I was hanging by the OpenRCT2 Discord a couple months ago when a fellow colleague asked if anyone wanted a free copy of SteamWorld Build, as he had a spare key from a Humble Bundle or similar¹. I was pretty idle and have been a longtime fan of other titles of the series², so I said “why not?”.

The SteamWorld anthology contains different game genres (turn-based, platformer, city builder) all set into the same universe that has steam-driven robot characters living in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world. It has great artwork, witty jokes and is ultimately very amusing, thus I was excited.

SteamWorld Build has you as a sort of city planner/developer: you have to build housing for the workers and factories for them to work and produce goods which are necessary for further advancing your small society, and that’s when things started getting gloomy.

In the beginning you can only build workers residences, general stores and dirt roads to connect them, because on day one that’s all that these workers long for. Fulfilling their needs is both a mechanic to unlock new buildings and to attract more of them, which you will need to work your various new factories and progress the game even further³.

The trick is that as the game progresses, these workers also start demanding more stuff, a general store is not enough, they now want a service shop, charcoal and cactus water, all within walking distance, how dare them⁴!

The game doesn’t stop there though, at some point you’ll have enough workers and economic strength to move to the next level: promoting some of these to engineers⁵, which you do by upgrading their existing houses. As newcomers of their fresh reality, engineers still stick to some of their old consumption habits while creating new ones, such as demanding for purified water and a washing service, for they also have hygiene needs!

And it keeps on going, eventually you upgrade their homes to house aristobots who still want pure water and washing service, in addition to a waxing service and a casino. Ah, and don’t ask me for their demands when they eventually become scientists, as they demand ART! Here’s a montage of each of their needs at the end of the game, remember you need to fulfill them to be able to advance:

Has it struck you yet how the game has some uncanny similarity with our current society?

#1 Development pushes workers to the fringe of the city

Because it is just easier to fulfill the needs of whoever is close to the city centre where most of the things are being built, naturally the game makes you upgrade your most well-positioned homes and slowly turn you into a gentrification machine⁶. Why would you have engineers or scientists living at the edge of the city where you’ll have to build all their supporting infrastructure from scratch when it’s just easier and cheaper to do that with workers?

#2 Robots better positioned are most and first rewarded

If they already live close to all of their current and future needs, let them move into the next tier first. What most would think is meritocracy is really just the privilege of being there first to reap the benefits.

#3 Different strata, distinct benefits

Why would the workers need to rely on cactus water and charcoal to sustain themselves, while there is already purified water and meat? There is no push to deliver the same quality of life to them all because from the game mechanics, it would be difficult to achieve, but maybe because some of the more refined have habits that would not be sustainable at a global scale.

It might look like the article has taken a sharp turn, but if you are a tiny bit grounded in reality, you see how even though I’m speaking of robots in a post-apocalyptic world, a lot of it applies to us humans, in the current era⁷. It’s easy to see how the same mechanics play out in most of the world and sadly it doesn’t seem to have an easy and immediate solution while capitalism, as a system of exploitation and inequality maximization, continues to be dominant.

I have no idea if the game developers wanted to stir such a sentiment or not, though I saw some reviews where people had similar perceptions, yet even if it’s a disturbing realization, it’s a good way to show that games are much more than just “time wasters that teach you nothing”.