You, the player, are the HR Director, Chief Motivation Officer, Happiness Guru, or whatever new-agey title that’s in vogue these days. They’re pampered employees at a tech firm or other “knowledge economy” company that feels the need to provide employees with on-the-job “perks” above and beyond the usual vacation days and health insurance. What’s going on here? What’s the value exchange between me and the cats? For a while, everything seemed like a mere jumble of gaming concepts wrapped up in Japanese cuteness, until it hit me: Neko Atsume is a metaphor for employee recruitment and retention as it’s practiced in Silicon Valley and other American workplaces in highly competitive labor markets. But beyond cooing over the likes of Snowball, Pumpkin, and Marshmallow, I started to obsess over the loose suggestions of an in-game economy. I, too, have been taken in by the game’s charms. I know all of this doesn’t sound particularly compelling, but this open-ended play has turned the game into something of a cult phenomenon. Lavishing cats with gifts and expensive food is rewarded only with currency for buying more stuff for cats, which in turn is rewarded with the continued presence of cats and the occasional odd “memento,” which is what the game affectionately calls random bits of garbage that cats bring into the house. Failing to tend to your cats brings no negative consequences in the game, other than an empty yard without cats. There’s no real way to “win” or “lose” the game. It has a lot of familiar gameplay elements-taking care of creatures, an in-game marketplace for buying stuff for said creatures-but what sets Neko Atsume apart from other similar games is its lack of built-in structure and incentives. Neko Atsume is a casual smartphone game of Japanese origin that’s ostensibly about tending to a menagerie of cats.
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