
Why Do We Play Video Games That Feel Like Work? - DiabloD3
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-do-we-play-video-games-that-simulate-work
======
ffn
Maybe it's just me, but I find work to only suck when there is a long commute
time and it's 2015 and our stupid company is still running Ruby 1.8 on rails
2.3, there is no automated testing, the javascript is an unreadable pile or
.rjs mess, and literally every bug is some variant of "undefined is not a
function" happening at run-time (for which I get yelled at).

In other words, work sucks primarily because it has been made to suck by a
combination of extremely expensive real-estate in a down-town office and
inattention toward the subject of how to make work fun.

The article calls this "the realities of work" and that the inherent
difficulties and uncertainties are natural to the problems of the "real world"
and must be accepted. But I beg to differ, there are tons of games that are
extremely hard to play well (e.g. Sim City, Devil May Cry, etc.), yet still
incredibly fun and addictive. And if you consider online games where
interacting with other player can produce just as much uncertainty as real
life, games are no less "real" than reality... yet they are fun while real
work isn't.

Personally, I think corporations can take a page from video game design and
analyze their own employees work flows and design it to be a more fun process.

~~~
majani
Trying to make work fun is a naive fool's errand. The nature of most work is
to be repetitive, and repetition takes the fun out of anything.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> repetition takes the fun out of anything.

Except MMO's, which are probably the pinnacle of repetitive, work-like video
games. Kill 10 rats times a billion.

~~~
mrec
That doesn't sound like fun, that sounds like addiction. And AIUI those games
are very specifically designed to be addictive.

MMOs: not even once.

~~~
lfowles
Ok, I'd like my work to be addictive, as long as I'm required to keep my 5
8-hour days, I might as well look forward to it.

------
dyates
Jane McGonigal's book on gamification, _Reality is Broken_ , includes quite a
bit of detail about this similarity between work and games. The basic idea is
that humans enjoy work if certain conditions are met, and games are designed
to meet these conditions. She defines a game as having four elements:

    
    
      * Goals to be achieved that give the player a sense of purpose.
      * Rules that limit how the player can achieve said goals.
      * Feedback on the player's progress towards the goals the proves them to be attainable and motivates the player.
      * Voluntary participation by players aware of the rules and goals.
    

And then the further argument is that we can make the world a better place and
people happier in general by bringing all of these game-style elements into
work and everyday life. It's an interesting read, if a little one-sided.

On the flip side, the _Black Mirror_ episode "Fifteen Million Credits"
features a dystopia in which most people spend their entire lives generating
electricity by peddling on stationary bicycles to earn credits they can use to
outfit a virtual persona. Let's hope that's not the logical conclusion of
_Farmville_!

~~~
jmcqk6
The point made in that book that stuck with me ever since I first read it is
this (I think she was quoting someone else):

The opposite of play is not work; it's depression.

I think the key thing people do wrong through, is to take work and try to make
it more like play by adding in superficial 'game mechanics' like achievements.

Visual Studio had this for a while, and it had things like "use the debugger
100 times" or something like that. This is not how you make work into play.
Those achievements are meaningless. Worse, they could provide incentive for
using visual studio poorly.

For a really deep look at how games can be used to improve real world tasks, I
recommend the works of [James
Gee]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Paul_Gee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Paul_Gee)).

