RE: Coffee Talk (game): It's like reading a book but not interesting
Quite a few games are based on actual jobs. Some that spring to mind are ‘Tapper’ in which you play a pub landlord, serving drinks, ‘Papers Please’, in which you play an immigrations officer, and ‘Death Stranding’ in which you play some futuristic delivery driver.
Why do people pay actual money to do work in videogames? Well, because people are paying to do such work, videogames designers are incentivised to make that work as engaging and enjoyable as possible. So, videogames designers strive to increase the creativity, challenge, variety and other aspects of work that make it enjoyable and engaging.
On the other hand, because they want to reduce costs, jobs creators strive to reduce the amount of creativity etc required of a job, because in doing so they can treat their employees like interchangeable units who are not paid as much as workers in jobs that emphasise the positive aspects of working.
Having said that, clearly not all games designers succeed in turning a dull job into an exciting game, as you well know!
I saw a game the other day called "Job Simulator" and couldn't help but get a giggle out of that. Also, I recall that people on MMO's would grind for hours for in game currency to buy a fake thing and the old response to that way that they could literally go and do any job for minimum wage and increase their output per hour if they were to simply buy the in game currency with real life money
It would be one thing if what they were doing in-game was fun, but even they admit it is not fun and I always found the process to be a bit dubious.
That being said I have in the past grinded for hours upon hours for levels in a game that I eventually kind of had massive regrets for sinking so much time into later in life... So I'm not innocent by any means!