I Am Not an Engineer. I Am the Emotional Engineer.

How Playing Oxygen Not Included Made Me a Better Engineer

I used to think engineering meant building complicated things.

Writing difficult code.
Understanding abstract math.
Optimizing systems for maximum efficiency.

Then I played Oxygen Not Included.

And somehow, a colony simulator about tiny stressed-out space people taught me more about systems engineering than most technical tutorials ever did.

Not because I cared about optimization.

Because I cared that my dupes looked sad.

Most beginner engineers think engineering means making something work.

You click a thing.
A machine turns on.
The pipe connects.
The script runs.
The website loads.

Success.

But systems engineering is different.

Systems engineering is not:

“Can I make this work?”

It is:

“Can this continue working without collapsing?”

That is an entirely different problem.

Because real systems are alive.

They consume resources.
They generate waste.
They overheat.
They bottleneck.
They break other systems nearby.
They require maintenance.
They compete for power, labor, and space.

In Oxygen Not Included, keeping a colony alive means continuously balancing:

• oxygen
• water
• food
• power
• heat
• morale
• waste
• automation
• labor
• transportation
• agriculture
• resource storage

—all at the same time.

And unlike many optimization games, ONI punishes instability slowly.

A beginner colony can survive for a while using chaos.

Messy wires.
Broken pipes.
Manual generators everywhere.
Heat leaking into farms.
Water spilling into random rooms.
Duplicants sprinting across the map doing inefficient labor.

The base technically “works.”

Until suddenly it doesn’t.

The crops stop growing.
The oxygen supply collapses.
The wires overheat.
The animals starve.
The generators fail.
The entire civilization begins suffocating because one tiny cooling problem spread into everything else.

That was the moment I started understanding what systems actually are.

Not isolated parts.

Dependencies.

Clicking something and making it work once is beginner engineering.

Systems engineering is making sure it keeps working.

The funny part is that I was never motivated by the same things many hardcore optimization players were motivated by.

I did not care about maximizing efficiency charts.

I was not trying to speedrun industrialization.

I was not trying to produce infinite steel by cycle 100.

I just wanted my dupes to be happy.

That was it.

I wanted:

• pretty bedrooms
• nature reserves
• organized kitchens
• recreation rooms
• showers
• stable temperature
• clean oxygen
• soft lighting
• cuddle pips cuddling duplicants

The emotional reward system completely changed how I approached engineering.

Because happy dupes require civilized infrastructure.

You cannot build a beautiful colony on top of unstable systems.

Eventually, I realized:

if I wanted better quality of life, I needed better engineering.

No more overloaded wires constantly burning down.

No more random polluted water flooding rooms.

No more emergency oxygen crises every twenty cycles.

No more starving animals because I forgot supply chains.

No more giant tangled pipe disasters hidden inside walls.

I started organizing systems not because I cared about optimization as an abstract concept—

but because unstable systems made life miserable for the little people living inside them.

And honestly?

That realization changed how I think about engineering in real life too.

A lot of technical culture frames engineering as domination over systems.

Control.
Scale.
Performance.
Optimization.
Throughput.

But another form of engineering exists.

Care-based engineering.

Infrastructure designed around reducing suffering.

Reliable systems that support living beings continuously and sustainably.

Good systems are not just powerful.

They are stable enough that people inside them can relax.

That is civilization.

Not invention.

Maintenance.

This is also why I personally found Oxygen Not Included more emotionally engaging than games like Factorio.

Factorio motivates players through production.

ONI motivates players through survival and care.

In Factorio, the factory is the protagonist.

In ONI, the colony is.

The systems matter because the people matter.

The emotional attachment creates patience for complexity.

Because when your dupes are exhausted, starving, suffocating, or stressed, the base stops feeling like a puzzle.

It feels like responsibility.

And strangely enough, that emotional responsibility made me want to learn harder engineering concepts.

Cooling loops.
Automation logic.
Resource prioritization.
Load balancing.
Thermal isolation.
Failure prevention.
Scalable infrastructure.

Not because I wanted achievements.

Because I wanted the colony to feel peaceful.

I think this is why I now describe myself differently.

I am not really an engineer in the traditional sense.

I am the Emotional Engineer.

I do not naturally optimize systems because I worship efficiency.

I optimize systems because unstable environments make living creatures suffer.

And maybe that sounds less technical.

But honestly?

Many real-world systems would improve dramatically if more engineers cared about the emotional experience of the beings living inside the systems they build.

In the end, I did become better at optimization.

My power grids stabilized.
My cooling systems improved.
My automation became cleaner.
My colonies became sustainable.

But optimization was never the original goal.

I just wanted my dupes to stop looking sad.