‘It Is As If You Were Doing Work’ browser game perfectly encapsulates the life of an office worker

It Is As If You Were Doing Work, an indie game by Pippin Barr you can play right in your web browser, simulates what it’s like to hate every second of working in an office and waiting to go home to have five hours of free time before you wake up early in the morning to do it all over again.

If you’ve ever sat at a lonely cubicle all day — or a desk in your home office, or even your couch using a TV dinner tray as a desk — performing thankless tasks, you probably know all about the tedium of a regular workday. If you don’t, then you can give It Is As If You Were Doing Work a try to see how the other half lives.

It Is As If You Were Doing Work is a realistic work simulator

You’re even given a screen to log in with your “username and password” like you’re at a real workstation. It’s even quite fun, at least until you realize how similar to work the game actually is — like being asked to write a 212-character email and accomplish other tasks while constant annoyances like motivational posters pop up everywhere. They’re there to challenge your concentration, of course, but they’re poised as fun little work extras.

In that respect, it’s just like getting a thousand emails about cake in the break room or an event you can’t attend because you work remotely but still get invited to every week anyway. But you’re a worker bee, so that piddly little email despite all the noise is no problem as you soldier on to be the best employee you can be, even though you’re wondering if the tedium is all worth the money. It’s uncanny, really.

If that doesn’t sound like an accurate representation of office work, I don’t know what is. You can check out the game and play it in your browser at Pippin Barr’s official site.

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