Supermarket Together and the Paradox of Work Games

The Scottish philosopher David Hume once documented a phenomenon that has since been dubbed the “Paradox of Tragedy.” The TL;DR summary: There’s something deeply weird about how people engage with the species of drama where happy endings are conspicuously lacking. Tragedies subject us to sad and unpleasant occurrences – which would make us feel awful if they befell us or our loved ones, such that we avoid them wherever possible in everyday life – yet we willingly expose ourselves to these things by partaking in tragedies, and even end up taking pleasure in them thereby. What gives? Why do we do that to ourselves, and what makes that transmutation of emotions possible?

Games like Supermarket Together (2024) have me thinking that there exists a digital-age cousin to Hume’s paradox, which I propose calling the “Paradox of Work Games.” In the same way that we can separate dramas into tragedies and comedies, so too can we partition the totality of video games into separate sub/genres according to their mood or mechanics. I venture to label one such genre the “work game,” designating titles where the main action consists of laboring in a job or role comparable to one you might hold in the real world.

For instance, the Game & Watch Mario Bros. (1983), in which players man a factory assembly line, fits the bill of a work game. Desert Bus (1995) and its various high-tech spinoffs, which task players with driving a bus along a lengthy and tiresomely plain route in real time, would also be suitable examples. We could also include SCS Software’s Truck Simulator series (2008–2016), where players transport cargo along faithful renditions of the world’s highways (and their attendant traffic conditions). Factorio (2020), a game about building and maintaining factories, could also be considered a work game, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker (2022), which projects into the distant future the labor of decommissioning ships and salvaging their scrap, marks another entry in the genre.

If Hume’s concern was figuring out how sad or distressing events can make us happy, my 21st-century variation of his paradox wrestles with accounting for how the mundane tasks of employment, boring and tedious as they typically are in real life, can become fun – or even addictive – when packaged as a game. For, as Marx observes in his writings on the alienation of labor, work generally sucks, and we’re unwilling to do it unless coerced: “[A]s soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.” Why, then, would we voluntarily subject ourselves to that same misery under the guise of entertainment? And how, if at all, does it become a source of pleasure?

I have no answer to hand, for such is the nature of paradoxes. But these questions seem especially pertinent when playing Supermarket Together, because it’s a game about the unglamorous minutiae of operating an urban grocery store, simulating all the repetitive drudgery that entails. You stock shelves with goods and recycle their cardboard shipping boxes. You assign prices, monitor inventory, and order new shipments as necessary. You clean gross stuff from the floors, including brown masses resembling human excrement. You scan and bag purchases, then either manually enter credit card charges or carefully count change for customers who pay in cash. In sum, the game is a precise portrait of the particular awfulness of supermarket labor.

Therefore it’s a mystery to me why Supermarket Together – and other games like it – should exist. Marx notes that the worker “feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home.” It’s therefore illogical that anybody would want to return from their day job only to spend their scant and precious leisure time masquerading as an electronic supermarket employee.

To be sure, Supermarket Together has pockets of delightful weirdness. You can pet an astonishingly realistic cat that rests outside the break room. Through certain windows and doorways, you can glimpse an upside-down elephant standing on the ceiling outside of a jail cell (?!). Wielding a broom lets you smack other customers – or other players – who flail about with ragdoll clumsiness after each blow (yet suffer no ill effects from repeated beatings). In other words, it’s not all business. But these elements are hardly the game’s focus, and furnish such a small part of the overall experience that I don’t believe they’re what carries it.

I suspect that, despite appearances, the operative word in the game’s title is not its first, but its second. Supermarket Together’s fun – such as it is – lies in its “together” aspect. I can’t say I’ve found the gameplay itself appealing, but I have enjoyed seeing the surprising things my friends and anonymous internet coworkers do during our play sessions. Sometimes it’s their immense cleverness, like when a particularly numerate friend priced all our wares with values ending in multiples of $0.05, sparing our cashiers from ever counting pennies. On other occasions, it’s their hilarious ineptitude, such as when a different friend assembled a lovely Halloween display… right outside our main entrance, preventing customers from entering or leaving. Or else it’s the revelation of their remarkable aesthetic sense, like when a total stranger strung up an altogether stingy number of lamps, yet managed to blanket the entire store with light.

The greatest surprise of all is when teamwork, without your prompting, saves you from a crisis. There’s nothing like the deep sense of relief – and appreciation – you feel when you’re racing to finish a task and find that your companions have your back, supporting, or even preempting, your efforts to complete it.

In the end, Supermarket Together’s true subject matter is not only labor as an activity, but as an entity – that is, the assorted people who keep the world moving. The game is about witnessing collective achievement on a small scale, and celebrating the camaraderie that can emerge among a group of people who share a unity of purpose. And the entire package nods toward the urgent need for labor solidarity. For it demonstrates that, no matter how unappealing a given job may seem, the key component to making that work fulfilling and worthwhile is the support of the people who do it alongside you.

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Alexander B. Joy hails from New Hampshire, where he used to spend the long winters reading the world’s classics and composing haiku. He now resides in North Carolina, but is plotting his escape. Find him on Bluesky and see more of his work here.