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posted by Woods on Thursday July 24 2014, @07:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the bytram-approved dept.

The BBC News asks:

Storming through forests astride dragons, commanding armies of vicious Cossacks, flying spaceships at unthinkable speeds the possibilities are endless. Computer games can transport you anywhere and let you do anything.

So, when you can dine out cheaply and conveniently on the most excitement-filled, exhilarating scenarios imaginable, doesn't it seem strange that many choose repetition, rigmarole and meticulous control for their digital fixes?

Whether it is managing a campsite, driving a long-haul lorry, mending a car or working a rubbish lorry, more and more people are passionately playing simulator games that accurately replicate everyday life.

But who is it that plays these games? And what makes people play them when you could just do the real thing?

In addition to interviewing five gamers, tidbits include:

10 simulator games to note:

  • Euro Truck Simulator 2 Drive long-haul vehicles. Hugely popular and PC Gamers' Sim of the Year in 2012
  • Camping Manager Build and manage your own vacation paradise
  • Bear Simulator Still in development, the game will allow players to forage and explore the forest as a bear
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator Perhaps the best-known of all the vehicle simulator game series
  • Farming Simulator Cultivate land and livestock and manage your farm. Outsold Medal Of Honor in 2013
  • Street Cleaning Simulator 2013 Remove dirt from roads with several different cleaning techniques
  • U-Bahn Simulator Navigate Germany's metro systems
  • Arma 3 Experience the realities of a military campaign
  • Vatsim A flight simulator where live air traffic controllers will book your ultra-realistic flight paths
  • Viscera Cleanup Detail Clear up the gore from first-person shooter games

And if that's too racy for you, there's always Cow Clicker.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by umafuckitt on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:03PM

    by umafuckitt (20) on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:03PM (#73437)

    Erm... Because not everyone likes the same stuff? I reckon the people who are playing FPS games aren't also the same people who are playing Street Cleaning Simulator 2013. Same way that people who like racing motorcycles on weekends are probably not the same people who enjoy crochet. Really, I don't see where this question is going.

    • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:13PM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:13PM (#73520)

      I enjoy crocheting while racing motorcycles. Too many hobbies.

      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday July 25 2014, @01:27AM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday July 25 2014, @01:27AM (#73552) Homepage

        Many years ago there was a game called Stunts, [smashingmagazine.com] which we played on a 386.

        There were no machine guns or bloody fatalities, but still my friends and I tried to figure out the more creative way to crash. There was a bug in the game where if you drive under the side of the loop, you would get stuck for a couple seconds and then the car would launch into the air like a mile high.

        It was a trip to watch in first-person (cockpit) mode, because you could see what it was like to fall like a mile before crashing into the ground (making a primitive clinking noise and cracking your windshield).

        • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday July 25 2014, @02:52AM

          by Nerdfest (80) on Friday July 25 2014, @02:52AM (#73568)

          I remember something similar in one of the NFS games. There was a cheat code that turned your car into a small scale model. Still very fast, but with the physics of something small and light. I was screaming along at basically top speed and tried to go under an oncoming car. Apparently it was not modelled that way. Head-on collision at 300+ Km/h. Little car goes straight up, thousands of feet and I see the entire map spinning and laid out before me. Absolutely amazing, but I could never get it to happen again.

        • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday July 25 2014, @03:38PM

          by LoRdTAW (3755) on Friday July 25 2014, @03:38PM (#73802) Journal

          Stunts ... still have my cracked copy. And I played it plenty on a 386 and 486. The best trick was when you put the up and down ramps together one after the other: up-down-up-down etc. If you hit them fast enough, after a few jumps the "physics" would wig out and you would shoot hundreds of meters in the air and take a long time to hit the ground. It was hilarious. What a fun game it was for its time. Building tracks was all I ever did and I never cared for the actual racing against an NPC aspect.

    • (Score: 2) by karmawhore on Friday July 25 2014, @01:24AM

      by karmawhore (1635) on Friday July 25 2014, @01:24AM (#73551)

      Pretty much agree, but there's bound to be a lot of crossover. Who wants to play the same kind of game all the time? Some of my favorite games the last few years have been ROTT '13, Spacechem, VVVVVV, DF, Surgeon Simulator, and KSP. There's very little overlap in terms of gameplay. They just all happen to be fun.

      And Bear Simulator sounds pretty awesome. If that's half as good as I imagine, I'm buying.

      --
      =kw= lurkin' to please
      • (Score: 2) by TK on Friday July 25 2014, @04:23PM

        by TK (2760) on Friday July 25 2014, @04:23PM (#73826)

        And Bear Simulator sounds pretty awesome. If that's half as good as I imagine, I'm buying.

        Save your money, the best bear sim of all time already exists. It's called Enviro-Bear 2000 - Operation: Hibernation [youtube.com], you get to play a bear, who drives a car, eats fish and berries, and hibernates. It is riveting.

