Video games have evolved greatly from their predecessors of years past. Where there were once high scores and obscene difficulty in order to extend an otherwise short experience, games now more than ever emphasize story, art styles, and. Yet the central aspect of nearly every game, especially competitive games such as Starcraft and Counter-Strike, is at its very core simple: to win. Whether that means victory in a competitive match in Street Fighter, beating the final boss and seeing the ending, getting 100% of the achievements, or even scoring loot in a game like Diablo or World of Warcraft, the compulsion to win is almost always what keeps you in the game. The infamous ‘Mcdonald’s Video Game’ uses that concept to highlight the ultimate cultural cost of McDonald’s’ brand of corporate excess.

The game itself is a fairly casual browser game, with a simple objective: to make money. The player is given access to several aspects of the company to manage: a pasture farm, a slaughterhouse, the McDonald’s restaurant itself, and the corporate office. Each of these aspects have extremely questionable shortcuts: growing genetically modified plants  to increase your soy production, corrupting city officials and politicians, using hormones and animal flour to fatten up your cows and obtain more beef, punishing your employees or awarding them a badge, and using clever stealth marketing tactics (like toy deals with Disney) to get more people to come to your restaurant. At least some of these tactics have to be used, as the game itself seems designed to be too difficult to keep from going bankrupt without them.

With that said, my playthrough of the game felt far less political than I expected. Though it took me a few tries to keep the company from going bankrupt within 5 minutes, I eventually adjusted to the rhythm of the game, manufacturing tons upon tons of genetically modified soy product, killing off overly diseased cows before they’re processed into meat, micromanaging the restaurant, and of course keeping environmental lobbyists and problematic politicians sated with loads of money. I tried to avoid some of the obviously immoral actions to be taken in the game, including wiping out rainforests and reusing animal matter to feed cows. The in-game repercussions were nearly non-existent , however, and there was no in-game moral prompt saying “Hey, this is totally wrong and you should stop.” I caved in and reaped the rewards of virtual corporate overkill. I wanted to see that profit number go up, and it promptly did. It is, after all, a game. I played to win.

But hey, who likes losing?