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.
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