Night Of The Consumers And Working-Class Woes

Is it bad that the only video game I’ve ever fully related to is a horror game?

What makes video games unique as an art form is interactivity. Our interactions as players draw us further into these experiences than just about any other media can achieve. There’s very little you can’t do in a video game. Almost no experience is off the table. This, I believe, is part of why representation matters so much in video games. From games that tell stories to competitive games with a wide cast of characters, it is vital that games are inclusive. While it’s great that through games we can experience life as people different from ourselves, we mustn’t limit that experience to the same few over and over.

Unfortunately, though amazing work is being done all the time, there are still many people who rarely get to see themselves in games. These issues range from the problematic and prejudiced down to the annoying and disappointing. Diversity is important for many reasons, least of all, to keep things fresh and interesting. What’s most important is that the most neglected people feel represented, like their stories matter. As a white man, I’m privileged enough to see people who look like me in all kinds of media all the time. However, I rarely see people who live like me, especially in games. Blockbuster video games tend to focus on the biggest, most world-changing events in their stories. Games deal mostly in escapism, they let us play the hero and save the day, they let us be the most important person in the universe. In video games, most of us would be somewhere in the background.

Oh god, they’re coming

For many of us, day-to-day life is repetitive, stressful and boring. We all have bills to pay, jobs or school to go to; it’s not all fun times. Many of us struggle with our day to day lives; awful jobs and low pay are the norm. We’re all on the grind, but many of us are not progressing as much as we’d like. This is a common experience, so where are the games about that?

The original premise for this article was an analysis of games that depict the working class. Although there is almost no end to the list of job simulators, few if any tackle the subject of living the life of someone working these jobs. Most of these games are casual representations of work that aim for some degree of realism, or over the top, frantic dramatisations designed for couch co-op shenanigans. Regardless of their basis, these games are intended to be fun and engaging.

While researching potential candidates for this article, I found almost no games that matched my criteria. Papers Please came close, but I’m looking for something more contemporary and relatable. Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is a pretty excellent example of what I’m talking about, but as far as analysis goes, that’s well-trodden ground.

Karen, no, bad Karen

What I want to talk to you about is Night of the Consumers. If you haven’t heard, it’s a small indie horror game that blew up on Itch.io a few months ago. It’s short and basic in its current form, but attention from some famous YouTubers brought many eyes to the little game. So what is it? NotC is a true to life simulation of working in modern retail, particularly accurate for those suffering from anxiety. In my opinion, this is the most effective horror game in years.

In Night of the Consumers, you play as the latest hire in a busy supermarket. You are “greeted” by your manager, who tells you you’re late but lets it slide this time. Your task is to head out on to the shop floor and get those shelves stacked. All the while, you will be dealing with demanding customers, who corner you with questions and need to be led to the corresponding aisle. Your objective is to get all shelves stacked by the end of the day. Now, by that description, you’d be forgiven for questioning what the fuss is about. Well, what if the characters looked like this:

(Avert your eyes)

Yup.

Now what I can’t get across on this page is the rest of the elements that make this game so horrifying. The sound design is impeccable in how disturbing it can be. The piped in-store music is repetitive; the customers make horrible noises that build and build as they wait for you to lead them where they want to go. There are hidden messages on the labels of goods that tell you to get out, or that you are wasting your life. Anything less than doing your job perfectly results in a terrifying moment where the lights go out, and your manager chases you down, gets in your face and tells you you’re fired. If you get everything right, he tells you you’re on track to being a top employee, and to be back at 6 am the next day to do it all over. Everything in this game is designed to make you panic and to fill you with dread.

What caught my attention wasn’t just how good of a horror game this is, but how realistic it feels. As exaggerated and insane as the game may seem, what I see is a perfect recreation of working retail while dealing with anxiety. That has been my life for the last six years, and while it has it’s better moments there are often times when I really struggle to continue, and a regular day can feel a lot like how this game plays. For fear I was reading too much into this, I contacted the creator of the game to see if this was something they had planned. This kind of pitch-perfect design can only come from experience.

