, some portray it negativley. You get a list of stories to choose from. In it, you are a newspaper editor for a corrupt government body. "The Republia Times" is essentially a commentary on unstable governments in unstable countries. You know, one of those 48hr game challenges. I found out he's got another "socially conscience" Flash game called "The Republia Times" he did for a Ludum Dare. I was reading about "Papers, Please" by Lucas Pope.