As a 21st century man-child, I love my work. I’d easily spend 10–12 hours a day at it if I could, it’s so engrossing. I’d even say it’s better than sex, and how many people can say that about their job? Well, maybe not better, but you can’t have sex for 12 hours straight.
Of course, I do need to log off sometimes. All work and no play, that sort of thing. But when it comes to playing, I’m just not much of a player — the game is far too stacked against millennials. Unfortunately, it’s where my friends hang out, so from time to time I need to re-convince myself that I’ve already invested too much effort to end it all now.
The problem is how much things have changed since I was a kid. It had started out so great: no cares, no fees, and no worries, since all your needs were taken care of. Well, they did have this tutorial that was more like babysitting, which lasted way too long. Kind of a necessary evil to teach you the ropes, but you didn’t need to pay too much attention. Just about everybody graduated to the good stuff. The problem was that they’d recently changed the revenue model from “free to play” to “fee to play,” so now you have microtransactions for everything from accommodation to food to utilities — stuff that used to be on the house. Luckily, I managed to pick up an in-game companion, which helped with the costs. Unfortunately, her routines had lately changed from being a supportive character to something more like nagware. Always going on about kids, making more money, and upgrading my skills. Tedious shit I have no interest in. Some of my friends keep urging me to focus more, but it’s never been a question of concentration — I can concentrate for hours on my job — but who wants to focus on the monotonous?
There are a couple of good things about it, though. I have to admit I’ve never seen such graphic fidelity: you can distinguish each individual tree on mountains miles away, and still see every insect on the ground. But I don’t know why they keep putting in more microtransactions rather than adding cool features. Especially free cool features. The best they’d done lately was introduce a few skateparks. That was alright, but if you get injured trying a new trick it takes forever to heal. Of course, you could always pay for better treatment in order to accelerate recovery. Just another example of how everything is monetized nowadays. On my way to and from the skatepark (there’s still no fast travel option) I sometimes come across an unopened box lying in front of a house. I don’t think of it as stealing per se, it’s more of a surprise mechanic since you never know what might be inside. Sometimes there’s really great perks — stuff I’d never be able to afford myself.
And then there’s the digital currency they recently introduced. It isn’t really useful since you can’t spend it everywhere, but its price fluctuates so wildly you can use it like a gambling mechanic. If you’re lucky and the value goes up you can cover a lot of your costs for the month. The problem is that it’s really expensive to buy even one coin. It was introduced as a money sink to help take excess cash out of the system, but for newbies like me there are way too many drains on your funds already. Still, some players have gotten ridiculously rich lately, and that’s driven up the power curve since they can afford to pay to win. It’s not really a very well thought out simulation. They’re going to need something like a great reset pretty soon.
Tiresome as it is, at least it’s only a few hours’ grind per day. And anyway, my real life revolves around work.
Work is awesome. When I’d originally begun with sales, they started me off in farming, but I quickly grew bored of that. I spent a couple of months trying my hand at fishing, and finished off the quarter with some hunting, but neither were to my liking. I eventually found my niche in middle management, where I proved to be excellent at directing peons and sometimes jumping in to help out. I love learning new skills and upgrading my existing ones at work. And the projects never last too long, usually only twenty minutes to an hour, but I more often than not complete them successfully. Management’s been watching, and I’ve already received quite a few promotions. Even when a project fails, it’s usually the fault of some other middle manager who screwed up.
Lately, I’ve started moonlighting, branching out in other directions on my own. Sure, the landscape is unfamiliar and littered with pitfalls, but half the fun is just exploring new territory. It’s pretty challenging, but I’m well equipped and gaining new abilities all the time. In fact, I’ve already developed a sideline catching rare pets. I have so many now that I’m running out of room to store them all. Things are going pretty great, but from time to time, my chosen field gets a little too crowded. That’s when things get cutthroat, and I have to spend some time whittling down the competition. I admit I’m pretty ruthless about it, but I tell myself they’re taking food out of the mouths of my future children. Still, it’s no way to earn your chicken dinner.
They say work won’t love you back, but I’m more than okay with a one-sided relationship. And yet the Europeans are supposed to be drafting some kind of “right to log off” legislation to prevent management from exploiting workers. Fucking socialists. If I had my way, I’d never log off again. Life is just better that way.
