I'd totally love to be a real ninja but Revenge of Shinobi is the closest I'll get, and that's OK with me.

They aren't jobs but they are aspirational vocations?!

Some games feel like work. Grinding is basically unpaid labour.

Yossarian wrote:

Sports can now be jobs, but were originally simply games themselves.

Good point. Do you think it's interesting though that the most popular games of games are the best paying ones?

For example: where is pétanque simulator?

Yossarian wrote:

Presumably they're the best paying because they're the most popular? But there are games which break that mould. Go carting and snowboarding aren't very popular, but Mario Kart and SSX are/were.

But then Go-Karting and snowboarding are expensive, and generally aren't something you can do at the local park...so playing games of those is closest most people can get to it (regularly at least).

Well yes, videogames tend to be a way of doing things that you can't normally. Even playing football in a game allows you to both play at a higher level than you probably can IRL and control a whole team.

Edit: Ram.

No, after the CRI (Cool Runnnings Initiative) winter sports are mandatory in all inappropriately climated countries

In Super Mario Sunshine you're essentially doing Civic Work in lieu of punishment.

*extremely Escape voice* Confessions of an Italian Window Cleaner

That concept is taken a bit further in Viscera Cleanup Detail, where you clean up post-rampage gibs.

Surgeon Simulator and Trauma Centre turn surgery into hilarious nonsense and high stress challenge in that order.

Euro Truck Driving Simulator and its brethren are all about making long distance freight trips, and they are the thin end of the wedge for the simulator market (train driving sims are really big in Japan, down to their own weird controllers).

A lot of survival style or Minecraft analogues are quite heavy on farming and designing methods to cut down the farm, to automate labour, which is amusing too. Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley and Farming Simulator say hi too.

It likely all comes down to the fact that its very easy to systematise jobs, because they have a clear input/output, success/failure, reward/punishment system. I read a piece over on Waypoint recently that was complaining about games that graded you, saying that it put a lot of pressure on the player and made it feel like a chore rather than a game, because of the emphasis that it put on performing well. No surprise that it's most often found in Japanese games.

Grading is really bad imo. It basically recontexutalises the majority of success into degrees of failure. (In the same way that any stars that aren't three in angrybirds don't really count as completing the level - particularly if you have that kind of mind tic).

My flat mate hates it, I've never been bothered by it. It's particularly rooted in a the Japanese sense of mind though, with all their tests and examinations and expectations. I like getting a big bunch of shiny S ranks, but I've never bothered to get good enough at anything to get 100%

Diluted Dante wrote:

Alternate take - it allows for progression.

I think beating a game could fulfill this. But I'm coming from a low arsed point of view and I'm rarely gonna do a thing twice just for a magical number bump but I can see how others might fancy putting the hours in (more work based rhetoric)

Making something a challenge may involve putting some work in, but it's very different from the tedious labour of grinding.

There's nothing wrong with work in games as such, and it doesn't have to have any relation to jobs. The best games make improvement and progress a pleasure.

Overcooked is probably the most jobby (not that kind of jobby) kind of game I've played lately.

Other than fork lift driving I've literally never played a job simulation.

Yes.