------
brownbat
Because in games accomplishment is often easier than in real life, maybe
because it's more structured and well defined, maybe just because each
accomplishment happens faster. We then probably get some kind of chemical hit
from accomplishing things, which doesn't discriminate very well based on the
importance of the thing we accomplished.

~~~
anigbrowl
Exactly - the rewards are relatively assured. When I used to play Eve there
was a lot of tedious work in terms of resource management and repetitive tasks
like heading off to shoot pirates or whatever, but as you fulfilled your goals
you got new toys to play with and more choices became available. In many real
jobs you master some task and you *might get a pat on the back or a promotion,
but you might just as easily get stuck with more of the same or have a bunch
of extra demands laid on you - especially true in low-wage jobs, which tend to
be the least rewarding/interesting ones.

------
whybroke
The reward you get from a (well designed) game is both nearly immediate and
directly related to the work you put into it. Additionally there is just
enough randomness to create realism but critically not so much as to create
the feeling of unfairness.

Compensation from work is much more distantly related to performance. A
salaried or hourly person gets the same pay per time period regardless of
being more productive than average or not.

Additionally that compensation is money which as at least one step removed
from the actual reward.

And sometimes that reward is using the money to buy time off which is
apparently a contradiction and requires complex understanding to justify the
whole point of work. Games don't have profound contradictions in this
category.

Also work compensation is sometime unfair paying inept or unproductive people
who are good at office politics. Games obviously can't be unfair in this way.

Sometimes the rewards are immensely remote such as retirement. Game rewards
often occur within seconds or at most hours.

Some rewards are just avoiding improbable miseries such as paying for an
illness (if you have the misfortune to live in a society where this is a
worry). Disasters in games are always no only unbelievable or impersonal but
often humors eg minecraft's creeper or sim city's flood. No popular game has
you grinding hard to save money just in case you become unemployable due to
depression or cancer.

------
ctdonath
For many, we do what we do for work because it's what we would do anyway for
free if we could. We get paid for that work because of all the irritating crap
that is a real and largely unavoidable part of doing what we live to do for
real. I love programming, and would do it for free if I could; what I get paid
for is sitting here past midnight waiting for remote systems to validate an
app submission while I try to get three packages to work well together when
they inexplicably decide not to because an update to one suddenly has an
aversion to seeing "#!" in another's file, and circumstances require I fix it
right now regardless of the hour.

We play "labor games" for fun because they are the idealistic of what we
really want to do but without that irritating intrusion of reality.

------
erikb
Is that strange to some people? For me it's not strange at all. I'd love to do
my job, after work hours, as a game. The good thing about games is that it is
clear who wants something from you (you can name the NPC who gave you the
quest), the result is clear, sometimes even the path to the result is clear,
and success is rewarded(!!!!).

In contrast in real life it is hard to find out who actually wants the result
you are just tasked to do, nobody knows how it should look like in the end and
everybody has complains about the result no matter how it looks. That's why
work feels like work and the same thing as a game feels good.

------
crimsonalucard
You guys ever heard of desert bus? Actual game. Possibly the most realistic
"work" game ever made.

"The goal of Desert Bus was to, quite simply, drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona
to Las Vegas, Nevada; a very very boring drive, as those of us who have done
it know. There were a couple catches, though: in the game, your bus could not
go over 45 miles per hour. Also, it veered to the right, just ever so
slightly, so you could not simply tape down the accelerator button on your
Genesis pad and leave the game alone; you had to man the wheel at all times.
Oh, and did we mention the trip takes eight hours, in real time?"

“You saw nothing. It was just desert stuff going by, And there was a little
green tree hanging from the rear-view mirror, one of those things that makes
your car smell better? And it would just kind of drift in slowly to one corner
of the screen. And you couldn’t take your hands off the controller, and if you
did…it didn’t have a spectacular crash, it just slowly went into the sand, and
then overheated and stopped, and then the game was you being towed backwards
all the way back to Tucson.”

“And when you went from Tucson to Vegas and did the full 8 hours, you had bus
stops, and the bus stops…you could stop and open the door, but no one got on.
No one’s ever waiting for you. And if you went by them you weren’t punished at
all, because nobody was there. It meant nothing. And a bug hit your windshield
five times during the eight hours, and that was the only animation. It was
just road after road after road. Eight hours of desert bus. And then when you
got in - and I love this - when you got into Vegas and pulled in and stopped,
the counter - which was five zeros - went to 1. You got 1 point for an eight
hour shift, and then a guy came in and said, ‘Do you want to pull a double
shift, Mac?’ And then you could drive back to Tucson for another eight hours
for another point.”

~~~
wildpeaks
Desert Bus is kind of an exception because it was intended as a joke from Penn
& Teller, mocking the argument that games need to be realistic.

But if you want to see people suffer through that game for a whole week
24h/24, come watch the yearly "Desert Bus for Hope" charity marathon in
November: [http://desertbus.org/about/](http://desertbus.org/about/) :-)

------
barbs
I've recently noticed that roguelikes, more than any other kind of game I
play, give me the most satisfaction and pleasure. In particular, games like
FTL and Nethack promote decision-making and improvisation - making the most
out of what the game throws at you, taking stock of what's available and
trying to prepare for future encounters in creative ways.

