I’m not allowed to not have a job.  The world has made things so expensive and my health has made it to where insurance is a necessity not a recommendation.  I have nightmares at times where I lose my job and then I have to find ways to make sure I can still get my medicine that without insurance is thousands of dollars for just a month’s supply.  It’s a very real scenario in my day-to-day life that I see staff leaving my company due to budget cuts and I wonder, “Am I next on someone’s list?”

I love video games.  I was lucky enough earlier in my life to get a glimpse of the ground floor of game making in my late teens and early 20s that it has been a always churning drive to re-enter that workforce again.  I made a game in my spare time to deepen that understanding and figure out if it’s something I really wanted to do as a career.  There are thousands of others just like me: where a childhood obsession with experiencing far-away lands and incredible stories is a foundational career path.  Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.  I can only imagine people really felt that before they got served their termination papers.

In 2023, the gaming industry crowded national headlines as over 10,000 people were laid off for a myriad of reasons, but most notably the awkward financial boom of the COVID-19 pandemic and corporate entities falsely believing the money party would never end.  This led to thousands of workers being put in a completely avoidable position of navigating an increasingly volatile job market where every company needed staff but no company was interested in paying for it.  Staff that had relocated for a chance at their dream, staff who were confident that their years of work could weather the storm, the constant undermining of staff foundational to a game’s longevity and success: burned at the seams of an less-than-expected Metacritic number or a company’s profits just not quite high enough to appease the upper-scaled masses.

But damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Welcome to the Karoshi Club. The term Karoshi is a Japanese phrase loosely translated to “Death from Overworking.”  Karoshi Culture is not lost upon the lips it’s muttered from: in 2022, nearly 3,000 people in Japan committed suicide due to working conditions and expectations.  The corporate business world is competitive, brutal, cutthroat, and unapologetic in its almighty obsession of the dollar.  You wouldn’t expect it at face value coming from a genre of work that brings so many people together, and provides spaces of relief and release from the oft-beaten craters of life, but the gaming industry, as it ultimately is an industry, suffers right alongside.

For Henji Haishima, it’s been a year away from this.  Fired from his job and desperate to find something, anything, he stumbles his way to a ringing payphone looking for someone who isn’t him.  They’re being addressed for a job interview.  A job interview is something Henji needs, but he’s had many before.  Doomed to the neutral but monstrous responses of, “We’ll call you back if we’re interested,” and receiving none such return, Henji can respond in one of two ways: tell the truth and explain to the employer on the other line that he is in fact not who they are looking for but they may be interested in what he has to offer; or lie.  Lie and say you are that guy.  Lie and get your foot in the door.  Lie so you can live.

Anyone who has withstood a job interview knows that fabricating the truth to build your rapport  is not a shunned tactic, but a necessary evil.  You may not be the best candidate, but you could be the best fit depending on what their definition of “best” is.  Henji will have to decide whether to tell the truth or lie in each question the interviewer provides, and it’s your job to build Henji to the best image of himself he can portray to a complete stranger.  They don’t need to know he fell asleep on the job, they don’t need to know he’s been out of a job for a year.  They could know he was “a directorial genius working on several projects at a time” or he was “the point of contact for having to do the tough job of laying off hundreds of employees.”  Is any of this true?  Absolutely fucking not.  But it doesn’t matter.  You need a job.  You need money.  You need stability.  You need a reason.  You need to be a reason.

The process from answering the phone to a completed interview will only take you around 15 minutes and how you conduct yourself will branch you into one of three different endings.  Henji’s opportunity to procure stability in a world that is not fit to provide it rests entirely on the morals of your choices and the lengths you’ll go to get the job done.  It’s an unnerving feeling taking the time to lie to someone who’s potentially giving you the opportunity to truthfully feel alive again.  But what would you rather do?  Rest on your morals and hope for the best?  Lie and be someone you aren’t, only to revel in the consequences in the future?  Or flirt with both sides and ride a morally gray line to greener pastures?

It’s a life many are currently facing now.  Unnecessarily having to provide hundreds of resumes to thousands of jobs against tens of thousands of suitors.  The forever demoralizing, dehumanizing, devitalizing journey of selling yourself so you can buy into a world that’s interested in buying into your talents.  Just be you.  But better.  For the company.  For your well being.

So tell me:

Play Welcome to the Karoshi Club here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2624950/Welcome_to_the_Karoshi_Club/