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Prison Architect: An Unfair Review of an Unfinished Video Game

Prison Architect - PriestOn the fifth night of my prison’s existence, during the third riot in 24 hours, one exceptionally frustrated prisoner used a knife he smuggled in to stab an already-unconscious guard. He stabbed him to death. The prisoner then got hold of that guard’s keys and, with two fellow prisoners – one maximum security prisoner and another on normal security (both of whom were already known to cause damage and harm to my guards) – bypassed the main riot and walked straight to the Psychologist’s office. The Psychologist who, all along, has been profiling the increasingly unsanitary mob – cataloging their needs, displaying to me how hungry they are, how unhappy – how apt to violence they have quickly become. They walked into his office and stabbed him like it was nothing out of the ordinary, but also like it was something they’d been planning for a long time.

So far mine is a small enough prison to where no riots have yet reached Attica status, but I’m man enough to admit my prison is totally broken. Daily income can’t keep up with the constant repairs needed by rioting prisoners. Guards can’t stay alive long enough to keep a paycheck and I couldn’t afford to pay them if they did. My prison, filename good.prison, once had rigid regime. It followed a daily routine! It had working showers! That was yesterday. Today, good.prison has degenerated into fenced pandemonium. I think I wasn’t feeding them enough. But I guess I still don’t really know exactly what went wrong. After all, nobody was willing to go into the showers after the first “incident.” Shower time came. Nobody went. I’ll never know why. I don’t even want to know. Watching the quiet, peaceful family visit of a guy named Pennock – who got sent to solitary for shanking a guard – just felt perverse. You rapidly grow desensitized to prison violence to the point where you’d rather watch one of your contractors install electrical cable than take the time to witness a series of shower-stabbings out of Oz. Or maybe you wouldn’t. This game gives you that choice.

Prison Architect Review
The winner of a knife fight lies unconscious in the floor, dying.

The only direct control you have over your guards is to click on a prisoner and have him searched, so I probably should have searched all my prisoners for contraband upon arrival. However, just like authentic American prisons, the intake rate is so high in Prison Architect that you can only give each individual so much attention while tending to the whole horrendously overcrowded system at one time. But after enough armed convicts break the line, surrounding inmates gain confidence and join the fight. Before you know it, 18 inmates are tearing down every gate you thought was secure, and then going straight for the psychologist whose job is to warp their minds and break their psyche down into the well behaved license plate stampers God wants them to be.

While Prison Architect is a well-polished Alpha, there are still a few game-breaking bugs; namely, what’s done with all the dead people lying around. After the mayhem of the game-finishing Third Riot, I noticed four hearses lined up outside my prison. My morgue was packed full of dead bodies, all of them guards, and so were the infirmary beds. Because the AI does not dispose of the dead yet, gamers complain on forums about their sprawling, growing morgues. Dead guards, prisoners and staff now litter the main drag of my prison as a reminder of the terrible situation all around them, permanent monuments to chaos.

Prison Architect Review - Morgue

But don’t take my word for it. Witness these horrors for yourself. The earlier you register this game, the cheaper it will be. That said, $30 is still pretty high for a broken game only in Alpha. On that note, Prison Architect has surpassed the $4 million mark. That’s how much Mojang made with Minecraft prior to MineCon in 2011, which celebrated the official release of the game.

The Prison Architect development team, Introversion Software, has crowd-sourced prisoner diversity by allowing their premium player base to write in the names and biographies of at least one prisoner per player. They suggested players use their own names but I created a fictitious prisoner named Frank “The Free” Mason, named after The Internet Chronicle‘s shittiest dead writer. Approving the massive swarm of incoming biographies sounds like a difficult task but the developers say just about anything goes and, considering how much money they’re making from the Alpha release alone, it’s safe to assume they will hire an editorial team to clean everything up closer to Beta.

Try not to let anyone die until the next Alpha update (current version is a-11).

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News Technology

HACKERS FREE PRISON INMATES USING BACKDOOR EXPLOIT

Thousands of prisoners escape with their clothes on
Hackers were even able to program clothes onto escaping prisoners.

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. — More than one thousand inmates escaped from their prison cells across the United States Wednesday following the release of a volatile computer bug used mainly in the hijacking of nuclear weapons control systems.

Last week at Defcon, the hacker conference, a technological flaw in prison security software was discreetly showcased before a handful of onlookers, provided spectators promised not to say anything about it.

Capital Punishment

The massive breakout occurred just before 3 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Latest reports say 1,233 of the more than 5,000 prisoners awoke to their cell doors opening. Usually that means breakfast, but guards were nowhere to be seen. All but two fled and only seven were captured alive. Many were fatally wounded.

CITIZENS: LOCK YOUR DOORS. BE ADVISED: The cell blocks affected by Wednesday’s hack housed only inmates serving sentences in excess of 25 years. In other words, there are violent criminals roaming the streets of Southern California, as usual.

Convicted for armed robbery, loves Antisec
Convicted for armed robbery, loves Antisec.

These include more than 1,000 convicted murderers, rapists, gang members, blacks, and worst of all, Mexicans likely inhabiting the barren lawless California desert of San Quentin. If anyone in an orange numbered jumpsuit ask you for a ride, just say no, unless you think he looks legit.

