Menial Tasks, But Like, In Real Life
My last couple of days have ended up just being pretty weird.
Sunday, which is typically my evening to relax, enjoy myself, order a pizza (which I still did) and really sink into some games, was not in normal form. I was originally going to guest on a podcast, but that was pushed to Tuesday, which is totally fine! I instead took a bit more time with Sunday Chats than I expected to have, looked over a few things, got the ball rolling on the new IP logo a bit more, and then sat down to work in a couple episodes of The OC. We decided we’d record in the morning today, and before that, record an episode of Hbomb and Friends, both of which were fun (even though we only go through one episode of the BrOC). All well and good, I just far prefer to spend my days off catching up on sleep and trying to relax nowadays, especially Mondays.
But hey, that doesn’t prohibit me from enjoying the rest of the afternoon/evening off. Now, here me out, I swear this whole thing has a point.
Mid-Hbomb and Friends I took a look at my kitchen and got so ferociously mad about how filthy it was I new that was going to be my project for the rest of the day. After finishing recording, I went straight to the shower, then out to Walmart to get some more washing machine tablets, some cleaning supplies, and came home to get to work. I got to power through some Horizon Zero Dawn reviews/impressions before wrapping up everything I wanted to get done though, a nice bonus.
Taking down the Christmas tree (finally), vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen, getting some laundry done, packing a few things up and organizing all around is a very relief-driven experience. I’m a bit frustrated that I didn’t get as much time to play games as I’d like. I’m about to sit down and play some Nioh before heading to dinner with some friends, then coming back to stream The Division with my D Club friends, as we are now called, just for reference. But getting these tasks done, that should/needed to be done, and I for whatever reason generally enjoy doing them, reminds me a lot of menial tasks both in real life, but also in video games.
Maybe it’s the coupling with Horizon impressions, an open world game that inherently favorites itself to some bullshit tasks here and there, but it made me think about all the menial tasks in games that really work.
I kind of wish there was a game where you could just clean, or do dishes, and have that be really satisfying. I’m trying to think of one, and I have this image in my head of dusting off objects in some game that I can’t quite name, and that being pretty satisfying. The ones that do it weird are always the ones that do it best.
Animal Crossing is a great example, because running through your whole town, picking weeds and watering flowers, is such a core tenant to that franchise. Keeping your village clean, clear, and beautiful, really does give some level of peace-of-mind to the player that few game mechanics have really replicated.
Menial tasks in games that suck are fetch/delivery quests with no significant payoff. Or cleaning up your inventory. Thank god Nioh has just a button you can hit to sweep out all of the bullshit in your inventory. It’s like the anti-clutter filter. But having to go through all my equipment every hour or so in something like Tales of Berseria can be a bit of a headache.
Menial tasks I think are genuinely really important to any immersive video game, and the reason why is right there in the descriptor of quality: they’re genuine. They feel like something that needs to be done, like I said above about cleaning out the house. It’s doing the thing right that is the next step harder. Working it into a mechanic or a world where it makes sense, has context, and feels pretty good to do, I think that is a big ask for many games today.
Horizon seems like it has a ton to do and they’re all pretty great, and I’m excited to see that game in front of me for real. I originally wasn’t going to get it on launch day because I knew Zelda would be (possibly) the game I prefer of the two, and it’s coming out three days later. Now, I think I’ll spend those three days before in Horizon’s world, and I’ll be anxious to talk about both.
