But the former also had a jokey fantasy setting, and the latter was cartoonish and farcial. Dungeon Keeper, an evergreen classic of the genre, was a raucous exercise in literal anti-heroism and bathed in gore and torture. Management simulators have ventured into some pretty dark territory in the past. Games can be designed to make powerful moral arguments Prison Architect follows in the grand tradition of design and management games such as Dungeon Keeper, Railroad Tycoon and Theme Hospital, which have been keeping this writer entertained since he was a teenager.

So what we now have is the polished, stable, fleshed-out, beautiful version of a project that has already sold more than a million units, earned almost $20 million, and has been attracting attention, accolades and controversy for months. This allows players to buy test versions of the game as a way of raising funds and getting early feedback on game mechanics and bugs. 'Officially' because Introversion is a small, independent developer and, as is now fairly common practice for small, independent developers, has had the game in open alpha for several years. Related story Mas d’Enric Penitentiary by AiB and PSPĪrchitects can now rehearse this question in the comfort of their own home with Prison Architect, a new PC game from Introversion Software, which was officially released this month. 'Would you design a prison?' has become one of the profession's ethical shibboleths. This laissez-faire approach isn't exactly impressive, but she's right in one regard: architects do self-select. Architects self-select, depending on where they feel they can contribute best.' 'Would you design a prison?' has become one of the profession's ethical shibboleths 'Members with deeply embedded beliefs will avoid designing those building types and leave it to their colleagues. 'It's just not something we want to determine as a collective,' former AIA president Helene Combs Dreiling told the New York Times's architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. It's a debate that is echoed, at varying volumes, wherever architecture is practised and prisons are built – which is to say, pretty much everywhere. The petition, which attracted more than 2,000 signatures, and the AIA's response, briefly focused a now long-established debate about the culpability of architects in supporting the atrocious moral swamp that is the American prison system. At the beginning of this year, the American Institute of Architects rejected a petition calling for it to censure architects who designed solitary confinement cells and death chambers for American prisons.

Prison architect