I find this parallels quite well with my day-to-day software development job,
although playing these games remove a lot of the mundane tasks of actual
employment (meetings, repetitive tasks, reliance on others, communication
issues etc). Both of these involve solving varied problems in different ways,
though.

I concluded that I was simply doing what I enjoy, creative problem solving,
and that I was just lucky enough to do what I intrinsically enjoyed for a
living. I didn't think that my choice of leisure-activity was influenced by
society's apparent changing view of free-time as "potential work time".

~~~
mpdehaan2
Also in the randomly-generated area (which i wish they would do a port to
current consoles) was "Spelunky" \- super challenging and randomly generated
levels too.

All being said, I miss the grand era of 80s/90s 2D greatly.

~~~
barbs
You can get that game on Playstation 4 at least
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelunky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelunky).

That game looks amazing, but I've been waiting for a linux port. I don't think
I'll be holding my breath though. If I get a Playstation 4 I'll instantly buy
it.

------
anodari
I saw a joke who says that the most real life game was tetris because as in
real life, no matter how much we work, always comes a new task faster and
faster until we die.

~~~
technomancy
"Tetris is a life lesson: your mistakes pile up and your accomplishments
disappear."

~~~
RankingMember
Wow. I knew the game was Russian, but that is _so_ Russian.

~~~
acmd
But why? Because of the Dostoevsky leitmotif?

------
getsat
My vice is the Demon's Souls/Dark Souls games. As one Steam review put it:

    
    
        >hours of "WHY DID I BUY THIS GAME?"
        >seconds of "I AM A GOD"

~~~
hnal943
Funny - that's similar to what people say about golf.

~~~
getsat
I can totally see this. :)

------
jaryd
The DFW quote is from the following Harper's article: [http://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazin...](http://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf)

    
    
      A vacation is a respite from unpleasantness, and since
      consciousness of death and decay are unpleasant, it may 
      seem weird that the ultimate American fantasy vacation
      involves being plunked down in an enormous primordial 
      stew of death and decay. But on a 7NC Luxury Cruise, we 
      are skillfully enabled in the construction of various
      fantasies of triumph over just this death and decay. One 
      way to 'triumph' is via the rigors of self-improvement
      (diet, exercise, cosmetic surgery, Franklin Quest time-
      management seminars), to which the crew's amphetaminic
      upkeep of the [ship] is an unsubtle analogue. But 
      there's another way out, too: not titivation but
      titillation; not hard work but hard play.

------
calibraxis
Does the author assume everyone's aware of David Graeber Utopia of Rules?
Because he didn't seem to cite Graeber, and yet clearly the arguments and
style have obvious similarities. ([http://boingboing.net/2015/02/02/david-
graebers-the-utopia-o...](http://boingboing.net/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-
utopia-of.html))

~~~
saraid216
He didn't cite [http://theoryoffun.com/](http://theoryoffun.com/) either.

~~~
calibraxis
Thank you, don't recall seeing that before!

------
jokoon
I was talking to my psychiatrist recently. I was making the point that I can't
manage to follow the rules I'm being given, that in general the rules of
civilization are made up and don't make sense.

She kinda made the argument that if I wanted to progress in life I could
follow the rules (work to get this degree), and that it should stimulate me as
much as diablo 3. It's true that in both cases, there are rules. Except I
thought that life/society/civilization is not really a game. Maybe if you want
to improve the economy, you can use bits of game theory to reduce the cost of
regulation and corruption, but I doubt that it's sane to imply that all real
life is like a game. Maybe I should try to play by the rules, but it would be
very tempting to cheat, that's one reason to avoid playing, to avoid the
temptation of playing.

In video games the rules make sense, but in society it rarely does. Social
stratification, social disintegration, my unemployment, etc.

I don't think video games are much simpler, or that simplicity has something
to do with it. But the rules never contradict themselves. There can be games
with rules that are pretty complex too, and those games are much more
interesting because there is a logic to it.

Maybe an interesting game concept would be to make a game more realistic by
introducing more contradictions inside it. Pollute the environment, increase
poverty, deal drugs, corrupt politicians, etc, adding a "some people just like
to see the world burn" aspect to it. GTA is already a little like that, except
I don't see it going all the way through.

