An ex-California state prisoner reviews Prison Architect

I grew up in a pre-tech boom, working-class Bay Area neighborhood, where a kid having relatives that were incarcerated was the norm. Some of those kids would, unfortunately, grow up to follow their relatives into cells (or worse). I wouldn’t classify the town as bad, it’s just the mechanisms of the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex were definitely in full swing around me. As for how I dodged it and became a game industry writer? I benefited from some skill, a lot of luck, and obvious systematic advantages that ensured my troubled youth phase didn’t land me in deep shit.

So when I saw Prison Architect, a game where the player constructs and runs a prison, my first reaction was to laugh at its ridiculously dark premise. Then I felt an uncomfortable wave of self-disgust. Whether that reaction is Prison Architect’s intent, I’m not sure. What I do want to see, however, is how someone who had actually spent a considerable chunk of time in prison would react to the game.