It is as if you were doing work

[kzahel]

If you tried it out and were a little confused, here's a little blog post about the motivation and development of the "game": http://www.pippinbarr.com/words/2017/06/14/narrative-framing...

And some more information in form of a "press" release from the github: https://github.com/pippinbarr/itisasifyouweredoingwork/tree/...

I found the "game" to be somehow interesting.

[mbrookes]

Or just click the "About" icon...

[fomojola]

Clearly it needs the following 3 things: 1. It needs a fake calendar that is randomly populated with meetings. 2. It needs to randomly require that you open Google Hangouts and chat with other users. 3. It needs to send random Slack notifications.

[majewsky]

> 1. It needs a fake calendar that is randomly populated with meetings.

While we're on this, can everyone please post their favorite ridiculous meeting title that is really real? I'll start with a recurring meeting series from last year that was called "mid-sprint calibration".

[QuantumGravy]

> 1. It needs a fake calendar that is randomly populated with meetings.

Not enough to compete with the real deal. Has to have multiple team calendars, so it can support conflicting mandatory meetings so people can bitch at you on Google Hangouts and Slack afterward for missing the ones you didn't attend, even though you'd told everyone in advance that you couldn't make it.

[cbhl]

If it's a video game, couldn't you still use real chat apps to chat with real other users?

[SamBam]

Maybe I quit before I got to this, but I would add:

4. Time-sensitive pop-ups: things that force you to act NOW instead of ignoring them.

[ed_cr]

ha ha yes random calendar items

[factsaresacred]

Having worked in an insurance company this brought a pang of PTSD.

A stream of minor frustrations, just mild enough to not trigger an audible and cathartic 'f*ck', over and over and over again. The only thing missing was a mandatory health & safety quiz.

Now excuse me while I go thank the Universe that I no longer work in such a place.

[yttrium]

My god, I'm starting to think Post Insurance Trauma meetings are in order. Everyone else I've met who worked/started in Insurance feels the same way. I can still recall those janky 'Internet Safety' etc. web seminars that restart if you accidentally click the wrong button and inexplicably take 45 minutes.

[module0000]

Do I sense another Blue Cross Blue Shield survivor?

[tempestn]

This just makes me sad that windows stealing focus, grabbing a randomly typed space bar, and submitting themselves before you can even read them is still a thing.

[threepipeproblm]

I remember the first time I used X Window and noticed windows not stealing focus. It was one of those times where you realize you have not even understood the full extent of your abuse. Approx. 20 years later and Windows still can't get this basic thing right.

[btschaegg]

Today I found out that MS "solutions" can also go in the other direction by not telling you what happened.

Scenario:

- You're forced to use TFS. - Your credientials are managed by a Windows domain controller. - The same credentials are used to authentify with TFS. - Your password expires.

Welcome to a non-trivial amount of time trying to figure out what happened. This is the single scenario I've encountered so far where interrupting my workflow would have been sensible, and it seemingly is also the only one where Windows doesn't do it.

I miss Git so much ._.

[eckza]

One of my favorite things about OSX is the fact that applications rarely / never are allowed to steal focus.

[pluma]

Literally happened to me the other day:

I was typing something in Slack and sudd-

> A new version of Ubuntu is available. Would you like to upgrade? [Don't Upgrade] [Ask me Later] [Yes, Upgrade Now]

-enly I found out that "spacebar" acts as a click of the selected default button and the rest of my sentence ended up in the password field.

I dismissed the slightly confused password prompt and didn't see the message again for the remainder of the day.

Yes, Canonical, while I'm typing something in Slack is exactly the moment I want to tell you whether I want to update my operating system.

[michaelmior]

One thing that still happens to me on an infrequent but regular basis is clicking on something I didn't intend because something popped up under my cursor. In general, this seems like a hard problem to solve. I want notifications to pop up but I could happen to be doing something in that area of the screen.

[narrowtux]

Just like real life. I am sure this is intentional.

[Aissen]

I love the "busywork" aspect of this game. You work like a drone, doing simple tasks with no intelligence whatsoever. This must be what most people working on a desk must feel like (not sure people on HN can relate to this).

It's also a reflection on modern gaming in general. If only some games had busywork as part of their gameplay, they'd feel less tiring and more fun.

