Dungeon, Inc. if you hate corporate life?

I spent more time than is healthy going through the comments on Ben Milton's review of Dungeon, Inc. and a couple of comments reminded me of something I heard when I was playtesting the original French game: some people are concerned that the game is going to feel "too close to home" when it comes to the pains of corporate life. They roleplay (like I guess we all do at least to some extent) to escape daily life and immerse themselves in an imaginary world, and they do not wish for that world to remind them of the daily grind. 

I can relate to that. In fact, I never watched the original (UK) office pas the first season because it was so close to situations and archetypes I was interacting with on a daily basis that — while I laughed hard — it also made me very uncomfortable.

Here are the two comments that sparked this post: 

Q. says "Too close to real life for me to play this." I'm not sure what to make of the smiley, but this is word for word an objection that I have heard when I was playtesting. 

K. says "I have lived and worked in the corporate world for so long that the idea of playing this seems abhorrent to me. That being said, to anyone less cynical and rebellious than me, it sounds like a lot of fun and a nice new take on the idea. I really enjoy Monsters Monsters! and love the idea of playing 'the bad guy'."

There are two things here that might be slight misconceptions about what the game is about: 

First, I want to point out that I don't wholly subscribe to this playing the monsters = playing the bad guys equivalency. Dungeon, Inc. doesn't come with an alignment system for a reason: sure, your job description as a host explicitly states that you will be killing clients. But the same could be said of adventurers and killing monsters. "Clients" or "Monsters", these are labels to avoid the uncomfortable moral questioning of why you are doing the killing. In the case of Dungeon, Inc hosts, you do it principally for pay, but you can be enthusiastic about it or you can drag your feet, you can be a loyal little employee or you can try to profit the system. You can even try to do your job while avoiding killing, although that's definitely an extra-challenge. 

Second, the relation to corporate life and cynicism: I have also worked my whole career in the corporate world and that is actually what feeds into a lot of Dungeon, Inc. The game is definitely not meant as a glorification of corporate life, and I think that comes accross quite clearly in the absurdities your characters are constantly subjected to. Interestingly though, because this is a fictional environment, you can get your own back. In several of the original playtest campaigns, at some point, the PCs devised plans to frame their Supervisor to get rid of them. In others, the pervasive remnants of the old goddess that used to inhabit the place got some of the PCs to embrace a religion that is decidedly not aligned with the goals of the corporation. 

Of course, it's not for me to say to anyone that they should try the game out, especially if the premise makes them uncomfortable. But I suspect they might find there's a jubilant pleasure in playing with the corporate tropes to highlight their absurdity. That's certainly true for me, and is in fact a big part of why I wrote the game in the first place.