Somebody should make a game about: Dyslexia
I’m pretty good at ‘hard’ games. I’m not world-class, not by any means. I won’t be signed to an esports team any time soon. But I can grapplehook through Sekiro, summit the peaks of Celeste and dodge bullets in Cuphead like the best of them. The internet told me to ‘git gud’ and I got fairly decent! There is one game, however, that gives me trouble. Papers, Please.
Papers, Please isn’t known for its difficulty. The game casts you as an immigration officer for a small, fictitious, Eastern Bloc state. People trundle up to your checkpoint and you have to examine their documents before you decide whether or not to let them through. Apparently, Papers, Please is full of devious moral quandaries. Your code of ethics will be tested as you balance your duty to your nation with the burdens of paying rent and ‘doing the right thing’. It sounds great. I’m sure it great. But I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t get past the first level.
You see, playing Papers, Please involves carefully scanning documents and teasing out tiny inconsistencies. Does this photograph match the person in front of you? Is the date right? Has their passport been stamped by the right agencies? At this point, I feel the malaise of confusion descend. I seem to have let a spy into the country. The clock is ticking. I get flustered. I have now let in a whole agency of spies, bootleggers and other assorted enemies of the people. The klaxon sounds. My shift has ended. I have been fired and my family have starved. Drat. Dyslexic people clearly shouldn’t become immigration officers.
An estimated one in ten people suffer from some form of dyslexia. Dyslexia is one of a number of specific learning difficulties. ‘Specific’ because they affect only one area of learning. You might appear eloquent, smart and able in all other respects, but your homework looks like the dog has eaten it. Or maybe written it. This inconsistency can be exasperating for others, especially teachers, and the disparity between your apparent ability and your actual performance is often attributed to laziness.
Papers, Please – Trailer Watch on YouTube
As the name implies, dyslexia is defined by difficulties with reading and writing. Reading can be a chore. You often miss or muddle words. Sometimes whole sentences vanish. Spelling is another sore spot. You might that ‘missing’ has two S’s, but you’ve only written one. Even with a spellchecker, homophones can be hazardous. Capitals creep in where they’re not Wanted. And everything takes aeons.