[ericdykstra]

There are plenty of games that have "busywork" aspects. The term for it in gaming is "grinding" (implies mindlessness, even though it is sometimes used in a different context). The vast majority of RPGs, especially old-school JRPGs and MMORPGs, require you do "grind" to get to a certain level to unlock more stages.

Many modern mobile games are literally just mindless busywork with an option to pay money to skip some of the busywork. The whole "clicker" genre is totally mindless.

There are plenty of games that fit your criteria, so maybe you're just playing the wrong types of games?

[Aissen]

…and, I'm missing a word, so I said the opposite of what I meant:

If only some games had less busywork as part of their gameplay.

To reply @stdbrouw and @ericdykstra: I hate grinding. Old-school RPGs and mobile F2P games are guilty of this. But all other games that have random collectibles in an open world, or "do X Y times" trophies/achievements are just adding stuff to keep you busy. I heard some people like this, but it's not my thing.

[stdbrouw]

> It's also a reflection on modern gaming in general. If only some games had busywork as part of their gameplay, they'd feel less tiring and more fun.

Like grinding in an MMORPG? I'm not so sure.

[Nursie]

>> If only some games had busywork as part of their gameplay, they'd feel less tiring and more fun.

Is this a joke?

A huge number of games have mindless busywork as part of the play. Whole genre's are based on it.

You're trying to achieve/build/win/unlock X? Great, spend the next 14 hours mindlessly and repetitively mining rocks until you can't carry any more rocks, and then putting them in the rock store, and mining more rocks!

[morugin]

Hm, that's a side of gaming that is foreign to most people who call themselves "gamers" (even casual gamers). A game like starcraft is much more complex (by orders of magnitude) than chess, a game with a respected intelligence component. AI cannot (yet) outperform human teams in mobas like league of legends or overwatch. These are the titles i think of when thinking about "modern gaming".

[mikestew]

EDIT: nevermind, I see it was a typo on OP's part, rendering my comment irrelevant. OP wanted less busywork, but forgot the word "less". :-)

If only some games had busywork as part of their gameplay

Mass Effect, Fallout 4, and Destiny come immediately to mind. Considering that I don't play a wide swath of video games, I'm sure I've missed many more.

"As mankind's last and best hope, busy though you might be, you're the only one qualified to get the old woman's cat out of a tree."

[saltedmd5]

> This must be what most people working on a desk must feel like

Out of curiosity - as opposed to?

[ld00d]

> If only some games had busywork as part of their gameplay

Try Mass Effect

[floho_hh]

I hate the fact that this "game" did not feel overly strange, and I played for a good while until I realized that a) I was not required to keep doing those mindless tasks b) my real work was still waiting

[erikb]

Before you switched back, did you also realize that c) you're also not really required to do most of your "real work"?

[jianzong]

I wonder how many people input (or almost input) their real username and password in the first screen.

[justinjlynn]

I would imagine that it's a number greater than zero.

[andai]

I had to stop myself. The power of habit is strong!

[hacksonx]

I typed my work username twice. Shows how simple social engineering can be.

[schindlabua]

I ended up laying my fingers flat on the keyboard (thumbs still on space) so I can hit more keys while mashing, lifting them only to set calendar appointments. It's like I've become a parody of myself.

[Jaruzel]

Likewise, until I realised that just holding down space kept the auto typing going.

Always game the system!

[Firegarden]

This is stupid its funny how long I keep it going. It's a little stressful when your trying to get your characters quota typed out and you have to keep selecting other modal windows but all in all it feels like "I am on track" with my fake work life.

[flukus]

I was particularly impressed with the focus stealing popups that emulate the real life windows experience.

[_pdp_]

And if you want to pretend that you are hacking open this: https://haxor.secapps.com/

[giancarlostoro]

Surprised these kind of apps aren't available as a plugin for a text editor. Would be bit more fun. :)

[dpwm]

At first I thought this was a satire of modern work. Now I'm convinced it is at least as much a satire of GUI toolkit widget developments or, more generally, corporate User Interface design.

The game emphasises just how close to being terrible most UI widgets are, and illustrates beautifully that the difference that makes them terrible is usually the only thing that differentiates them from validated text input components. My favourite two are the calendar and the spinner.

The calendar only goes back month by month. Some calendar components I have had to use actually do this, especially those on the web. There is no way to choose a year and there is no text entry of dates. A validated text entry field would be superior if your use of them consisted of anything but picking dates in the current month.