        --
        The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
        • (Score: 2) by karmawhore on Saturday July 26 2014, @06:42PM

          by karmawhore (1635) on Saturday July 26 2014, @06:42PM (#74236)
          Oh my god thank you for this.
          --
          =kw= lurkin' to please
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by mj on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:23PM

    by mj (399) on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:23PM (#73447)

    These games seem weird, but basically represent the nonfiction(ish) category of the role playing game genre. Some of them can be fun in a strange way. I played papers please [papersplea.se], a game in which you are a visa stamping bureaucrat at a guard post between a fictionalized version of east and west Germany circa 1990. It forces you to empathize with a bureaucrat in a society that applies game theory to the incentive structures of bureaucracies by putting you in the position and letting you play out the different story lines, most of which end with your family and finally you starving to death. I've also played truck driving/flight simulators before, it's some what interesting to learn all the physics of controlling those things. Anyone's life could be a game if it has no consequences. Also, People like anything novel... Reality tv? Why not reality games?

    --
    The nihilists have such good imaginations.
    • (Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:44PM

      by nitehawk214 (1304) on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:44PM (#73460)

      Step One: Create a game that simulates my life.
      Step Two: Kick back and let other people perform my job and life for me.
      Step Three: Uhh... play games simulating other people's lives?

      --
      "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:40PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:40PM (#73481)

        "Step Three: Uhh... play games simulating other people's lives?"

        "The Sims". In real life, when I describe "The Sims", people who don't have personal experience or an alternate source accuse me of trolling them when I tell them about "The Sims". "No really, you have to tell your dolly when to take a dump, or it has an accident that needs to be cleaned up, for real"

  • (Score: 2) by emg on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:37PM

    by emg (3464) on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:37PM (#73454)

    "But who is it that plays these games? And what makes people play them when you could just do the real thing?"

    I can't drive a truck, but I can drive truck simulator. Though it was more fun before they introduced fines for hitting other vehicles.

    I can't fly an airliner without spending $100,000 on training (though I have flown an airline 747 simulator), but I can fly MSFS for $50.

    I don't want to get shot, or have my bits blown off by shrapnel, but I can play ARMA.

    I'll never be a goat, but I can play Goat Simulator.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:57PM (#73466)

      > I'll never be a goat

      Don't be too sure there, Professor Calculus.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @08:20PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @08:20PM (#73927)

        The Goat Tower is off limits.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:36PM (#73477)

      After 2001-09-11, the latest version of the simulator game was delayed and released in
      October 2001 in order to REMOVE the WORLD TRADE CENTER buildings as they were now
      a pile of rubble in real life at that time.

      So that made all the 'uncut' copies of Flight Simulator 2000 and earlier that had
      these destroyed, world-famous buildings in them valuable and sold for a tidy profit
      on eBay or kept as a keepsake for a bygone era.

      At the time of this post, there were 86 listings for "microsoft flight simulator 2000"

      Why else would people still try to sell such an old software program if not to remember
      (or virtually re-create) 9/11?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Flight_Simulator [wikipedia.org]

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:44PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:44PM (#73482)

        "Why else would people still try to sell such an old software program if not to remember (or virtually re-create) 9/11?"

        Nostalgia.

        I've flown out of Meigs Field in Chicago in real life (because I'm old) even though that field no longer exists solely because of the merger of organized crime and politics in Chicago, I'd be kinda pissed if I couldn't set the clock to 1988, position to Meigs, and set the plane to a classic 172.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Rivenaleem on Friday July 25 2014, @09:40AM

      by Rivenaleem (3400) on Friday July 25 2014, @09:40AM (#73680)

      I'm sorry to disappoint you. Having done the real thing, I can tell you that Goat Simulator is not even remotely accurate.

      • (Score: 1) by elmindreda on Friday July 25 2014, @10:32AM

        by elmindreda (619) on Friday July 25 2014, @10:32AM (#73696)

        Please regale us with your tales of goathood.

        • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday July 25 2014, @12:57PM

          by Rivenaleem (3400) on Friday July 25 2014, @12:57PM (#73729)

          Oh my. This is embarrassing. I somehow added the word 'with' the the GGP's post. Is there ... ummm... a way to delete posts?

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 25 2014, @05:40PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 25 2014, @05:40PM (#73878)

          Theres a goatse joke lurking in here somewhere

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Tork on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:46PM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 24 2014, @08:46PM (#73461)
    "And what makes people play them when you could just do the real thing?"

    When you say something like this here's what you're really asking:

    "Why do you want to a small portion of a task, that you can pick up and put down at your leisure, that has been arranged in a fun and challenging way?"

