[Suggestion] Medical experiments?

[Amalise]

I'm fairly new to PA, so apologies if this idea has come up, or is inappropriate. I admit, it's not for everyone. But I saw the thread on "more uses for medical staff" and for some reason thought of that brief show Alactraz, then my brain kinda slipped down a rabbit hole...

So the idea as currently bubbling is, have an option to employ prisoners as medical research subjects. Start out with legal research, legal recruitment (prisoners have to opt in, somehow?), and absolutely crap pay. But if the player starts this, they can open up illegal recruitment, or illegal research. Depending how you want to handle things, illegal research may be random drugs, or specific drugs (although with medical experimentation, side effects will always be risky). Drug trials may make prisoners more violent, more docile, more... anything, really. Hungry? Do we have a food budget? Tired, and unable to work in the plate factory? Many things could be options, both for chosen research areas or random, undesirable effects.

Next, based on prisoner reactions, increased violence may lead to more riots. More prisoner deaths. Increased escape potential in many ways. Each of these can lead to public knowledge (not a system I've seen yet, but PR seems to be a developing area), and any illegal aspects of drug trials trip into the developing game legal system and ramifications for the prison.

Of course, increased risk (illegal playing) comes with greatly increased income. So, it's a carrot and lots of sticks. ^_^

[Deggial]

No. No, no, no, no... no!

Not that your proposal would be a bad game mechanic. In fact, I would love to see some trade-offs in the game, options that might allow different prison concepts not only in the layout, but in gameplay as well. (Maybe even mutual exclusive options, that might encourage you to start another prison to try it out.)

But medical experiments on prisoners are way too disgusting to be implemented in the game, imo. They are not only illegal, they are against international law and highly unethical. Personally, I would have incredibly bad feelings using this game element. Games shouldn't make you feel bad in this way.
It is absolutely fine to rise ethical questions in games, don't get me wrong here. Is it okay to build a execution chamber in PA? Other games have this, too: Are Mecs okay in 'X-Com'? Shall I accept bribes in 'Papers please'? But these questions are about legitimate moral choices. Medical experiments are beyond any moral question. There is no dissent that they are wrong.

And because many players would probably agree on what I did write above, they would abstain to use this feature. Which brings me to the second reason not to implement it: Why should IV dedicate time and money into a new feature, many players will not like/use? Time and money that might be spent on other, more popular features!

No, sorry, this rabbit hole is way too dark. I will not follow you in there.
Oh, and don't eat this mushroom...

[Lke]

But medical experiments on prisoners are way to disgusting to be implemented in the game, imo. They are not only illegal, they are against international law and highly unethical. Personally, I would have incredibly bad feelings using this game element. Games shouldn't make you feel bad.

The (in)famous "No Russian"* mission was also against international law, highly unethical, and made you feel incredibly bad (one would hope). I think game should be allowed to make you feel bad. Film and books sometime depict and describe disgusting and illegal behavior why wouldn't games.

Now that being said it is against international law, an the game is about running a commercial prison, which as far as i know is really a developed country thing. This makes drug experimenting a bit of a stretch from reality since such countries have strong laws against illegal drug experiments


So i don't think it will happen. But i think you oppose it for wrong reasons.


*: Call of Duty 6 (Modern Warfare 2) level where the player play an CIA undercover agent participating in a terrorist attack on a Moscow airport. Lot's of firing on unarmed fleeing or wounded civilians. Made quite the scandal, debates over should game follow the Geneva convention (spoilers : terrorist don't care for the Geneva convention). Truly a disturbing experience.

[Deggial]

As I mentioned in the section below your quote, I have absolutely no problem with difficult moral problems/decisions in games. In fact, I think that exactly those questions make games good! Furthermore I agree, that amoral behaviour is an interesting topics for books and movies, making them worthwhile to read/watch.
Indeed, I loved the discussion in the X-Com forum regarding the ethical consequences of 'Mecs'! What could be better than a game that lures you into the engagement with philosophy?

It is probably the topic of medical experiments itself, that pushes me off.

You know, being a German ties me to a very shameful history. What happened in Nazi-Germany KZs must never be forgotten (Dr. Mengele, anyone?) and I really have strong, STRONG feelings regarding this topic. I really don't want to see this used as an enjoyable feature in a game without any earnest questioning.

Anyway, this might be merely a personal problem...

[Lke]

Well we all draw the line somewhere.
I don't get the same feeling that human experimenting should be especially an out-of-bounds subject.
I understand that you feel PA is too light hearted for such a grave subject, and may not convey the horror of human experimentation.

(And hey, just the suggestion of this feature has triggered a moral debate around it)

[Amalise]

Fair enough. I knew at the outset it would be a touchy idea. And I did suggest gating it completely behind A) an opt-in mechanic like allocating prisoners to work in the lab, and B) initial testing would be highly opt-in at every level. I also think, if implemented, the costs should far outweigh the rewards. But it can be hard to quantify costs such as increased riots, escapes, or lawsuits. Where money is an easily quantifiable reward. But yes, it's a touchy subject.

In the end, what most caught me up was the idea that one system could involve so many aspects of the prison. Everything I've seen so far is simple and straight-forward. If I build a visitor room, I get visitors. If I build a workshop, prisoners work. I liked the pervasive feel of this idea. That one decision could slightly tweak numbers for income, costs, escape rates, prison valuation... Many systems which are minimally fleshed at the moment (medics, lawyers) would gain a good measure of function and complexity. Whether this or other things, I like the idea of deeper, richer systems. And I particularly like ideas that leave the game simple until the player wants to make it more complex.

[conquestking]

No. No, no, no, no... no!

