Earlier we talked about First Person Perspective, and the cultural norms it caters to and defies. It's an extraordinarily important topic in gaming culture, because it deals with violence- first person games are very often shooters- our culture is incredibly military. The DoD created the internet in 1991, and everything that has to do with PCs (and videogames, by extension) has had a military bent since that time. Police work has a similar structure, and so we're stuck with this system that allows us to play the part of police, or the military (which is illegal in real life), but blocks out normal social activities for defiance, like drug and alcohol awareness, or intrapersonal relationships.

RPGs are the rare exception, we're allowed to play the part of the morality police- or their opposition. I call it participating in middle class PRISM. Your actions, instead of being monitored by a computer based flag system, simply affect the storyline, and your choices dictate your life. Most often RPGs are second person, you see the character you're playing, which creates a mildly disturbing god complex. I talk back to my pixel puppets frequently.

As always, Disney is the normalizing factor in this trope. They even handle police work, school, and other public sector organizations. Zootopia Crime Files allows you to explore the cultural world of gaming as an outlier- a second person good guy who has to follow the rules, but carries a role that is traditionally first person. (The other crossover, the first person perspective with morality rules, centers around games like the Elder Scrolls series- they're rare, but they are out there).

Since Disney is so family friendly, they're able to offer role playing for figures of authority, because the mitigating factor is their brand. You don't want to work outside the box, since it's Disney and, since it's Disney, they don't let you. Their storylines flow from one end to the other without any deviating choice involved (no Detroit Become Human angst for you).

As a result, you're able to learn about police work in a relatively sterile environment, from a second person perspective- one which generally allows you to do just about anything, and will generally provide dead ends and fatal endings randomly, simply to remind you that the real world is out there. Programmers probably don't even realize they're doing it, those devices are just so common in second person games that they're prevalent.

So you generally won't find police, or military jobs in the second person perspective (but we did find one, and explored the rules). You don't find monetary limits that can't be overcome by you, as a deus ex, from outside the game. You don't find moral conundrums (even Detroit keeps your perspective over the shoulder- the general "faux first person" flag). You, as a higher power, are almost always allowed complete freedom from the rules of the normal world and are only restrained by the checklists necessary to complete your quests. It would be interesting to study the psychological affects of the second person viewpoint- as they surely effect security personnel.

Either way, it's fun to find a game that bucks the standards, and play through to find the ways that programmers got around the gaming norms- the reasons will tend to fit in with the perspective standards. In Zootopia it's simply by restraining freedom of choice, and making checklists apparent, with few things hidden for plot twists. Refreshing, and enjoyable.

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