EXPLORE THE GAMES:
⟢ Thesis
⟢ Capstone
⟢ Studio II
⟢ Major Studio
⟢ Elective
JOB
⊹ ࣪.⋆~⊹₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆✩࿐
For MFA Thesis
You sign away 3 years of your life to perform a strange job in a locked room. Even stranger... they won't tell you what that job is. Perform the SPECIAL LABOR assigned to you by the COMPANY in this surreal, corporate incremental rogue-like.
JOB - Trailer
Interview:
✧ In one or two sentences, describe the main themes present in your game.
JOB is a game about labor, exploitation, and capitalism and about how we are numbed to and then seduced by the horrors committed against us by faceless corporations.
✧ What was the inspiration of the game? What made your team decide to make this game specifically?
I was compelled by the possibility of representing the complex interactions of capitalism with the individuals living within its confines. A game that can compress and walk you through a life lived by a laborer under capitalism sounds interesting to me! We'll see if we get there.
✧ What were some of your most memorable moments from making this game? What did you learn from those moments?
Having started the development process in January, it's been a compressed, hazy, blur of a time. However, the moments that stick out to me the most-- or the moments that I remember best at least --were the many conversations I had with my advisor, Naomi. In those we talked about similar games, the feelings invoked by interactive systems and mechanics, the ways that players engaged with other games in the genre(s), and most of all what I wanted to "do" with the game and how I wanted to do it.
✧ Talk about your teammates! What was everyone's role?
So there's me: Nico. I developed the game. However, though I was the only one in-engine, I was not the only person to work on the game.
Austin Burkett: a close friend, fellow game creator, and talented audio designer helped me figure out the sound identity of the physical office space and contributed a host of clips that make up the surreal corporate ambience. Austin was critical, not just to the formulation of the soundscape but also the identity of the game itself. It was endlessly helpful to have someone familiar with what I was aiming to do who I could regularly check in with and who, totally unprompted, would send me a bunch of audio that was a perfect fit for the game.
Mike Dewson: a close friend, previous collaborator, and excellent artist and animator. Mike worked with me in the Dungeons and Dragons Patreon/commission space back in the day and then I convinced him to learn how to do 1-bit pixel art so that he could do all of the art for my Playdate game. Working with Mike has always been effortless and this project was no different. If you want to see Mike's footprint, look to Gooby (the Pet application), that's 100% Mike.
Robert Ohman: a close friend (there's a throughline here) and previous collaborator. Robert and I worked together for the first time on an alt-ctrl game and I knew we had to work together again! Robert absolutely smashed the non-diegetic music (and some of the diegetic COMPANY chimes and such) for JOB. Robert has this uncanny ability to create a sound that you've never heard before but sounds exactly like you'd imagine the sound would feel. How's that for a sentence.
play this game on itch.io
https://nicoailani.com/
bsky: @thewriterwins