This seems fair

“Yeah, for sure! I’ve been working in retail for four years (two years in a supermarket) and it’s never been something I’ve particularly enjoyed. I basically just wanted to create a game to parody my day-job to deal with the frustrations I’ve had with bad management, employees, and of course, the customers. Since I know what it’s like to work in retail, I found it was very easy to translate into a game.”

This is Germfood, the creator of Night of the Consumers. They were kind enough to answer a few questions and chat to me about the game. It seems we have our retail struggles in common. I wanted to know more about the reasons why they made the game, and also if the struggle of working-class life was a part of that process.

“I’m really happy to hear that it got you to relate like that. That is something that I thought would be really cool when I first released the game. The idea that the game could bring retail workers together and relate to the nightmares they’ve all experienced, and I see that in a lot of comments on Youtube playthroughs of the game.”

Is this work/life balance?

“And yes, that’s something I wanted to depict for sure. Night of the Consumers was hard to balance (making a game fun when it’s about working a crappy job is tough, who’d have thought?). But for how over-exaggerated the game is, I wanted it to retain that dreary feeling you get when you’re somewhere you don’t really want to be yet you’re there cause you have bills to pay.”

This, I think, is core to the horror of NotC. That dreary feeling, the depressing repetition of doing the same thing over and over again with no progress, all the while life is moving on. You get older, but you don’t necessarily feel like you’re moving forward. While the game is very in your face about how it scares you, what it taps into is something more existential. We can all play the game once, get a few spooks and put it away. What if you couldn’t, though? What if you have to do this every day of your life?

Didn’t need sleep anyway

“The game also has a lot of hidden messages on the products you stack, one blatantly saying “You’re wasting your life”. I’m also working on expanding the game at the moment. One of the new mechanics I’m messing around with is to do with sleep deprivation, something that is well-known in the retail world. So not only depicting the job is important to me, but how it affects your life outside of work too.”

The effects jobs like these can have on someone’s mental health is enormous. In many studies on workplace mental health, retail has ranked extremely low alongside most other customer service industries. Many of these jobs are entry-level, often targeted at young people who need to start earning a living for the first time. These jobs are classically thought of as temporary, a stepping stone to your future. More like a speed bump really, but a necessary hurdle in life that builds character. However, that speed bump can quickly become a mountain for many of us.

Modern retail is taking more and more cues from big business, efficiency is the name of the game, and the goal is always profit. Minimum wage jobs are getting harder on the worker in many industries with metrics and timed activity becoming standard in many jobs. In a previous job, I had dozens of sales targets, some that actively clashed with each other to make sure I could never keep my employer fully happy. Not entirely unlike the manager in Night of the Consumers, I would regularly have my manager come to me to discuss these metrics. The possibility of losing my job if my numbers weren’t good enough was always held over my head, and as I said, they rigged the system to make sure my metrics were never perfect. In this game, your manager wants to fire you. In real life, there’s a decent chance someone wants you fired from your real job too.

She’s not wrong, but also, not right

I have many friends and relatives in similar situations with similar stories. This is the truth of modern working-class life, the only jobs we can get are ones where we are less important to our employers than the money we make for them, and the second we’re not making them enough money they can and will cut us loose. The stepping stone is quickly becoming an island, as opportunities to move forward are disappearing. Right now in 2020, we’re in a global pandemic in which we, the underpaid and overworked, have been classed as essential workers. Nothing has changed; they’re just calling us essential instead of disposable.

“Absolutely. There have been multiple busy workdays where I ask myself why I’m putting my mental health on the line just to stack some measly shelves and If I were to leave, how I’d be replaced in a week since working-class jobs are so disposable. I worked really hard on the music which plays when you’re caught by a customer in the game, I wanted it to convey the anxiety you feel when you’re asked where a product is, but you don’t have a goddamn clue, cause you don’t really care. Yet, you have to handle it professionally, or you may get a complaint (or in the game, fired immediately).”

“I’ve heard people say that the fact that there’s no monsters, ghosts, or paranormal stuff is their favourite thing about the game. It’s just straight-up real-life bullshit, and that’s terrifying!”