The genius of the spinners in this game is that you can't just use them as text entry fields. You can only use the tiny little buttons, so if you have to enter -13, then you have to click 13 times. Text entry would be superior if you had to pick a value far from zero.

The only widget that does what it's supposed to is the text entry field. But even that feels alien initially because the wrong letters come up. It is only when you see words appear when you hit backspace that you realise that you're just meant to mash keys.

[LanceH]

It is just as much an indictment of managerial input on UI, or anything really. "This is important, it should grab focus." The same basic mentality that gets all issues listed as priority 1.

[nattofriends]

You do realize that calendar picker is the stock jQuery UI picker

[valine]

Make it randomly and forcibly install updates and it will be perfect. A "Preparing to install updates [Confirm] [Delay for 10 sec]" message would be funny.

[brandonmenc]

This is equal parts eerie, depressing, and absolutely hilarious. I'm cracking up right now using it. Well done!

[mshenfield]

Eerily similar to how distracting an actual work environment can get.

[danek]

I had to close it because it was too similar to being at work, on my day off.

[erikb]

And the actual work itself is also not really valuable and it's okay if it never actually gets done. Most projects end up in a semi-failed state anyways.

[hosh]

I wished I could find this article again -- it was an analysis of games that were designed to be deliberately addictive but not fun. Examples were things like ProgressQuest. This was right around when gamification became a fad on the internet (around 2012).

It's all dopamine hacking.

[empath75]

Jonathan Blow has given a bunch of talks on that topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFu5O-oPmU

[ggsp]

That sounds like a super interesting read, too bad you can't find it :(

[renegadesensei]

I recently started working for a very big corporation and this hit a little too close to home.

[likelynew]

I can totally relate to the superficial points. In my work, I can cut my work to half if I do what I think is best and achieve the same end goals. A big proportion of my work goes to useless things, doing what anyone think is right, and I am instructed to try them all. And even worse, I have to report what I did everyday in nice readable way, due to which I sometimes build temporary things that I know I will have to rework completely later.

I complained about daily reporting and my senior said I can say I could not achieve anything in a day, but I have to report. I haven't done that any time. Can anyone here advise if it's fine for me to report that.

[sleepychu]

In general I'd expect the backlash from an unsatisfactory daily report to be low, there's a lot of opportunity to coach you and it lets your supervisor coach you/steer you if you've developed an inconsistency. It's also an opportunity to get domain specific knowledge of pitfall you might experience integrating with an existing system.

I think that deliberately making a to-be-scrapped system just to generate some work-done for the report is a waste of your time and you'd be better just making the real progress you can within the day and then reporting on how it's going/what (if anything) is stopping you from making progress; in general I don't think that tasks which take more than a day are expected to be complete.

The report is really about making sure that you're not sitting there unable to make any progress for days/weeks/months at a time resulting in an unexpected failure to deliver at the other end.

HTH.

[pmiller2]

I would say that if you've done any work in a productive direction, you've achieved something that day and can feel ok reporting your work in progress. Not all tasks may be able to be finished in a day, but you can make incremental progress on anything, even if it's only to find out a particular approach is infeasible.

[bmh100]

The report should show what you are working on, where you are spending your time, etc. It is about time spent more than achievements per se. It can alert your senior that you need training on a particular task that is taking too much time or that the task itself is too difficult.

[Animats]

Up to "Computational Administrator". Is there anything after that?

Reminds me of "Papers, Please".

[jaredsohn]

   var jobTitler = {
     subject: [
       "Screen", //100
       "Input", //400
       "Dialog", //900
       "Interface", //1600
       "Data", //2500
       "Big Data", //3600
       "Choice", //4900
       "System", //6400
       "Computation", //8100
    ], // 9
     position: [
       "Administrator", //1000
       "Technician", //4000
       "Engineer", //9000
       "Specialist", //16000
       "Architect", //25000
       "Executive", //36000
       ]
   }

https://pippinbarr.github.io/itisasifyouweredoingwork/js/dat...

I'm guessing Computation Executive might be the highest if it uses the position field. (Don't have time to see how this data gets used to set the title.)

[molloy]

The text that you end up "typing" is actually very motivational!

[erikb]

They even started with my favorite quote:

Ever tried, ever failed, no matter.

Try again, fail again, fail better.

