Oliver Haslam·

Simulate The Joy Of Mundane Office Work With This Browser Game

Have you ever sat down after a long day at work and thought to yourself “you know what? I wish I could do some more work right now.” No? Neither have I, but that has not stopped design professor Pippin Barr from creating a new browser-based game called It Is As If You Were Doing Work.

As that name suggests, this entire game revolves around making players feel like they are working, complete with all the “fun” that comes with it.

Right off the bat, gamers are placed into an environment where they have the old faithful Windows 95 with which to work. They then have to send emails and deal with inane dialog boxes in order to work their way up the slippery ladder of management within a fictional company, and if that sounds horrific to you, it is because it is.

There is, of course, a reason for all this. Barr says he created the title based on a possible future for us all, where automation has done away with many of the jobs that we do today.

The game poses as an application that humans who have been put out of work by robots and AI can play as a way to recapture the sense they once had of doing work and being productive. It’s a kind of semi-condescending service offered by this new world to those of us who can’t deal with it.

This all sounds like the kind of thing that would bore people to tears, and that is kind of the point. If this does, for some strange reason, sound appealing to you though, or you just want to get a taste of what the future may be like, then you can check out It Is As If You Were Doing Work in your browser for free at pippinbarr.github.io/itisasifyouweredoingwork. I just don’t quite know whether I would recommend it.

(Source: pippinbarr [GitHub])

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