I’d argue that just working towards a goal isn’t necessarily “labor.” What makes DRG a labor simulator is that every mission type involves some amount of planning, communication, coordination and manual work. The devs were clever, there’s some things you have to do in every game that just aren’t fun to do alone, but working together makes the drudgery go by faster.

Lol half the posts on the DRG subreddit are tips on how to approach game tasks more efficiently or more fun-ly. It’s like the kind of shit you see in trade school manuals.

Yes! But you’ll nedd two separate PCs or consoles to play it on. No split screen multiplayer.

DRG makes its profits by taking advantage of an intelligent species’ natural ingenuity, courage and work ethic.

Even then its a bit of ludonarrative dissonance. Like your character is alienated from their work but you as a player are still having fun junking spaceships.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker, most survival games, everything Ben Croshaw has called a cozy game, yeah.

There’s a beer you can drink in the game that makes you smarter. Sometimes after drinking it your character will realize their labor is being exploited by the company, but they lose their train of thought when they sober up.

“Oh, I love Ayn Rand.”