Videogames where you do a job.
Not the kind where you do simulated tasks that could be a job, but where doing the simulated task for money to invest in the job to do more work. Repeat, forever.
I like a good mindless job game. Stuff like Cooking Mama or Sim City or Roller Coaster Tycoon. Well, the Tycoon games are tricky because your goal is to build out something and keep it running but in the end you have more control over what you build and how. Tasks are things like "build a park with 3 coasters and 5 bathrooms" or something open ended.
The games I'm talking about are these new type of what I would consider a leveled up "tycoon" game. The first one I can think of would be the powerwashing game. The part that makes it fun is finding all the dirt in the level and trying to spray it clean. It's very simple but in the end your character gets paid for the job and uses that money to buy upgrades and unlock levels and whatever. It doesn't have a time limit mode (that I know of) or angry customer mode, but others do.
There was a phone game a while back called Good Pizza, Great Pizza. Your character owns a pizza shop and you get customers who come in and order very specific pizzas and you have to make them. Right now. Timer is ticking. Don't get through enough customers and you don't get enough money to buy new toppings. Spend your money on new chairs and you can't afford mushrooms. Customers come in and start asking for vague stuff like "a spicy pizza with no meat" and you're making like a jalapeno and onion nightmare. Because you are physically using your finger to spread the sauce, apply cheese, and add toppings there are quality control issues to contend with as well. Your customers are now hangry Cooking Mama's getting livid if you didn't put sauce to the edges because you were trying to prep one pizza while getting one cut and out the door before the other customer gets angry.
Now the fun tycoon game is a "stresstaruant simulator". I've seen dozens of other mobile games that work on the same premise. A line of customers on a timer, ordering bizarre time consuming items, leaving you rushing to fulfill every order. I don't know about yall, but after working in restaurants in college I can tell you that it's not fun and actually worse in real life. Hungry people lose patience instantly.
I got to thinking about this because I was playing my steam deck this weekend while sick and went looking at the newest games out there. Everything is a cozy something. Cozy Farm Simulator. Cozy Shop Simulator. Cozy Bubble Tea Cat Cafe Savings and Loan.
I did d/l a few demos of these just to see if they were as stressful as the mobile job games. Most just take you through a tutorial of a very intense menu system but in the end they were free from the stress as far as pleasing customers on a timer. (apparently lack of timer makes it cozy) But, its still a job simulator. You still had to sell so many books in a day to buy more books for the next day. (Some quickly become idle games like TCG Card Shop Simulator.)
Want to continue to the next area? Sell more items. Want to build a new barn? Sell more crops. The farming games are hardcore about the money aspect of a game. Back during the pandemic we bought Animal Crossing just like everyone else did. I think I played it for about a day before becoming frustrated and bored. I needed to farm for bells to do anything. Farming for stuff is not for me. WoW in 2004 had us running around skinning everything in the hopes of collecting enough leather to maybe construct a pair of boots that were way under-leveled for our characters. You got better loot from bosses. I gave up leather working at like level 40. (It took a very very long time to get to 60 back then.)
But now every game has crafting, and crafting requires farming. Farming games are huge. I tried Stardew Valley. I gave it a week. Tediously raising crops so I could tediously clear out and restore my farm was just not fun for me. It felt like doing a lot of work and spending a lot of time doing very very little. Animal Crossing was similar, I farmed a bunch of fruit or whatever for what? A fancier shovel? Cute farming overalls? Not for me.
I don't mind clearing out and collecting stuff to build things. But those things need to be useful to me in a specific time frame. Like, I love Age of Empires. I send a group out to collect wood, gold, and meat and after 15 minutes I have created a massive army to go wipe out the village next to me. That is fun.
I also don't mind doing a job. Coffee Talk is a game where you literally make drinks for customers. Given, you are talking to them 90% of the time and making drinks 10%. There is a mode where you can just non stop make drinks for people but there are very limited ingredients and no supply issues to worry about. Just get the order right.
But if I have to commit literal 8 hour workdays to a job in a game, for free, that I paid for, I'm out.