Labor and Gaming

A short informal piece about work

Come all of you poor workers
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwell

Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

Appalachian folk song “Which Side Are You On,” lyrics originally by Florence Reece, whose father and husband organized strikes during the Harlan County War. Florence’s husband Sam died from black lung after 60 years in coal mines.

It’s been a while, folks. Hope you’ve been well over the last…two months.

In case the ghosts in Elkhorn Mine in Act I weren’t enough to get the point home, Act II of Kentucky Route Zero opens with an artist trapped at a nonsensical desk job, devoid of any work that might give her satisfaction or pride. She is rejected from yet another creative contest and, resigned, returns to work. Her boss stands behind her and her coworkers, guarding the elevator, and seemingly that is his entire job.

Today is Labor Day in the United States, which means our government and bank offices are closed in celebration of laborers whose hands built the infrastructure and farmed the food we need.

It’s also one of the least important and least respected national holidays. So I’m here to talk about the ways games represent labor. This will become a much larger project.

Work is Hell

Several weeks ago, I asked around for games that comment on or portray work as a Hell. I’ve long been a fan of Hadestown (the musical), Severance (the television show on Apple+), and a few games that (I argue) carry on a similar theme: Kentucky Route Zero chief among them.

Jordan H.J.

mentioned the new game The Alters, in which the main character creates clones of himself to do menial labor on his behalf. It’s not as oppressive as that sounds: he genuinely needs the extra hands and the companionship. As he put it, “In that game, work is more than just survival, it's literally the reason for their entire existence.”

Jim Mander

responded with Grim Fandango, a point-and-click from 1998. Manny, the player-character, works as a travel agent in the Underworld. His whole job is to sell expensive travel packages to any client who might qualify for them. The better the package, the faster they can make it to the “ninth” realm of the Underworld, but only the best people in life are eligible to purchase faster means on transportation, like a train ticket. Many are condemned to elect for a bike or even just a walking stick. The game is filled with critiques of commodification, meaningless workplace culture, and whether one has any control over their own life at work.

Margot

said, “Hades is kind of a work place that the protagonist is trying to escape. There is even a worker of the week (or month) poster.” Indeed, Hades (the realm) is a workplace, with Hades (the god) as the boss. Zagreus had worked in the white collar office for a while before deciding to escape. Hades belongs.

Katya Ryabova

echoed her sentiment: “there’s an office where souls of the dead work, complete with a water from the Styx cooler, endless records shelves, and plus the protagonist can inspire the workers with a tone-deaf speech 😂 Hades himself is the big boss behind a large executive desk.”

I’m going to paste

Cat

’s entire note: “This is a tiny bit of a stretch but I think Inside (the game) is really good for depicting what it's like to be a mindless drone and how the whole world just wants you to submit. Then of course the ending adds a lot of extra layers in there for autonomy and free will. All of which fall into that idea of a workplace being like hell where you don't have any free will at all. It's more themes based than direct application of your idea, though.” Inside (from the same creators of Limbo) is an excellent addition. Its major theme is, in one word: amalgamation (a word I will write more about in the future).

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The situating of workplaces into an Underworld or Hell, or (the other way around) the portraying of a Hell as a workplace, seems to have become relatively commonplace. I think we can make our own judgments as to why this is.

I think it’s because work is supposed to mean something to the worker, but now it almost always does not.

That is, our work is easier, more worth doing, and more fulfilling and restful toward the other areas of our lives when we actually care about what we’re doing, the community we do it with, or even the effects our work might have on the world.

I respect the hell out of coal miners, like the ones who went on strike and died in the twentieth century across the US to help grant better worker protections for everyone. I respect today’s coal miners who do work they know is hard on their bodies and the environment. I’m not going to diagnose the psychological or sociological reasons why a coal miner chooses to be proud of his work. I’m three generations removed from the last one in my family. All that needs to be said is that work—ALL effort, ALL labor we put into something—deserves a little dignity and should provide for the worker in return. Work is work, and it should pay some bills. It should let you come home knowing you did something.

The problem is that the work doesn’t provide for the worker anymore, especially if you’re stuck in a soul-sucking corporate position doing rote and unimportant tasks all day for the abstract wealth of executives to increase.

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Gaming is Work

Games are a fascinating avenue for labor analyses because they, despite being fun, require an incredible amount of effort in order to exist at all. The game doesn’t appear before me—the next section never comes to the screen—unless I put in some labor and make the game happen.

Some games go all in. Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, along with the entire suite of resource management games, give the player the opportunity to participate in a simulation of grueling labor as though it were entertaining and fun. And, weirdly enough, it is. These games are fun because they let us labor under our own terms.

Games can be split into any number of schemas or categorization systems. One about labor is as follows:

1. Minimal work is simulated

   1. in which the player must only hit a couple buttons in order to complete a complex laborious task

   2. or else in which the player hands off materials to a different character to be crafted for them, again requiring only a couple button presses

   3. common in adventures and visual novels, or other games without much urgency in their controls

2. Work is required, but in abstract and in raw materials

   1. as with the previous (b), others do the difficult crafting, but the player must find those materials, often with urgency

   2. common in RPGs

3. Work is presented at all stages

   1. heavy crafting games or mini-games in which the player must collect and then create items, but also receives all rewards and joy of production

   2. higher satisfaction because of the higher buy-in

   3. common in survival and sandbox games

This schema is not perfect, and you’ll find games that participate in two or even all three at different points in their play. I offered some general trends of genres, but all genres can have elements in all three of these labor aspects.

For example, Night in the Woods is an adventure game very greatly concerned with labor and our modern options for work. Mae’s dad has an excellent monologue toward the end about how a job is supposed to provide for you, let you rest, give you just a little hope and satisfaction. Because it’s a story-driven adventure game with only a few mini-games spotted throughout the narrative, it fits very firmly with (1): Minimal work is simulated.

However, there are two sections of the game that do require the player to act with urgency (attentively) and with effort. The first is, as a group, the times when Mae plays bass in her band. It’s pretty tough, and I cannot deny that doing well is work. But the pay-off is worth it for some players, and the playing is fun. The second is when Mae, toward the end of the game, must move slowly and great with difficulty to do something the player may or may not agree with. It’s taxing on us to watch Mae move in such pain and weariness, and it’s taxing on us to admit that we have to let Mae do what she’s going to do.¹

Those sections I could see as being small moments of (2) or (3), but they are small moments and quite abstract. The game as a whole lives in (1).

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Where to go from here

Here’s a bunch of vague platitiudes to end off with.

Play, and put your work into the game. Own the game. Labor over what it offers you. It’s more difficult than television and YouTube, but do it.

Do it a lot, and do it with dignity.

Love live the workers who build our world and farm our fields. Blessed are the weary, for they have sweated that their families and friends be better off.

Work is required, just not for billionaires. Think about how you labor for your loved ones, for your communities. Be glad that you do.

From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs. Plow the half-acre as you can. Collect all those korok seeds. Befriend every villager.

I’m going to get more specific on labor in games going forward, and I’ll return to those series I need still to finish. I hope that it won’t take two months this time. Be at peace, my friends, and may you find some rest from your work.

1. Was I vague enough here in a way that still conveys the player’s feeling?