[GreaterFool]

Who knew, I'm really good at it!

[brianzelip]

checkout this author on instagram, his "game idea" thread is hilarious! https://www.instagram.com/pippinbarr/

[pavlov]

Another super-fun take on this concept is Job Simulator, available for the big three VR platforms:

https://jobsimulatorgame.com

[chickenfries]

Fun little game. Made it to Big Data Administrator before I was able to pry myself away.

It would be fun if mashing different keys made typing faster.

[iamben]

My brother and I have been laughing about something like this for a while. 1. Create a 'real time office / trading simulator' game and market it well to folks who like playing playstation / xbox. 2. Connect it to 'the cloud'. 3. .... 4. Profit :-)

[bytesandbots]

https://pippinbarr.github.io/itisasifyouweredoingwork/js/dat...

Why are some inspirational quotes commented while others aren't?

[pattisapu]

Vaguely cognate with the Tim & Eric Awesome Show Good Job! Celery Man / Cinco products type skits [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAFcEU6atk

[pmoriarty]

I would like to see a vim/emacs + shell version of this, with maybe IRC for chatting with coworkers. No mousing or clicking around, just have a tiling window manager controlled fully by the keyboard.

[strictnein]

Reminds me of Cookie Clicker: http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/

[throwaway1892]

I wonder if this submission would have gone to the front page if I had added game (or [game]) in the title as I first intended when posting it...

[drakonka]

That was stressful.

[nice_byte]

Wow, this is extremely annoying. Guess the point is to portray a constant stream of interruptions, so job well done :-)

[jimbo999]

that is horrifying

[mesozoic]

I am upset I can't be promoted beyond "Computation Administrator" :(

[hamburglar]

I determined that the most efficient way to play this game is to ignore every task that isn't typing for character count, including never actually saving once you get to the minimum character count for the current task. As you go up in levels, the number of work units you accomplish per character goes up, and you continue accruing work units even if you do "extra credit" on one of your tasks by exceeding the minimum. So it pays to just keep returning focus to whatever window you were typing in and never stopping. I think it also might stop giving you new tasks once you have a certain number stacked up, which lets you have uninterrupted keyboard-mashing time to get those promotions. :D

Using this strategy, I managed to hit the Computation Administrator progress cap almost immediately after my first "well-deserved break".

[collinmanderson]

The dialog boxes remind me about space-team. Totally nonsense instructions. :)

[titzer]

This. is. freaking. genius.

[reacweb]

is there a forum to discuss about our progress in the game ?

[ducttapecrown]

Does anyone know where the text in the emails comes from?

[davidsong]

https://github.com/pippinbarr/itisasifyouweredoingwork/blob/...

[olavolav]

So amwesome! :-) Nostalgia + sillyness. Made my morning

[hayksaakian]

Is computation administrator the last level?

[larodi]

all suffering from ADHD - the text in the emails is the cure. couldn't' have been chosen more appropriately.

[hasbot]

It reminds me of that game Papers Please.

[geuis]

Doesn't work on mobile safari.

[jstoja]

Thank you for making my job better!

[j7ake]

This game chills me to the bone.

[nkg]

That is just wonderful.

[FlyingSideKick]

Hilarious! Thank you.

[oliv__]

This is brilliant.

[saghm]

Is there anything after you get to Computation Administrator?

[ajpikul]

ugh windows

[monochromatic]

Disappointed there was no Tayne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIXTNumrDc4

[fusiongyro]

I once posited this video as answer to "what does the project management group do all day?" and giggled more than was appropriate while watching it over his shoulder. Great video! Underrated.

[eanzenberg]

Can you kick up the 4d3d3d3

[Afal]

Here you go http://celeryman.alexmeub.com/

[dsun176]

I played if for 8 hours straight. My team thought I was very busy and diligent so they better not interrupted me.

[erikb]

Oh no! You should take a break after 4 hours. Otherwise you lose focus in the afternoon and become less productive!

[ClassyJacket]

This page is just a grey screen that pauses my podcast, on an iPhone.

[AshwinG]

UBlock Origin blocks some of the scripts, disable it.

[teknologist]

Same on my desktop Chrome!

[gt_]

clickbait titles should be banned from HN

[whatnotests]

Does not work on chrome on iPhone

[klodolph]

Not really surprising, it's simulating a desktop with mouse and keyboard.