Competent virtual reality creates a profound shift in the way games immerse players. Past the novelty, however, comes the demand to have a material effect on the virtual world. Being a witness is fine, but becoming a participant is better. Job Simulator, perhaps more than any other PlayStation VR launch title, neither dwells in abstracts nor resides in stasis. Its cartoony confines are genuine, and player agency, however modest, feels authentic.
This is realized the first time you try to microwave a fire extinguisher or drink gasoline. Neither of these are objectives, but both are possible inside Job Simulator’s confines. The game posits a post-human world in which robots operate a museum that recreates mundane human service jobs. Available in the simulation-within-a-simulation are opportunities to clerk a convenience store, withstand a position as an auto mechanic, become an impossibly equipped chef, and endure the tedium of a cubical serf.
It is immediately clear that the robots who built these simulations had, at best, a tenuous grasp on the actual process. Each job has a requisite amount of context to make sense, but they’re all a few degrees left of center. Regular humans, for example, would violently object to being served a sandwich comprised of glass and boiling water. Getting your car fully serviced usually didn’t include an even distribution of headlight fluid spread across the dashboard. Gas stations don’t want to sell you obscenely large fountain drink—oh, wait no, that one is correct. Anyway, from the hilarious approximations of AM and FM radio to general bizarro world aesthetic of the place, Job Simulator is bent toward madcap tendencies and isn’t interested in correcting its course.
Watching someone play Job Simulator for the first time is akin to seeing someone realize they’re in a dream. In the office job, at first, they’ll plug in the computer and maybe answer the phone if it starts ringing. They will obey the rules of the real world they have inhabited for all of their lives. Soon, usually after fewer than ninety seconds, they will inevitably pick up the Magic 8-Ball or the Newton’s Cradle on the desk and hurt into the back of the head of the robot occupying the next cubicle. The chains have now come off.
Job Simulator can be a collection of four distinct rooms overloaded with weird virtual toys. It can also be a (somewhat) structured simulation game. Each of the four jobs has a finite and escalating series of goals to accomplish. The chef, for example, will receive different food orders to complete. There’s an impressively elaborate system of kitchen devices—blender, sandwich maker, microwave, refrigerator, grill, stove—within arm’s reach, creating easy options to heat, boil, blend, or smash together any of the food items lying about. Tools and material are at your disposal.
Most meal orders are modest, but in your construction of their food you always have the option to build something that would poison a regular person. The robots don’t care, obviously, they’re just mimicking a process they don’t fully understand. This is part of the dry humor ingrained in Job Simulator, and it’s always set to maximum power. Break a wine bottle over the sink and pour it on yourself, throw literally anything out into the restaurant, create soup out of a flowerpot and microwaved milk. Go crazy. Rough standards have to be met before you can serve it and “finish” the meal order, but Job Simulator still maintains a high degree of improvisation.
The other three jobs follow a similar course. The convenience store requires you to work a register and deal with customers. The mechanic must either aid or hilariously sabotage people with car trouble. The office worker needs to power through the mundanity of the drone lifestyle. The store clerk, in particular, reaches a point of repetition where it starts to feel like actual work (which, if intentional, would be a commendable triple Inception dive) and the office job rips perhaps a bit too much off Office Space, but they’re each still serviceable for the 30-40 minutes they require to complete.
Originally developed for the HTC Vive and its room-scale operation, I wasn’t sure how well Job Simulator would perform on the comparatively underpowered PlayStation VR. I’m pleased to report that, technically speaking, Job Simulator didn’t suffer in the transition. Two Move controllers, with their rear triggers, are responsible for Job Simulator’s primary activities of picking things up, turning switches, and mindlessly throwing objects. I preferred to play the game standing, but sitting seems like it would be plausible too. You do, however, need a good three (or more) feet of space around all sides; there’s quite bit of “stuff” to do near your surroundings.
Job Simulator is also well tuned to correct its own mistakes. If you drop or throw an object out of range, it will instantly refresh back to its point of origin. This goes for customized items, like a constructed piece of pizza or anything you’ve decided to make into a hood ornament, as well. It’s not perfect, in the office I dropped a candy bar and it was unrecoverable, but Job Simulator allows you to essentially re-enter any job from the last available task you received.
Long term value in Job Simulator isn’t measured in an individual experience. I spent around four hours goofing around with its jobs and generally having a good time, but the odds that I will personally dive back in and do it all again are low. Instead, it’s the first thing that I will show to another person, especially if they’re not in to videogames.
Other marquee titles on PlayStation VR—Rez, Thumper, and to a lesser extent SuperHyperCube—are for people who already play games. Rigs and Battlezone VR may be too intense. Batman: Arkham VR’s intentions are pure, but performance isn’t guaranteed. Job Simulator, however, is instantly relatable and easy to process. Feeling like you’re in a living cartoon captures exuberance in ways photorealism would struggle to achieve.
I thought I was done with not-an-actual-simulation simulation games. Surgeon Simulator signaled the rise of this goofy genre, The Stanley Parable was its existential midpoint, and a year later Goat Simulator was its logical end. How would anything else not just be riffing on what those three already achieved? Virtual reality is the obvious answer but it isn’t the only one. Job Simulator is silly and it’s fleeting, but it rewards experimentation and there’s enough weird secrets and subtlety packed inside to qualify its place as an eccentric and valuable experience.
If nothing else, Job Simulator allowed me throw a large cup of soda at an irritating customer. After working a service job for fifteen years, that was pleasant.
