Yesterday, in the United States, many people had the day off in order to celebrate Independence Day. After a day full of relaxing, eating, and watching fireworks, it is time to head back to work. For those who couldn’t wait that long, however, Pippin Barr released his browser game It is as if you were doing work.
The premise for the game is simple. In the not-too-distant future, robots have replaced our need to work. Instead of enjoying the early retirement, people are feeling useless and unproductive. This is a game that brings back the joy of clicking buttons, waiting for progress bars, and checking boxes.
It is as if you were doing work is an open source game created by Pippin Barr. In a blog post from August 2016, Barr shared his first concept of the game.
“Basically I was watching Rilla resizing an image while working on a project and suddenly felt like it would be amazing to have a game entirely premised on totally conventional operations with traditional user interfaces,” says Barr. “From there it became the idea of a WarioWare-esque game where you would complete simple interface operations under time pressure (I will likely return to this) with various ideas for layering on some kind of meta-narrative, or AI-twist, or something to make it more ‘spectacular.'”
When the game first loads, users sign in as if they were at their work computer. From there, they are given various documents to type, boxes to check, and windows to close. After a few promotions, it’s finally time for a break. Users can enjoy some music, change their display, or play a quick game before getting back to work.
Those interested can check out It is as if you were doing work right now through any desktop web browser. The game is likely not mobile-friendly, which is fine since it is meant to replicate an old desktop computer anyway. The game uses sound effects and a visual theme from Windows 95 and Windows 98. Desktop images are all creative commons or public domain while the inspirational pop-ups are all watermarked stock images of work.
For more on how to keep that work groove going outside of work, take a look at how Job Simulator re-created Overwatch.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.