Amazon FC Employees Play These Video Games While They Work

At Amazon, I get paid to play video games all day. Dream job, right?

Be careful what you wish for. At my Amazon fulfillment center, my coworkers and I have two screens at our stations. One is for work. The other and larger screen allows employees to play eight different video games, among other things. Does this "gamification" of work, well, work?

Let's look at these FC Games to find out! Plus, look for the new bonus game at the end!

Tamazilla

The first game is Tamazilla, in which you collect virtual pets, care for them, and watch them evolve. Some of the pets, like the pink panda, are really pretty cute. It's fun to see caterpillars grow into butterflies. The animals are styled with blocks, so they look like generic Minecraft creatures.

I played Tamazilla for maybe three months, daily. This game appealed to the collector in me, but beyond collecting, there was little reward in catching them all.

The goal is to evolve all the pets. The problem is the huge number of critters. For instance, there is not just one kitten, but three different kinds of kitties (with monikers like friendly, cute, whatever). Since there are three different cats, and three levels of evolution per kitty, that means we need nine different kitties to fill all those slots. And I'm not counting special color variations, and I think that's a thing, too, like Shiny Pokemon.

Overall, Tamazilla requires many hours of virtual pet maintenance. While some pets evolve in an afternoon, some require a full work week or more, even when using the daily "bonus boosts" to speed up the process.

The pets are easy to babysit. You must tap the screen to feed them, play with them, and exercise them. While working, an occasional glance is all you need to tap the screen to keep them growing.

Naturally--or unnaturally?--the pets cannot die or anything, so there's zero risk here. This sounds boring, and it is, but my urge to collect all the pets kept me playing. The only way to buy more pets is to keep working in real life: scan more items, earn more coins, grind grind grind. Real work really is a grind. One small challenge is the necessity to purchase "pet slots" for extra pets. Note that you cannot pick your pets; your purchase is a surprise, and a disappointing one when you drop a load of well-earned coinage on slots and pets, only to get the same lame crabs you already own. Yep, Amazon gave me crabs.

Easter Egg: Tap your pet to engage with them! The animals jump and spin around with excitement. And that's about as exciting as it gets.

If you're a gamer who likes collecting every item, you may enjoy Tamazilla. However, I lost interest when I started getting the "harder" pets that took a week to evolve. I wanted to earn rare mythical pets. Apparently there's a Cerberus on here?! But I didn't have the patience to keep playing, and it's hard to really care about these blocky creatures. After a few months, tending to Tamazilla pets only became more work itself, less about joy and achievement than endurance and survival.

I wish we could interact with other coworkers' pets in some kind of virtual pet playground, perhaps even trade them, or at least earn a reward from the process. And while I think battling the pets Pokemon-style is a fun idea, I also think it's too complex for a chill work game.

Final Tamazilla review:

Tamazilla is a pleasant distraction that gets tiresome over time. Scanning items in real life to earn in-game currency is rewarding only as long as Tamazilla remains entertaining, which for me was a few months. I imagine it's shorter for most. This virtual pet sim may delight the collector in you, but little else. You'll log many thousands of hours before you finally catch 'em all, and by then, you will no longer care. In fact, you'll be wondering why you still work at Amazon.

Nice try, now try harder: Tamazilla earns a B -.

Castle Crafter

It's difficult to pack depth into a video game based on scanning items in real life, so I have to give Castle Crafter some credit. This basic village sim is more complex than any other Amazon FC game. Castle Crafter allows solo or co-op play, features a rewarding system of leveling, and requires a bit of strategy with resource management. In fact, the seeming complexity of Castle Crafter daunted me, so I never played it. Until now.

Castle Crafter only looks confusing. Basically, you can build or gather. You can gather materials such as wood or food, and you'll need many materials to build up the village. While it appears there are many options for the player, in actuality the game only lets you choose what is available to your current level character. For example, I had the option of either building another market or a level two lumberyard. That's it. If I want more options, and I do, I better get building. I mean, scanning. Because the speed of my virtual work is based on the speed of my real-life scans.

