Kicker

You are kicker. You kick ball.

It's as though the old Saturday Night Live song about foreign placekickers who seemed like out-of-place afterthoughts was given a wry twist.

It's an outsider-in-a-crowded-room tale. This outsider belongs with the group, but (as portrayed) only barely. An at-first reasonably convincing simulation of a standard American Football contest (complete with authentic scoreboard in the status line) plays out while you wait to do something useful. Your job description is minimal, because your specialty focuses on kickoffs, extra point tries, and field goal attempts.

This game is too thoroughly implemented to dismiss as just another waiting simulator. You can focus your attention on different participants in the game (all of which have a variety of ways to disdain you, aside from the special teams coach who parodies the new-age gurus who were once in vogue at that position), stay limber, chug Gatorade, or just watch the Jumbotron and scoreboard.

We may not know precisely when or where this game is taking place (the presence of a Jumbotron puts it well past the leather-helmet era, at least, but the presence of fullbacks on the field suggests it may not be modern day) but we do know that our coaching staff is not especially good at their jobs, having called three straight runs on first down after a punt return up just 3-0 in the third quarter, and not immediately firing the punt returner whose return "dancing for extra yards" still only got him to his own three yard line. Good thing the opposition is just as badly coached, punting the ball away still down by three with no timeouts remaining in the final two minutes of the game!

The game's play-by-play and scoring are not predetermined, although three-and-outs seem much more common than scoring drives. On my playthrough, my 41-yard field goal was, in fact, the only scoring on the day. The game-ending banner tersely noted the team's victory, but not my unique and indispensible contribution to that outcome. A suitable ending to a game in which there was plenty to watch and plenty of people to (try to) talk to, but not much to learn except that sometimes work is narrow and thankless.