Most of the really old prison doors had the old hinge, swing in, swing out, kind of deal. He then chooses the main door to attach to the outside.īrown: So I can’t just put this door anywhere? Oh! They have sliding doors like New Folsom. He drags out the foundation for the execution building. It’s a tutorial, so they’re making you put it somewhere specific so you figure out how things work. So, we’re just building it out right now? I can’t just put the building anywhere? The intro plays and is showing off different locations of the prison.īrown: Seven cells deep with one on the end is the “bird bath” one. I load up Prison Architect on a laptop and start the first campaign, which involves executing a prisoner on death row. GamesBeat: So, what I want to do is have you play through the first campaign of this game. It was a small crew, and I ran it until I was paroled. Eventually I wound up in Soledad running my own thing. And then eventually I wound up in Old Folsom.įrom there, I got deeply involved in some of the prison gangs. They suspected, so that was enough to get me a first class ticket to New Folsom. So I stabbed this guy, but they couldn’t prove it was me. In terms of the incarceration, after I was sentenced, I was immediately taken to San Quentin, where I … well … I promptly assaulted another inmate. I had time to think about what I was doing. Originally, they were trying to get me life without the possibility of parole, because they felt it was premeditated. The state of California sentenced me to 13 years on a plea bargain.
James Brown: Well, I was incarcerated for killing a rival drug dealer in what was considered mutual combat. GamesBeat: I am keeping you anonymous for obvious reasons, but just so people know this isn’t Joe “never been incarcerated” Blow giving random opinions - could you tell the readers a little bit about your credentials for discussing this topic? I’m grateful that he is willing to dive back into his dark past for us, all for the sake of discussing a video game. We agree to meet in a secret location, where I have brought a laptop running Prison Architect. 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.
Whether that reaction is Prison Architect’s intent, I’m not sure. Then I felt an uncomfortable wave of self-disgust. 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. 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.
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. Some of those kids would, unfortunately, grow up to follow their relatives into cells (or worse). I grew up in a pre-tech boom, working-class Bay Area neighborhood, where a kid having relatives that were incarcerated was the norm. Join gaming leaders, alongside GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming, for their 2nd Annual GamesBeat & Facebook Gaming Summit | GamesBeat: Into the Metaverse 2 this upcoming January 25-27, 2022.