Eventually, you can level up your character to the point of building an "alternative technology research institute," or something like that. It allows you to develop new technologies to, guess what, build more stuff.

I worked on plots with others, and enjoyed working with my coworkers for once. That's a lame joke, of course, but the truth is that my job doesn't involve much interaction. I can literally go through my entire day without saying a word to anyone. This is not healthy, and not easy for an introvert like me. Rather, it is very easy. What's hard is creating social contact, because most of it falls outside of any predetermined work space. It's nearly impossible for me to make friends when I have to try, when I have to say "hi" and have no excuse beyond my obvious need for social interaction. As Brene Brown says, it takes courage to fail.

Turns out it's fun to team up in the game. We can see one another's name, too, so you can work with friends, if you have such things. I don't recognize any of the names, because most people take assigned tags like "Splendid Manatee" or "Toothy Lemur." Nearly always an adjective and an animal. (I keep my own login name, in a weak attempt at social recognition.)

When several people are working the same plot, you can knock it out faster and move to the next. Faster, in this case, can mean hours as opposed to a whole day or two. Choose teams, get it done. Just like real work! We all work together to make it happen, guys! It seems that when there are more people working a plot, it attracts yet more people to work the same plot, like vultures working a fetid corpse, so the progress scales exponentially and impressively. I also worked alone, and my single plot took half a day to finish, but it felt rewarding to complete on my own.

Final Castle Crafter review:

Castle Crafter is as complex as I imagine possible for an FC game. The ability to play solo or co-op, and with choices of plots or collections, combined with a rewarding system of visible growth and greater options, ultimately creates a game with enough variety to be keep my attention. The complexity and strategy are surface level, for sure, more an appearance of complexity created by choice than actual depth--ripples on a puddle. Yet ripples can be hypnotizing.

How long I'll remain under its simple spell, though, is questionable. See, I actually have to care about the puddle to look in the first place. And it's hard to care about things, about life, about . . . a game at work, based on my speed of work.

Good job, guys. Castle Crafter earns a solid B.

Dragon Duel

Now the games get crappy. Weren't they already? In Dragon Duel, you compete against a friend or let the system choose a competitor. And like most of the games, this race is based on your scanning speed.

(Pro tip: you can scan the same item over and over to cheat these games! Spam those scans! However, your supervisor may notice.)

The best thing about Dragon Duel is the landscape. You fly over villages, forests, farms, and mountains. It's like Panzer Dragoon, except these chunky polygons have clean edges and the gameplay is absolutely nonexistent. Look, you can see your friend ahead of you! Can I go home now?

The landscapes are also the worst part: once you've seen the variety, you see it again and again, like a looping demo for some long lost Jaguar game. And I mean that in the best way.

Final Dragon Duel Review:

Compete against a friend or foe. Fun? No. Without a reward system or power-ups or the ability to scorch the villages and blast the opponent, this game plays like a prototype best left unearthed. In other words, pointless. If you and a friend are really into this, right on. For the most part, though, this is forgettable. I understand why it exists. But it makes me question why I exist, why I bother, why I work at Amazon when I have a freaking master's degree.

I get it. Now I'm over it. Dragon Duel earns a fitting D.

Mission Master

For the sake of completion, let's glance at the remaining shovelware for the Amazon FC Games console. In Mission Master, you get various, um, missions to master. Most of these, if not all, rely on your UPH score (your Units Per Hour). In other words, scan fast! Grind grindy grind!

I found the tasks too easy, and found it impossible to get "Game Over" in Hardcore Mode. Disappointing. This should tell you how fun this game is; I thought it was more challenging and therefore more fun to die! I want to say that I had a lot of small items to scan that day, which would make most missions easy, but I feel like the game was too easy, regardless. And I'll never know, because I'll never play this again.

Mission Master Final Review:

If you're driven by micro-challenges, this "game" may appeal to you. Otherwise, I'll stick to the main mission: survive work without breaking down and sobbing and banging my head against the wall. Game over.

Mission Master earns a D-.

Who Cares?

Oops, I mean Space Race.

Space Race is the exact same as Dragon Duel, only aimed at Star Wars nerds instead of Middle Earth geeks. I happen to be both.