~~~
VLM
asanagi got flag killed, probably for too many "trigger words" but the idea,
expressed, phrased somewhat more politely, is people will lie to gain control
and power and one thing to lie about is the rules. (edited to add and the most
important rule to lie about is that "nobody is taught lies about the rules")

So the bigger and more complicated a culture is (you know, like ours?), the
more likely the rules as taught are lies vs the rules as how the world
actually works.

So unsurprisingly following the rules as taught isn't going to work very well
for everyone. The folks who want to maintain control can fight that little
problem by all manner of social engineering. Let people vote, but only between
irrelevant decisions never the important stuff. Guilt trips. Threats (see
religion and eternal damnation for all heretics). Anecdotal examples in the
place of actual societal trends (the token xyz in a group, etc). Good ole
fashioned bread and circuses, ya see the baseball game last night and how bout
that game of thrones episode?

------
lmz
[http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/may/05/is-
bein...](http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/may/05/is-being-
addicted-football-manager-medical-condition) Maybe somewhat related.

------
imgabe
Video games offer a certainty of outcome you can't get in the real world. If
you do X and Y, you'll get reward Z. X and Y might be difficult or tedious to
do, but you know that Z is there around the corner.

Work often has situations where the outcome is much less certain. We have a
problem we don't know how to solve so we need to try various possibilities.
This _can_ be fun if there is room for experimentation and we can try some
things that fail without failing overall, but in situations with tight
deadlines and uncertain outcomes, where you have a limited chance to attempt
something and you don't know whether it will work, this is a recipe for
stress.

------
anon4
\- You can stop playing any time you want, but at work you're bound by
standard hours.

\- You need to work to make money to buy food to eat. That introduces
unavoidable stress into your work in the form that you know, if you don't work
well enough, you'll get fired and then you'll starve. Or get your power cut.
Or be kicked out of your house.

\- You can always start again, no matter how badly you mess up. In a lot of
workplaces, if you mess up a couple of times, you're fired and you can't try
again.

In short, real work is less like Farming Simulator 2013 and more like nethack,
but you only have one life.

------
sakri
I'm gonna make a game where you are an unemployed single mother, doing job
interviews and cutting coupons. I'm gonna be rich!

~~~
tauchunfall
>a game where you are an unemployed single mother, doing job interviews and
cutting coupons

Sounds a bit like Melanie Emberly from the indie game "Cart Life" (2013).

>A recent divorcee who had to quit her job at her office as a result. Now,
Melanie runs a Coffee Hut. Her goal is to amass a sum of one thousand dollars
in sales by custody hearing on Monday whilst taking care of her daughter,
Laura.

------
bottled_poe
I see two obvious reasons - freedom of choice and having a stake in the
outcome. Video games give the player total control over the outcome within the
rules of the system. In my experience, workplaces typically define too many
constraints and give the player very limited power over the process and next
to zero share in the outcome.

------
nether
Dovetails with
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492110)

Why do backbreaking labor outside when one can sit comfortably in a cool
office staring at a screen? Because meaningful labor is invigorating, even in
simulation.

~~~
visakanv
Yes. I have often surprised myself with how much I enjoy seemingly menial
things like cleaning my windows and restringing my guitars, once I get over
the initial pain of starting. Making a real difference to yourself, your
living environment, your context, your peers, etc– can be incredibly
rewarding.

The equivalent at work would be when you can see a very clear relationship
between your actions and the benefit your actions have on your customers and
the rest of your team.

------
mrxd
Implicit in all of this is a belief that true happiness is found in some kind
of luxurious aristocratic passivity of nothing but rest, relaxation and
comfort. That's great, if it suits you, but some of us need a bit more
stimulation in life.

The author also twists Adorno. Immediately before the quoted sentence ("the
contraband of modes of behaviour proper in the domain of work… is being
smuggled into the realm of free time"), Adorno says "free time must not
resemble work in any way whatsoever, in order, presumably that one can work
all the more effectively afterwards." Obviously work simulators try to very
closely resemble work, and they don't try to hide this fact at all—no
contraband smuggling here! That was written 50 years ago, maybe things have
changed.

