alt Hacker NewsYeah. The original was social commentary on the role of immigration enforcement as a tool of state oppression, with the brutality that sometimes occurs centered prominently and jarringly against video-game pixel art.
This is tech bros recycling the same exact structure but making it about getting billionaires to fund their latest "Uber but for AI-powered false advertising."
It's like if Flock wrote a version of 1984 where the heroic protagonist was trying to rise up against a regime of local activist groups who opposed installing Flock's mass surveillance products.
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It was also about how poverty enables cruelty, juxtaposing your struggle to pay for rent and food with the demands of the state. The incentives are very different from people like Paul Graham and Gary Tan who can flip through a hundred folios without being forced to pick anything. The procedural tragedy of the game is lost if you're Joe Capital with a $3M fund at your disposal.
It also spits in the face of the gameplay side. The whole point of Papers Please wasn't pixel art work simulator, it was the pressure of the timer and being forced with making complex choices of doing helping others, helping yourself, and doing a proper job. Those gameplay decisions further strength the social commentary and how that kind of system is bad for everyone.