Final Space Race Review:

I get it, again. Compete for fastest score or whatever. Can we earn Paid Time Off with this? If so, I guarantee everyone would play this steady, sad race into oblivion. Who cares?

Space Race earns a D-.

Floor Versus Floor

Oh hell yes, us up on Floor 3 are gonna mop our floor with the other floors! Does that make sense?

To be honest, I don't recall much about this game, but to be fair, what is there to remember? Whatever floor has the highest UPH score is winning. I think. Sometimes on the screen you witness your floor mob pass another floor mob. Hell yes, it's like a boss fight! Hell no, not really. Go yell at your boss if you need a boss fight. Play this path-crawler if you've given up on life. It's so bad, it's like a leftover mini-game from Dragon Duel.

Final Floor Versus Floor review:

If your FC has some kind of competition between floors for vending machine cash (a real item), this could be engaging. But like real life, the conflict is all in your head, man.

Floor Versus Floor earns an F.

FC Game Show!

In FC game show, you take a guess at what items you'll scan the most, and maybe, after an hour of scanning, you'll win! I guessed correctly when I played--"home products," I believe--based on the items I was already scanning. I never saw different questions, though I assume the game asks more than "what kind of meaningless junk will consume the next hour of your life?" I'll never find out. This stuff makes Tamazilla look like Breath of the Wild.

Final FC Game Show review:

If you're patient enough, you may get some interesting questions over time. Otherwise, this is an exercise in ennui.

FC Game Show earns an F+.

Avatar Builder

Okay, this isn't a game per se, but it's more fun than most of the games. You can decorate your "Peccy" (for "peculiar") character; I like the wizard get-up. You can also view your achievements, which makes FC Games seem like a real thing, for half a second. No rating for this. But wait! We have a new game!

Gone Fishin'

Gone Fishin' just dropped recently. I've only unlocked a few locations, but already I can say this game is decent quality, up there with Tamazilla and Castle Crafter.

Like all of these "games," Gone Fishin' relies on grinding. Here, it makes sense. It feels natural to grind for more fish and coins, which in turn unlock new rods, lures, and locations. Settings range from tropical to autumnal. Unfortunately, you can't choose where to cast your rod; your character is set in one place along the shore. There are many, many kinds of fish to catch, including entities that are not really fish, such as snails and tadpoles. I enjoy the 16 bit style graphics, which look somewhat "Link to the Past."

You can customize your avatar. Personally, I like the default goth girl with red eyes and purple hair. As you unlock new rods and bait, you'll be tempted to travel to previous locations to catch the rare fish.

I'm guessing Gone Fishin' will keep my attention for at least a month. I find its system rewarding, for now, and the visual style looks great. A variety of lures and rods allows some strategy, and the game remains engaging with the large selection of fish to check off your list. This is one game where endless grinding actually makes sense.

Gone Fishin' final review:

This may be a new favorite. The FC Games console proves it's still got some surprises. Is an FC Games 2 in the works?

You didn't just reel it in, Amazon. Gone Fishin' earns a B+.

Now, FC Games, how about an RPG? What could be more grindy than that? Items, battles, leveling up, cool locations . . . it could go on forever. Or you could just pay me to play Chrono Trigger and Octopath Traveler and such.

FYI, I grade FC Games based on how much they can distract me from real work, how engaging they are, and how unique or interesting they are.

Note: I don't show it for obvious reasons, but Amazon employees can see their ranking on the leaderboard that often appears to the side of the game. We can check our floor, building, and national ranking, which is fun, sometimes. I most often hover around the center of the rankings. Here, being perfectly average is perfectly great to me. I believe many employees log on to FC Games just to keep track of their score, though you can also do this from a game's title screen.

When I see other Amazon employees playing FC video games, the most common are Castle Crafter, Tamazilla, and sometimes Dragon Duel. Lately, many people have been playing Gone Fishin'.

Once I got a question on my FC screen asking what kind of game I'd like to see. I picked RPG, of course.

Thanks for reading! I'd better get back to playing video games . . . I mean, working at Amazon! Yeah . . .