"I really enjoy the mundane process of making a dirty plate get clean, and my hands are warm. It requires only the most basic skill, but there's a constant sense of progress, of achieving something, and at the end of it a pile of nice, clean crockery. Which is to say, I get it, I'm totally aware of all the issues, but when I hear a new game has a colossal map covered in icons to clear, I feel a sense of warm happiness."
"but of course still absolutely leans on them. I see William Hughes' fantastically furious AV Club review describing these as "the nine million chores waiting to intrude on [Atsu's] quest for solitary vengeance." In Chris Tapsell's superbly considered Eurogamer review, he notes, "Once again, sidequests amount to helping nameless NPCs with comical busywork that inevitably ends in killing six-to-twelve bad guys." And I think: "Ooh, goodie!""
A preference for domestic chores translates into enjoyment of repetitive in-game tasks that produce visible progress. Performing simple, warm tasks like dishwashing provides a steady sense of achievement and tidy results. That pleasure extends to games with vast maps populated by icons to clear, producing warm happiness despite awareness of design issues. Ghost of Yōtei faces criticism for obsessive completionism and intrusive side chores; efforts to integrate repetitive activities into the world increase opacity but still rely heavily on icons. Critics characterize sidequests as busywork ending in mass combat. A 2021 survival game, Dysmantle, delivered many hours of engaging, satisfying mundanity.
Read at Kotaku
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]