{"id":1236546,"date":"2025-03-03T13:36:11","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T18:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1236546"},"modified":"2025-03-03T13:36:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T18:36:11","slug":"kaizen-a-factory-story-makes-a-game-of-perfecting-1980s-japanese-manufacturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1236546","title":{"rendered":"Kaizen: A Factory Story makes a game of perfecting 1980s Japanese manufacturing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Zach Barth, the namesake of game studio Zachtronics, tends to make a certain kind of game.<\/p>\n<p>Besides crafting the free browser game <em>Infiniminer<\/em>, which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cascadepbs.org\/2015\/08\/the-godfather-of-minecraft-a-conversation-with-indie-gamer-zachary-barth\">inspired the entire global <em>Minecraft<\/em> industry<\/a>, Barth and his collaborators made <em>SpaceChem<\/em>, <em>Infinifactory<\/em>, <em>TIS-100<\/em>, <em>Shenzen I\/O<\/em>,<em> Opus Magnum<\/em>, and\u00a0<em>Exapunks<\/em>. Each one of them is some combination of puzzle game, light capitalism horror, and the most memorable introductory-level computer science, chemistry, or logistics class into which you unwittingly enrolled. Each game is its own thing, but they have a certain similar brain feel between them. It is summed up perhaps best by the Zachtronics team itself in a book: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zachtronics.com\/zach-like\/\">Zach-Like<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Barth and his crew have made other kinds of games, including a forward-looking visual novel about AI, <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2019\/08\/eliza-review-startup-culture-meets-sci-fi-in-a-touching-fascinating-tale\/\"><em>Eliza<\/em><\/a>, and multiplayer card battler <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2021\/01\/nerts-is-the-free-pleasant-six-player-card-game-we-could-all-use-right-now\/\"><em>Nerts!<\/em><\/a>. And Barth himself told PC Gamer that he hates &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/puzzle\/one-of-the-best-puzzle-game-designers-is-back-with-kaizen-a-factory-story-a-game-about-manufacturing-japanese-consumer-goods-during-the-largest-economic-bubble-in-history\/\">saying Zach-like<\/a>.&#8221; But fans of refining inputs, ordering operations, and working their way past constraints will thrill to learn that Zach is, in fact, back.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2025\/03\/kaizen-a-factory-story-makes-a-game-of-perfecting-1980s-japanese-manufacturing\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2025\/03\/kaizen-a-factory-story-makes-a-game-of-perfecting-1980s-japanese-manufacturing\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zach Barth, the namesake of game studio Zachtronics, tends to make a certain kind of game. Besides crafting the free browser game Infiniminer, which inspired the entire global Minecraft industry, Barth and his collaborators made SpaceChem, Infinifactory, TIS-100, Shenzen I\/O, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1236546\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,44,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-technology","category-unfiltered-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1236546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1236546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1236546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1236546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}