San Quentin State Prison Warden Mike Martel said, “Sure, we might lose a few prisoners, but those .commies will fill their places. I fucking hate kids, and their damn computers. So when are we doing this interview?”

One prisoner who escaped by way of the hacked beta version of the hack-in-progress said he is grateful for the efforts put forth by anonymous computer hackers, “whatever the fuck that means.”

Many dozens of prisoners scrambled over top of each other just to get through the open doors. Video surveillance tapes played back scenes of utter chaos as a herd of inmates bottlenecked, taking gunfire at the open bay doors near the front of San Quentin State Prison.

Scooter McLintock, 39, is serving two life sentences for the 1997 rape and murder of his two elderly South Beach neighbors. McLintock – along with many others – opted to take their chances and bum rushed the open front doors to the prison, where outside, freedom awaited survivors.

“We was thinkin’: what if we jus all rush out dat door at once, ya know? The guards can shoot at us, but they can’t kill us all. They ain’t kill me. But I had this big colored man on top a me get shot an’ he was screamin’ like a lil’ bitch. Like a scared little bitch wit blood squirtin’ out his mouf an’ shit.”

Famous Unknown People

Last year, a cyber worm known as Stuxnet disabled Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, slowing or possibly crippling their once-thriving nuclear weapons program. The Stuxnet worm is still considered the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever made. It disabled the centrifuges by attacking a “programmable logic controller,” which is the same type of computer used, ironically, in America’s prisons.

Martel explained why they use such sophisticated, yet flawed technology in San Quentin’s holding facilities. “In America, prisoners are considered a commodity where prisons are privately operated. That’s why we treat them with the same level of protection as Iran treats its controversial nuclear program. Because we care. About money.”

David Blanche of Lebal Drocer Correctional Authority said the most recent outbreak is the largest in world history, and authorities are actively searching for someone to blame. Critics of hacker culture point at Defcon for condoning cybercrime, but “mainly because they are older, they still blame MTV.”

A group of unidentified and highly-skilled hackers – not to be mistaken with the club of misfits going by “Anonymous” – bought a programmable logic controller for testing purposes. Such computers are commercially available for less than $2,500.

Using this hyperrealistic computer simulation, hackers were able to determine the possible effects of remotely opening a prison door.
Using this hyperrealistic computer simulation, hackers were able to determine the possible effects of remotely opening a prison door.

Within days of testing, hackers achieved success by way of a simulated attack on their own machines using their newly developed cyberbug.

Chronicle.SU editor and Anonymous insider Kilgore Trout abused his anonymous credentials and dug into their possible involvement. Once again, his skepticism proved itself.

You read it here, folks: Sabu has openly admitted to orchestrating the Antisec cybercrime of the century.

While talking with Sabu in a private IRC, Trout bragged about the completion of  his latest cyberbug. Because all anons care about how cool people think their fake online identity is, Sabu’s inner anonfag came  crawling out to bite the hook. He said, “That’s one hell of a bug, but guess who just released a bug into San Quentin State Prison?”

1337_H4X0R5_BR4
lol, #freetopiary

Sabu instructed Trout to “Keep it on the dl bro,” but the Chronicle.SU is not some pussy collective that respects the meaning of ‘off the record.’ “I’m not trying to get v&,” Sabu pleaded. But Trout said, “Tough shit.”

The bottomless compulsion to achieve notoriety based on a seemingly endless stream of pointless, shitty attacks caused many in the hacker community  to doubt whether the world may ever again blame Anonymous for anything  outside of ruining an online forum. But Sabu came through.

While anons and fanboys fapped mercilessly upon their prepubescent penises with thoughts running through their  heads of meth lab informants being hunted down and killed  after mass d0xing of police contacts, more people are now being raped and killed – this time because of criminals they helped free from prison.

The Final Solution

Prison guard Antonio Rueda, 43, responded with force to the security breach. He said they tried to preserve lives, but then were just like, fuck it. “Following the ineffective use of non-lethal bullets and pepper spray,” Rueda said, “we resorted to rifle fire and rape sticks. Still, some escaped and we’re really kicking ourselves for failing to run autoupdate on Windows XP Home Edition.”

After news of the breakout went public, prison technicians around the globe began looking into alternative security measures and solutions that couldn’t be so easily hacked.

“We’re going to take a look at our router settings, make sure NAT’s turned off. That’s probably the issue.”

This breaking coverage was brought to you graciously by your friends here at Lebal Drocer, Inc. We are pleased to announce the Grand Opening of our Megajail™ next week. It will feature brand new locking mechanisms designed using the latest in Iranian lockdown technology, operated directly by the mind of dead Lebal Drocer president, Raleigh Theodore Sakers. Megajail™ reminds you, once you’re in, you’re in. We  own everything that matters, and now jails.

(disclaimer: Lebal Drocer, Inc., is not responsible for limbs lost by closing cell doors. The system is fully automated, as is our transcendental President’s brain, and the prisoners must learn to adhere to the times doors open and shut.)