I often wonder (as a joke, but also not) if it’s too late for me to run away and join the Shakers, a centuries-old religious sect that believes in the value of hard work. I feel like I’d fit right in given my love of a good task: something I can set my head and hands to and get done through perseverance, something that might not be the most interesting or the most attention-getting part of a project, but is helpful and necessary.
I’ve had jobs like this, most notably when I was a dishwasher and prep cook at a feminist vegetarian restaurant, where the owners used to joke they could get me to do anything by prefacing it with “hey, do you want to be useful?..” I felt this way when I lived on a docked boat, where the fire had to be started and the water jugs had to be filled every day. And it’s a feeling that’s my favorite part of Power Wash Simulator 2, a game that, to me, is all about the joy of tasks.
Sure, there’s some whole meta-game of upgrading your tools and buying new furniture for your office, but honestly I barely look at those options when I play. The meat of the game is being faced with some filthy structure and having to clean it; you could play with friends or max out your equipment to get this done faster, but there’s no avoiding the part where you just have to walk around aiming your nozzle at things until those things go from dirty to clean.
A lot of players love Power Wash Simulator for its chill, soothing vibes, an escape from the real world and even from the pressures of the real things in your real life that probably need cleaning. The game’s big draw for me is that, however I play it, as long as I keep spraying I’ll eventually “beat” the level and make progress; the key to success in the game is to just keep cleaning until there’s nothing left to clean. Power Wash Simulator reminds me that there are things in this world I can actually do, and I don’t even have to be particularly good at them; I just have to start doing them and then not stop doing them before they’re done.
This is a quintessential joy of the task, and it hits the same brain buttons that get hit in my real life when I have something to do that might not be that sexy or fun, but needs to be accomplished. I might never have the opportunity to power wash an amusement park ride or even a deck, but there are plenty of things around me that just need doing, and here I am as a person who can do them. At the end of the day, just like admiring my cleaned Power Wash Simulator structures, I can reflect on my completed tasks and take pride in knowing I’ve contributed my own small part to the foundation of necessary efforts that undergirds the world.
My evangelization for the joy of tasks comes with a few caveats: I know not everyone is hard-wired for that kind of thing, and that my approach of “do things until I’ve done them” doesn’t work for everyone. And I’ll warn you that if your brain does play nicely with tasks, it is very easy to end up doing all the tasks, and nothing ruins a good task like tipping over the thin line of “enough tasks” to “too many tasks.” I will also warn you that, at least if you’re me, there’s a slippery slope from enjoying tasks to getting into endurance hobbies like distance running and bikepacking, which are basically at their core also tasks: You can carry your body from point A to wherever point B is by simply repeating the task of moving your legs enough times. (Distance running is at least a cool task in that sometimes people cheer for you while you’re doing it, which is not the sort of thing that happens when you are, say, taking out your apartment’s compost bin or paying your company’s bills.)
While I could resent that my love of tasks often gets me labelled “uptight” or “overly responsible” while Power Wash Simulator gets positive player reviews and critical acclaim, I will instead appreciate that there’s a video game that loves a good task as much as I do. If a game can counter the negative PR that has for eons dogged the task and introduce more people to the joy of getting things done, I’m all for it.
