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Work-time Fun is one of the few games that genuinely confuses me. You can talk about the byzantine storylines of games like Metal Gear or Modern Warfare 2 all you'd like, but I tend to be able to follow them, even if it is after watching a cut-scene a second time. I don't say this to brag, because even when I don't follow a story's logic I can roll with it and still have comprehensible game experience.
With Work-Time Fun (abbreviated to the appropriate "WTF"), even the gameplay itself throws logic out the window. Every time I play it, I'm left wondering why I played it, but oddly satisfied at what I've just done. A long internet-time ago, I wrote about Flower, Sun, and Rain, a game which I proposed had intentional flaws designed to continually asked the player why they were playing the game. It was a bit egotistical and counterintuitive to not want people to play your game, but I ultimately thought it was a creative quirk that you took part and parcel with an already odd game. Suda 51 was trying to purposely divisive or incompetent, which, depending on who speak to, is a pretty consistent mantra of his.
But Work-time Fun is without question entirely spiteful in its design. Essentially a collection of mini-games that range from counting the number of people in a crowd to sniping people inside a skyscraper with "happy bullets", with only a few unlocked from the start. In order to unlock more games, you have to earn money playing the games you do have. Once you have enough money, you spend it on vending machines that cost 1, 5, 10, and 50 dollars. The mini-games vary in yield per play, but 50 dollars will take you around an hour or two to acquire.
The vending machines won't always yield a game, either. Your hard-earned cash could be wasted on trinkets and other stuff you don't want (unless trinkets are your thing). Not only that, but certain games are tied to certain machines, which makes unlocking them frustrating as hell. With progress as slow and random as it is, collecting everything will take you quite a while, especially if you want each and every title, game, and trinket.
You gain titles for things like playing Pendemonium, a game that involves nothing other than putting caps on the top of pens and nothing else, for 100 hours. The game doesn't "end" and you decide when you've felt enough monotony. The counter on the bottom of the screen has 36 digits. I haven't been able to check if all of those zero's can actually change. But that hasn't stopped people who seem obsessed with this game. From a GameFAQs guide by user Ahlyis:
Doing 5,000 pens an hour is not too hard. You may want to kill yourself after, just for a change of pace. But it's not hard to exceed 5,000 pens per hour if you can stand the monotony.
My (2nd) best:
101,000 total pens
73 defective units
$3,027.81 base salary
$2,016.00 bonus pay
$5,043.81 final paycheck
My best: 1,000,011 total pens
$20,791.74 final paycheck
306,993 defective units
Only $1.20 bonus pay (I did almost none of the run while trying for accuracy)
I didn't worry about making the pens correctly, simply on putting a cap on and moving on. Took me about 5 months of casually working on this to complete it.
This mini-game is called "Drunken Mayor". In it, you have to cut the ribbon at several opening ceremonies without missing.
I'm not sure what "casually" working on it means, but 1,000,011 pens at 5,000 pens an hour amounts to about 200 hours. Add the 20 hours from his second-best, and I could work through Persona 3 and 4 and have time for a run of Half-Life while he capped away. I'm not berating the Ahlyis for wasting his time, I'm just in awe at the obsession that games like this can inspire.
There are plenty of games just like this in Work-time Fun; most them feel like the work you're doing to get to the foal rather than the fun. It's ironic, then, that the goal happens to be getting more games and useless objects. It's a weird, obsessive cycle that won't end for quite some time.
But, the design being intentional and all, there's a bit of a charm to it. Like a girl who can't leave an abusive boyfriend, I come back to Work-time Fun time after time. It's never for too long, though; usually, I'll be sitting somewhere, waiting for something to happen and not feel like playing anything else on my PSP. Perhaps there's something about hating the player that appeals to certain kinds of people. It could also be the oddball Japanese imagery that populates the menus. It really does feel like some sort of weird version of hell (the game was called Part-time Hell in Japan), and there's something unique great about it. I just don't know why I keep playing it.
Have you guys ever had an abusive relationship with a game?
