Steam, lemmy and reddit are currently creaming themselves over a game which devs makes multiple really cringe “jokes” about slavery and exploitation. Read the steam page descriptions.
Those “pals” are clearly antropomorphised creatures being dogwhistle for humans. And if you read the game reviews, even the g*mers are not lost on that fact (just they love that):
I really don’t think Pals are a dogwhistle for humans. Its just a monster collection game where you can make the monsters do stuff. Its legitimately not that deep. Its not like a game is saying slavery is good or anything. Like sure, you can be mean to the digital puppets if you want, but really a lot of stuff is just head cannon. Are they working for you because they are scared or because they live in some communist utopia and work as a choice? Up to you. Really I think its just a way to put them to use for more than just combat. Plus it means you can focus on tasks you find fun instead of some of the busy work of survival games. Seriously, every game has things like this. You can take any idea and if you intentionally read it in a negative light that will be what it looks like. Does pokemon promote dog fighting? Ofcourse not. Even if it really is just digital dogfight simulator. Does Disco Elysium promote drug use because drugs have useful effects in it? Does Skyrim promote capital punishment as a good thing because guards will try to kill you for committing crimes and you can kill bandits for the government? Irl crime is caused by disenfranchisement of the poor, is Skyrim proposing we kill them all? No. Skyrim wanted an easy low level enemy you could deal with to learn the game and make some early money. In fact, any game that involves killing anything can be construed in such a way if you like. Ofcourse this isn’t to say games can’t carry messages, but I don’t think this one really does. I think the devs just saw they could do some edgy marketing and went for it.
You can also do that by not designing the game to have busy work, tbf
The thing about survival games is that the busy work is the point. Participation in it at first and finding ways to get around it as your base gets more complex is part of the fun. You start from nothing and eventually through effort and planning get powerful. The busywork is the obstacle for the player to overcome.
Without the busy work survival games become some kind of BR. Which has its appeal but scratch fundementally different itches. A pizza and a burger are quite different even though both have bread.