The Xbox 360 Marketplace finally shut down last month on July 29th.
With its passing, a great host of work was lost; cool, punchy, exciting games that only released on the Xbox 360 and had not made the leap over to the most recent hardware, leaving a library to rival Alexandria to our memory cards and receptors.
I had only recently got my old 360 out of storage to reminisce on some good old-fashioned shooty games (seriously, its been twelve years and nothing has surpassed Max Payne 3) and found one little game that is now lost to the wind.
I want to talk about it, partly due to its now-lost status, and also that its seems unique in its story, setting, and humour.
Say hello to Office DisOrders.
Working 9 to 5 – Office DisOrders and the Chaos of Cubicle Work
Office DisOrders is a life simulation game focussing on the trials and tribulations of a bland, faceless corporation and its employees. Players are in control of Jennifer, a temp worker at the company.
The developer, Moment Games, are former alumni from Maxis, so the game takes similar elements from The Sims. While getting on with Jennifer’s daily tasks, the player has to manage her hunger, thirst, energy, and bladder.
Like The Sims it’s a pretty simple core loop. And while The Sims was a veiled skewering of American Consumerism (yes, really, here’s proof, (1:07:25)), Office DisOrders aims its sights at jobs and the corporate marketplace.
One of the first tasks Jennifer is given is to sign a non-disclosure form for her time at the company, Incomputech (rivalling Dundler Mifflin for the vaguest company name ever).
The task is a simple affair, just logging onto the computer and getting Jennifer to read and sign the form.
When The Sims would do loading screen as part of the expansion packs, they would hide little jokes in the loading screen. For example, for the Vacation expansion, there would be messages like, “Loading Weather data”, “Screening Entertainment Talents”, and “Establishing Hotline”.
Office DisOrders takes that similar tongue-in-cheek approach to its progress screens. That said disclosure form starts normal enough; “Reading Summary”, “Organising Thoughts”, and “Analysing Legalease”, but sprinkled in are increasingly paranoid thoughts like “Re-reading Subtext”, “Contemplating Implications”, and “Imagining Consequences”.
These are sight gags, on screen for a second at most, yet drew a laugh from me at the familiarity of thought processes when knee-deep in contracts.
Day One is normal enough though (aside from another sight gag of the range of middle managers doing nothing put playing Solitaire on their computers). But as the days progress, Office DisOrders slowing tweaks the surrealism dial up. Re-re-reorganisations that require everyone to move chairs multiple time a day, “downsizing” where people literally get shrunk, and hedge fund managers that are actual vampires.
Part of Office DisOrders charm also lies in its art design and location.
The characters are all simple designs, with square heads and only the most basic of features (some of the characters don’t even have mouths), yet it works. It doesn’t need super expressive faces, you get all the emotion from the text box voice lines, and it keeps the revolving doors of middle managers recognisable when they are ultimately fired, re-hired, promoted, and demoted in the same day.
The design of the Incomputech office is also oddly a strong suit. Just like The Sims, the office is laid out in “walls down” mode, allowing the player to see into every room with ease. But with bare white walls, strategic plants, and that EXACT grey heather carpet colour that every office has, it hits the perfect note.
I also love that when characters leave the office, they just step through the door and out into a dark void. It’s obviously meant to be like that as just a space to load in and out, but it gives the sense of the office being stuck in a liminal purgatory to add to the surreal vibe.
After only a few days as a temp, Jennifer becomes a full time worker and then CEO as the reshuffles continue. When an AI computer called “The Bubble” is brought in by Harry the Vampire (and hedge fund manager), Jennifer is told to feed it a mission statement and vision board so that it can direct the company moving forward.
First the mission statement which the progress screen says is made up of; “Collating Disagreements”, “Ameliorating Differences”, “Mishmashing Options”, “Exaggerating Prospects”, “Bridging Contradictions”, “Rewording Gibberish”, and “Obfuscating Techno-Babble”.
Once that is done it’s time for the vision board. No-one knows what that actually means though, so Jennifer steals a pair of glasses and combines it with the notice board from the kitchen and feeds it to the machine, which makes the poor AI promptly blow up in her face.
It leads to one of my favourite dialogues in the game;
Worker: The Bubble you and your Wall Street friend created burst!
Harry The Vampire: Who knew bubbles could do that? Oh dear, look at the time, gotta run.
Various Workers: My 401k is wiped out! My husband lost his job! My house got foreclosed on!
Jennifer: But this is what Wall Street wanted me to do!
Comedy games can be rather hit or miss with their jokes. Sometimes you get stunners like Portal 2, but rarely do games age well with their jibes and tone. Yet with Office DisOrders being made in 2010, two years after the financial crash, even in 2024 the jokes still hit a perfect combination of low and high-brow quips and zingers.
The game continues with political satire later on as Jennifer heads to Washington DC to ask for a bailout for the company. Again, it’s a bitingly funny scene just from the arguments the player can choose from, such as why potatoes are great, to “Family Values”, and the concept of America.
But even after securing a hilariously huge pile of money (as it is listed in the inventory) Jennifer gets fired, only to find herself back at Incomputech four months later with palette swaps of all the characters, causing her to shake her head and turn right back around.
The game ends with a simple text box; “Just another day at work.”
In research for this piece I had a look for similar titles that are also set in offices spaces and turns out there were quite a few more than I would have thought.
I already knew about The Stanley Parable, which merges its office space with surreal and liminal horror, while also being darkly humorous, with nineteen different endings.
One of the premier titles for VR is Job Simulator, a riotously funny game where the player is tasked with many jobs, with a section dedicated to office work filled with all manner of jibes such as firing staples at your colleagues and playing with your executive toys.
And Say No! More tasks you as a defiant intern who after being treated terribly by their company and having their lunch stolen by their supervisor, learns the power of saying “no!” to any request, and blazing through the company on a righteous mission of destruction.
The office space is a fruitful playground for games, allowing a power fantasy that can be drawn from both personal experiences and pop culture tentpoles such as The Office, Office Space, and even non-fiction books like Bullsh*t Jobs.
So while Office DisOrders may be lost to the digital wasteland, new games follow in its footsteps, and we that had the privilege to play it can reminisce about it, even now the servers have finally shut down.
Banner Photo Source: YouTube (Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) Documentation)
TOM CLEMENT | GAME PRODUCER | NARRATIVE DESIGNER 