Why we like playing games that let us pretend to work
While gamers might once have fought battles in far off galaxies or gone head-to-head against marauding hordes of zombies, a new generation of gamer is quite content to drive a truck through Europe or run a bookshop.
A new type of game, rather than taking you away from the mundanities of life, throws those mundanities right back at you.
Games like Farmville, Tiny Bookshop, and Euro Truck Simulator 2 have millions of players worldwide. They all simulate doing jobs, so why do we find this so satisfying?
Dr Owen Brierley, a game designer and scholar at Kingston University London's school of art, has studied this new phenomenon.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 has millions of players worldwide.
Supplied
“This whole notion of getting in a car and attaching a caravan to the vehicle and driving to some remote town on the coast and then opening a little bookshop, managing that bookshop, engaging with customers who come to the bookshop, playing along in the story, exploring this, I suppose, quaint little world is quite a fascinating phenomenon.
“It piqued my interest for sure, and I started exploring what is the why behind it, and what are people looking for?”
Why we like playing games that let us pretend to work
He found that the games satisfy a need actual work doesn’t offer, he says.
“The daily grind of modern work doesn't have the same payoff, if you will, to what this game offers in that you get to be an expert in something, you get to engage in interesting puzzles and challenges, and at the end of the day, you turn the lights off and you go home and leave everything else behind.
“The other thing is I don't have to give up my existing life to go have that cosy work experience.”
The games chime with a demographic looking for something less stressful to pass the time, he says.
“Isn't it interesting that we live in a world of rage-oriented commentary and people are seeking the customer interaction or work interaction that isn't as high stakes.
“This tiny bookshop, for example, if you don't give someone a recommendation of a book that they're looking for, they go, oh, that wasn't what I'm looking for. Oh, well, move on. It's not the end of the world.”
The satisfaction, he says, “comes in lowering the stakes as opposed to increasing them.”
Millions of people around the world play a game called Euro Trucking Simulator, he says.
“Driving a truck through these beautiful landscapes, knowing that you've got some kind of task to get done, knowing that it's going to be somewhat of a mundane experience.
“And at the same time, there's an almost meditative aspect to that. And isn't it mind boggling that not only is that something interesting to play as a player, but it's also something interesting to watch?”
Just as people flock to watch street traders’ skilful techniques on YouTube, people watch other people undertaking these somewhat mundane tasks, he says.
“There's a skill and a mastery and a flow to the work that they do. Similar to what goes on in your truck simulator, you have this kind of flow, flow is all about having a certain level of expertise in something and knowing that you can kind of get into the experience of it, as opposed to constantly having to think am I doing this right? Or what's my technique?
“It's very much I'm at the top of my game, I can engage with the flow of that activity.”