------
dkersten
I love programming. I find it to be a fun and enjoyable activity. However,
when I _have to_ do something, sometimes its not fun, but then if, later, I do
the exact same thing when I want to, its fun again.

I think its the same thing with games - some games I play do feel like work,
but I still enjoy them and I think the reason is because I choose to play when
I want to. If I were told "you have to play this game now", then I'd probably
hate it, but if I can decide for myself, then I enjoy it. Which games I would
choose to play in a given moment depends on the mood I'm in.

------
thewarrior
My room mate plays DoTA for 6 - 7 hours a day AFTER work. Now that has to be
tiring but he does it everyday.

I'm amazed at this level of obsession and dedication. If we could figure out
how to turn this on or off for learning to code or figuring out math then
everyone could do wonders.

------
parski
I think I have some degree of autism but I thought one of the most enjoyable
parts of Shenmue was when you work as a forklift driver at the docks. Driving
around moving crates was pretty zen and it got me thinking a lot. Very
soothing.

~~~
visakanv
There are all sorts of real life "arrange things" tasks that can be really
soothing, too. You may enjoy
[http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/](http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/)

------
jebblue
You want work in a game? Try 7 days To Die. Clear a newly found town of 50 to
100 zombies so you can maybe find a can of dog food in one of the cupboards.
That's work and it's fun and I have no idea why.

~~~
visakanv
Killing zombies is always its own reward. :-) I guess they represent the
perfect "Other", you can completely hate them and enjoy killing them without
feeling any remorse or doubt.

------
s_kilk
Searched for "Eve Online" on the article page... was disappointed.

~~~
cjslep
I agree. Anyone that wants to peer into the equivalence of work with video
games that does not peer into the culture Eve Online has developed is missing
a core part of the research, in my opinion.

There is the literal "spreadsheets online" part of the "gameplay". I used to
be one of them. I literally spent hours pouring over resource numbers and
timing, and that's not even touching the in-game market that has complexities
of the same magnitude as the real-world market.

Then there is the "millionaire-turned-retired" myth persistent throughout the
in-game culture. It was cited as a ha-ha-only-serious joke for whoever seemed
to dump a ton of money-for-ISK into the game, but if there is a kernel of
truth in humor then that is something that could always be more fleshed out.

Then, of course, the entire premise of the game is built on top of the simple
mechanic "when you get blown up, you lose everything with you". Loss is very
real and requires real work to keep and _maintain_ your in-game status quo.
Whether it is having good allies or finding a less-crowded corner of the
universe.

Very many missed opportunities indeed.

------
Shivetya
accomplishment.

plus in many cases it simply gives many something to do. never underestimate
the number of people who have nothing to do and need an outlet

its not much work if your not bored anymore

~~~
visakanv
> never underestimate the number of people who have nothing to do and need an
> outlet

The interesting thing is that people always have an endless amount of things
to do.

The problem is that we're usually really VAGUE about what we need to do. And
vague todos don't get done a little bit less, or a little bit slower– they
don't get done at all! This is pretty counterintuitive.

I have a bookshelf of unread books, and an endless list of work, but it's
easier to play a game (or reply to a HN comment!) because the task at hand is
much more straightforward. Type, hit reply, get the dopamine.

With the books, or with work, I have to pick something, decide what I want to
do, decisions, decisions, decisions. Great video games lay out the decisions
for you in a very clear "jump this gap", "pick up that weapon", "shoot that
guy" sorta way.

Real life is messier, and so we procrastinate more. The feedback is less
immediate and clear (unless we deliberately design it to be so.)

------
dennisgorelik
Games are based on simplified models and train us to do useful work.

So we like to play, because it improves our skills.

------
dba7dba
I just want to say any work can be more fun than playing fun video games, if
you enjoy your work.

~~~
visakanv
I agree. I find video games less compelling now than I did as a teenager
primarily because my work feels a lot more interesting and engaging than
school did.

------
laurentsabbah
The beauty of psychology, behavior and game-mechanics!

------
jarradhope
goat simulator.

------
ribs
I'm several paragraphs in and there is no sign of deep insight. "In
simulators, work is efficient, productive, and fun; it is goal oriented,
quantifiable, and successful; the player can always win." No kidding. We're on
the second page the story already. Time to tell me something I don't already
know.

