Seems Legit

So I was derping about on the Xbox Live Marketplace the other night, when I nearly got conned by a cunning and wily trickster:

Oh-ho! I'm not falling for that one! Only Nigerian finance ministers have the savvy and capital to make such audacious financial claims!

What game was this for, you ask? Surely, it must be some truly mind bending, life altering, stunning epic of a game to warrant such a ludicrous price tag?

Actually it was Flo's Diner Dash.

This is Flo. Source.

Wait, no, this game wasn't for me. It's something Mrs. Cranface was interested in. But as wonderful as she is (Mrs. Cranface, not Flo) I am not spending 4.2 cranzillion Microsoft credits on this game.

And besides, 'waiter simulation' is stretching the truth a little. In fact, there is no way Flo should be smiling the way she is. The game essentially puts you in control of our overworked and underpaid heroine Flo, as she rushes around seating diners, taking their orders, bringing their food and clearing away their mess. Diners who, after a mere microsecond of waiting, bang their fists on the tables in anger at such appalling service. These diners are human beings, not mayfly, they do not have to eat, fuck and birth babies all in a day just to ensure their very survival.

Poor Flo is the only one serving these impatient arseholes, who are tighter with their tips than Scrooge during a recession and her main reward for earning any money is the opportunity to add more tables to the diner - thus increasing her never ending cycle of dystopian servitude. Show this game to a Communist and he'll be hurling his copy of the Manifesto straight at the TV.

'Before playing Flo's Diner Dash, I only had a small moustache and hunted peasants for sport'. Source.

If this slave-labour simulator is what the youth are playing today, what does this mean for the future of gaming?

The 12 isn't how old you need to be to play the game, it's the average age of the work force.

I would imagine Victorian Workforce Simulator would make full use of the Kinect's capabilities. Perhaps there would be a mini-game where you have to catch gruel in your small wooden bowl before dinner time is over. Not only that, but there would be two modes, Simulation and Career. In Simulation, you train and develop a team of starved, cheap labour, until you were running the most cruelly efficient workhouse in all of foggy London town. You could have Barney Buggerthumb as a level 2 shoe shine, and Maude Millertuggins as a level 3 matchstick girl. In Career mode, you take on the role of one these Dickensian raggamuffins, working your way up the ranks from measly chimney sweep, to a world renowned picker of pockets. But be careful of the old bill, if they find you, they'll be bashing your noggin in, and it's off to the workhouse for you, young Timothy Bumblesniff!

What I like most about the front cover of Victorian Workforce Simulator is that one of the pictures looks like a man crawling up a bum hole.