Not that your proposal would be a bad game mechanic. In fact, I would love to see some trade-offs in the game, options that might allow different prison concepts not only in the layout, but in gameplay as well. (Maybe even mutual exclusive options, that might encourage you to start another prison to try it out.)

But medical experiments on prisoners are way too disgusting to be implemented in the game, imo. They are not only illegal, they are against international law and highly unethical. Personally, I would have incredibly bad feelings using this game element. Games shouldn't make you feel bad in this way.
It is absolutely fine to rise ethical questions in games, don't get me wrong here. Is it okay to build a execution chamber in PA? Other games have this, too: Are Mecs okay in 'X-Com'? Shall I accept bribes in 'Papers please'? But these questions are about legitimate moral choices. Medical experiments are beyond any moral question. There is no dissent that they are wrong.

And because many players would probably agree on what I did write above, they would abstain to use this feature. Which brings me to the second reason not to implement it: Why should IV dedicate time and money into a new feature, many players will not like/use? Time and money that might be spent on other, more popular features!

No, sorry, this rabbit hole is way too dark. I will not follow you in there.
Oh, and don't eat this mushroom...

I would. I got this with the intention of making a death camp, labor camp, political prison camp, torture camp etc. I want to go there.

[UberFuber]

No. No, no, no, no... no!

Not that your proposal would be a bad game mechanic. In fact, I would love to see some trade-offs in the game, options that might allow different prison concepts not only in the layout, but in gameplay as well. (Maybe even mutual exclusive options, that might encourage you to start another prison to try it out.)

But medical experiments on prisoners are way too disgusting to be implemented in the game, imo. They are not only illegal, they are against international law and highly unethical. Personally, I would have incredibly bad feelings using this game element. Games shouldn't make you feel bad in this way.
It is absolutely fine to rise ethical questions in games, don't get me wrong here. Is it okay to build a execution chamber in PA? Other games have this, too: Are Mecs okay in 'X-Com'? Shall I accept bribes in 'Papers please'? But these questions are about legitimate moral choices. Medical experiments are beyond any moral question. There is no dissent that they are wrong.

And because many players would probably agree on what I did write above, they would abstain to use this feature. Which brings me to the second reason not to implement it: Why should IV dedicate time and money into a new feature, many players will not like/use? Time and money that might be spent on other, more popular features!

No, sorry, this rabbit hole is way too dark. I will not follow you in there.
Oh, and don't eat this mushroom...

I would. I got this with the intention of making a death camp, labor camp, political prison camp, torture camp etc. I want to go there.

Prison Architect appears to simulate a commercially run prison. You don't get much objective other than don't let prisoner escape for X amount of time. Some of those "camps" could come about in scenarios due to various requirement/constrains.
1. Death Camp - All you get are death-row inmates, and you have to execute them in a timely basis (whether a constrain on how many years they can stay "alive" and/or forcing continuous intake of them, so you have to execute some sooner or later).
2. Labor Camp - You don't get paid much per prisoner (or get paid nothing at all). As such, you're required to have your prisoner work for the prison to function. OR your regime is locked to have a 12 hours work time, and you have to figure out how to stop your prisoner from rioting.
3. Political Prison Camp - You have very large intake of low-risk prisoners.
4. Torture Camp - Prison Policy lock all infraction to 6 hours solitary. OR Regime locked to something inhumane. OR if policy allows for "beating", lock all infraction to beating?

[UberFuber]

On the whole, I would argue that medical experiments would offer little benefit to gameplay versus the effort it would take to implement one. The only possibility would be have modding capability extensive enough to allow for it. Regarding medical experiments, it would likely involve:
Drug experiments: Ability to "inflict" status effect (aka, drugs) to prisoner. This could be piggy-backed off another potential feature requiring doctor to administer medicine to cure disease or medication for special need prisoner. So a possible scenario is for a pharmaceutial company wanting to test a certain drug on 20 medium-sec prisoners. Your doctor will go and inflict a status effect related to said drug (effects are unknown to player). The end result could be gradual health lost, faster/slower needs increase, or increase/reduce heat threshold.
Surgical experiments: Since we can already put prisoner in medic bed, some additional modding could make it such that prisoner are harmed instead of healed while in bed.

[christopher1006]

The costs to the player for trying to run drug tests on prisoners would be easy enough. Prisoners could become addicted, agitated, vegetables, etc. There has to be some actual benefit to the player that decides he/she is okay with it. What about it unlocks randomly generated drugs? What this would do is make it to where a drug is randomly generated and your medical staff release it in to a control group of prisoners, whether they're volunteers or voluntold is up to the players. .

Once doctors understand what this drug actually does then you have a few options to play with, 1) You can sell it to a private corp and you'll get a set amount of money depending on what it does. 2) You can release it in to your prisoners by putting it in to their food, force feeding, or they go to the medical ward during free time to get a pill every 12 hours. This would mean that while there could be a horrific cost that would make many choose not to use this feature, others would look to the benefits as a worthy reward. Now as this is a game about choice, these drugs won't be available only to players risking prisoners dying. They could spend more time and money to make sure certain side effects are not going to occur which could help players trying to make a customized drug who have quite a bit of cash to go around.

If a prisoner did die though, you would obtain penalty points and a fine depending on how many have died before. If the media does get added to this game, they could help to establish what's socially acceptable (possibly making difficulty levels?) and if they have drug testing on prisoners as a no no then you could gain some heat which could make fines cost more and income be lessened as the government tries to push you in the direction the people want.

Once a drug is researched it would get added to a 'library' on all known drugs researched so that you can assign them as you wish to prisoners, cell blocks, kitchen (to be put in the food) and medical wards (for prescription use).