Work simulation: Hostel in Snæfellsness

Have you ever dreamed of cleaning a hostel on the Icelandic peninsula? Nobody dreams of that.

Work simulation: hostel in Snæfellsness is a simple role-playing game for 6-8 people, where players take roles of workers cleaning a hostel in a remote area of Iceland. The player's task is to pair up and clean six rooms during the workday. Values in the game are energy and mood, which players spend to clean rooms. Every room card is a story, adventure, obstacle, or decision.

The inspiration for this project was the invitation from Maja Luxenberg to collaborate around her performance during her residency in Teatr21 in December 2024. Maja is a culture worker in Poland who was forced to take on seasonal work because of low wages and used this experience to build an artistic practice around it. Maja collected audio-narratives from the workers sharing seasonal work experience in Iceland. Common motives in collected material are the need to escape the places of origin, the need to change life patterns, and the lack of agreement to the life and work conditions in the country of origin. Testimonies inspired Maja to write monologues and songs presented in the performance "Aceland" in Teatr21.

Hearing about her experience in labour organizing, Maja invited Anna Marjankowska to lead a workshop in Teatr21 during the residency. The role-playing game came as an idea for the workshop scenario. The medium of the game is used to familiarize players with working conditions that can be very alien and hard to imagine. Players live a day as essential workers, make decisions, and try to survive the workday, making empathizing with their situation easier. It becomes a liveable experience.

An important context of the game scenario is the situation of seasonal workers coming to Iceland, and connected to that are the status of the labour unions, workers’ knowledge of their rights, dangers associated with working abroad, and working in a remote area with a high dependency on the employer.

The game was created as a tool to immerse oneself in the life of an essential worker and a trigger for further discussion about basic work, work conditions, the labour market, and labour organizing.