Points of Entry: Competitive Bureaucracy

Persuasive Games’ Points of Entry went up on New York Times Select this week. The game is well done and clever. It’s especially informative and after several minutes, the player should have a good idea how a recently proposed immigrant point system (Merit-Based Evaluation System) would work.

The game puts the player in the shoes of a US immigration officer who must adjust the attributes of citizenship-seeking individuals that show up on their side of the screen. The player is competing against another officer controlled by the computer and the goal is to make one’s immigrant more immigrate-able than the computer’s. The player can gain points for their current immigrant by changing things like education level and occupation.

As the points are based on points proposed in real-life legislation, game players quickly master real-life criteria that congress wants to use to filter potential citizens. One of the gameplay mechanics rewards the player for beating the computer with as few points as possible. So, rather than always barrelling over the competition by making one’s immigrant a super model (worth 20 points), one may just give their immigrant a job offer (worth 6 points) if that’s all they need to win. Because of this, the becomes aware of even the obscurest criteria as those may be the highest payoff.

In the end, I would pay money to see a face off between Points of Entry players and legislators voting on the point system the game is based on. My guess is the former may know it better in the end.