Bread Winner
Isabel Lee
Advisor: Kari Love
A browser-based idle clicker that gamifies and satirizes our obsession with digital productivity. Play the game online at breadwinner.app!
Abstract
Bread Winner is an idle clicker game that reaps all clicks from the player across their browser, whether it be from checking email, filling out a survey, or playing another game. Clicks are used to bake bread, buy power-ups, and boost the rate of production. Through playful and unserious gameplay, Bread Winner aims to explore our compulsion to be productive, highlighting both its absurdity and its addictiveness. By gamifying the smallest unit of digital labor-- the click-- even the most negligible task transforms into an act of production. In a world where laptops, mobile devices, and the internet have made it impossible to escape our work, this game asks us to lean into our compulsive tendencies in order to unravel them.
Play the game online at breadwinner.app!
Technical Details
Bread Winner is a web app built in React. The supplemental browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox browsers also were built with React and the Chrome and Firefox extension APIs respectively.
UI assets were designed in Figma, while supplemental images were generated using Midjourney.
Research/Context
One of Western society’s greatest obsessions today is productivity. Forged through a tradition of capitalism and individualism, many of us have been conditioned to treat our time as literal money. If you’re not using every moment of your life to work, study, or otherwise get ahead, then it’s as good as wasted. The rise of laptops, mobile devices, and the internet has further exacerbated our compulsion. No longer can we ‘step away’ from our labor; instead it follows us around in the form of email apps, wrist buzzes, or late-night work pings.
This phenomenon captivated me and exploring it was the core engine behind my research. I delved into works on labor, the attention economy, and technology. Pieces like The Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, and Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell helped me form vocabulary for my project and exposed me to radical solutions that reform our habits and ways of living.
I supplemented my readings with deep analysis of popular clicker games, dissecting what exactly makes them so engrossing. Games I focused on in particular include Cookie Clicker, Universal Paperclips, and Cow Clicker. I also researched building idle game economies to aid in making my own.
Further Reading
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell
The Math of Idle Games by Anthony Pecorella
