In Factorio, from the Czech developer Wube Software, you have crash-landed on an alien planet and your task is to build a rocket so you can escape. This entails single-handedly restaging the Industrial Revolution, from breaking up rocks for crude stone furnaces to refining oil into rocket fuel. One recent Sunday, I had just installed a pump on a lake shore to feed water to my concrete plant, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t drunk any real-world water in several hours. My head was aching, but I didn’t want to get up from my computer. I wanted to solve the problem with a click of a mouse, the way I would in the game, running a few metres of pipe from the kitchen tap to my hunched form (and perhaps another few metres of pipe from my hunched form to the toilet).
在捷克開發商Wube Software的《異星工廠》(Factorio)中，你墜落在一個外星球上，任務是建造一枚火箭以便逃脫。這意味著你要親手重現工業革命，從破碎岩石建造簡陋的石爐到將石油提煉成火箭燃料。最近的一個星期天，我剛剛在湖岸邊安裝了一臺水泵，爲我的混凝土廠供水，這時突然意識到，我已經好幾個小時沒有喝過現實中的水了。我的頭開始隱隱作痛，但我不願離開電腦。我希望能像在遊戲中那樣，用滑鼠輕點一下就能解決問題，把幾米長的管道從廚房的水龍頭接到我駝著的身體（也許還要鋪幾米長的管道從我駝著的身體通向廁所）。