Time management games about heros and kings/queens and such outnumber the service industry apps overwhelmingly.
Every city/fortress/kingdom and most tower defense games that are multiplayer are time management games as well as combat, just as a kitchen/diner app may be time management plus crafting.
Another wildly popular subgenre of this game is the farm app, which I would speculate hits urban (often false) nostalgia for small farm life.
Or the animal/monster breeding game, which may involve a pet shop, dragons who do or do not battle, monsters who look like Muppets who sing a capella (a personal fave) and eat pizza, and it goes on…
My larger question might be this: women who game on the net are now over half the market. Why do we still aspire to spend our time relaxing as farm wives and waitresses?
Someone could as easily create a race-to-cure-epidemics time management game (such things have been done) that feature heroic women in lab situations. Or games that pit white hats against black hat hackers. Or any number of things that might promote STEM role models to young women.
But they would not be relaxing to many women. And no one expecting a profit would fund them today. Le sigh.
Those jobs used to be “womens’ jobs.” Now they’re the only jobs.
In a way, the same problem applies to most jobs - if you’re good at what you do, your reward is that you can get promoted to a position where you won’t be doing it anymore. Yay.
Are those rabbit ears on the Torg Corporation headquarters? No doubt the real evil genius behind Torg Corporation is Bun-Bun…
Race to cure epidemics time management would be the Pandemic boardgame?
Is it just me, or does everyone in that first screenshot look completely baked?
And, according to the Peter Principle, the job you’ve been promoted to is beyond your capability.
I read The Peter Principle for the first time on a plane to India, and suddenly realised that if I wanted to become a manager, I had to learn to manage before I had a management job. Reading that book had more effect on my future career than any other management textbook I ever read or any course I attended. Yet it seems to be almost forgetten, while dreck like the works of Ayn Rand continues to be promoted.
I don’t think this is true. There have been an awful lot of male service jobs in the past, but these jobs are now more equal opportunity (or equal lack of…)
If you like the time management games listed in the post you might like (or hate) Love And Order. It’s from the same person who did Analog: A Hate Story, so you know it’s going to be traumatic.
I played it back when it was free; it looks like it’s now $9 on steam. It’s a simulation of being a secretary in a french law office. There’s a mystery component, but you need to balance solving the mystery with doing your work and caring for yourself (if you don’t slack off enough, you will screw up at work, get fired, and the game ends). Just getting a reasonable work-life balance in the game (ignoring the mystery entirely) is quite difficult. The game balance might have been changed since I last played it, though.
Thought-provoking analysis of an “underground” game genre from a feminist and quasi-marxist perspective. Very cool, this is everything I love about offworld!
What we need is a game that simulates being the HR department at a company like Amazon - your task is to monitor labor laws and contract hours, income of your employees, union membership, etc. to prevent anyone gaining a permanent or open ended employment contract. You have to design and alter company rules to make your employees ineligible for promotion. You have to minimize the salary, overtime, pension and health benefits that your human resources can drain out of the company.You have to invest in robots to replace people or to make their work more menial, you have to employ lobbyists to change the laws and lawyers to fend off people classifying your workers as employees rather than 1099 contractors, etc. We could have cut scenes of people choosing between food and heating, or buying their groceries with SNAP benefits, It’s important that children learn this stuff young and a video game is a good way to reach them.
A very timely selection of game, and perhaps some the Prime Minister of New Zealand might take some time to play - Prime Minister pulls waitress ponytail - repeatedly
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