    Seriously. That is what you are asking. Yes, I know, you actually want to dig into what actually makes a particular challenge fun, but the way that is phrased just kills me. What do you expect me to say? "Sorry, but it turns out that wandering around my neighborhood and cleaning up the road just isn't as glamorous as Street Cleaning Simulator 2013 made it sound."
    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:38PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 24 2014, @09:38PM (#73479)

    I have some hours in both real Cessna 172s and probably 100x as many hours in sim time and the main appeal to me for in sim time is figuring out my limits. I'm not at the level where I can shoot a complicated ILS approach in a thunderstorm at night for real, but its interesting to see what happens when I try it in a sim.

    Aside from limits there's cheap screwing around. A stereotypical real pilot task is going out to get that $100 hamburger, because you need to fly x hours every X days to keep current, otherwise you get to recert and thats the only screwing around you get to do. SO real pilots fly every 8 weeks or so even if they have no reason, so stereotypically they fly to some place and get a hamburger for lunch and it cost them $100 in fuel and long term maint, hence the $100 hamburger. Well, if I feel like going for a flight today, I could call the FSS and see if an instructor/plane are available, but if I don't want to spend the cash, the sim is free and it never is in the shop or on vacation or rented out.

    There's a different kind of screwing around where I've never done mountain flying in real life, and probably never will at this point. And for pilots living in Colorado or something I don't think they could consider that exotic, for them its mundane. None the less I live in a part of the country where it'll take most of a tank of fuel to find a splat of dirt higher than 2000 or so feet ASL so for me as a weirdo its interesting. It would cost some serious bucks in real life, but in the sim its free.

    Also there's a lot of vicarious thrill... I don't necessarily think piloting a bizjet or a X series aircraft is necessarily "mundane" and I'll certainly never get to do it in real life. Well, maybe I could talk myself into copilots seat for a touch and go on a bizjet, but I wouldn't expect it. So the only way I'll ever get to try the exotic stuff is in a sim. Much like the farmer sims, "If I had $1.25M laying around, I'd own that combine. I wonder what driving it is like? Hmm lemme try..."

    Finally its a cheap education. I have enough ground school to know exactly what I need to do to really do a cross country flight (not literally Maine to CA but in aviation it means "Way outta sight of your home base"). I can do all of it in a sim except most of the preflight. I can use real maps to plan real routes around / into various classes of airspace and fill out a real flight plan and get real current aviation weather off the internet and search for NOTAMs (temporary warnings) and do a real weight balance calc. I can figure out all the real radio freqs and real approach plates and all that. And its a lot of work and a PITA and general aviation really isn't for me, or at least not a primary hobby. And a sim is a cheap way to find out. Also its interesting to see what my gentleman farmer uncle went thru for 30 years growing about 10 acres of corn for the family. Growing 1000 acres would pretty much just be more, longer rows. Its an interesting sim topic.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by arslan on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:07PM

    by arslan (3462) on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:07PM (#73517)

    Its only mundane in real life when there are actual physical and/or mental demands on that menial work with real risk associated such that the interesting aspects is overshadowed. In a game, those are gone replaced only with the risk of not scoring well, that leaves the player to enjoy the interesting aspect of that type of work.

    Also, most games, whatever the task, typically gives gamers a sense of achievement when they succeed. If a game is design to have the right balance and variety to that, the subject matter is probably secondary.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @07:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @07:44AM (#73659)

      And often the achievement of success is simply "whoa, I didn't die". Which is why a lot of this stuff is not something you can just do in real life, it takes lots of training.

      Example: You don't just go out and rent a plane, and then on the 12th try go "woohoo, landed without a huge fireball". Because you would be dead on each one of the first eleven tries.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @02:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @02:22AM (#73562)

    now I want that Storming through forests astride dragons -simulator,
    what is its name? where can I download it?
    will it work well in my linux and look wonderful despite my old graphics card?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by tibman on Friday July 25 2014, @03:42AM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 25 2014, @03:42AM (#73584)

    Viscera Cleanup Detail guy here. It's the multiplayer that makes the game great : ) Try cleaning up a mess with your friends tracking footprints everywhere.

    Overly detailed games can be amazing. Why isn't Dwarf Fortress up there? I'd also go with Space Engineers and DayZ:SA. The Forest seems interesting but so buggy right now.

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Friday July 25 2014, @04:04AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Friday July 25 2014, @04:04AM (#73589) Journal

    I think part of the appeal of these games is the ability to do everything over after you've screwed up. In real life, if you mess up, that's too bad. The same is pretty much true of everything else done with computer simulation, including writing. Umberto Eco put it very well in Foucault's Pendulum:

    The problem with suicide is that sometimes you jump out the window and then change your mind between the eighth floor and the seventh. "Oh, if only I could go back!" Sorry, you can't, too bad. Splat. [The word-processing computer named] Abu, on the other hand, is merciful, he grants you the right to change your mind: you can recover your deleted text by pressing RETRIEVE.

    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @07:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @07:30AM (#73654)

    I bought Euro Truck Simulator. It was cheaper than getting a licence to drive the real thing. My work place used to have an office right next to a trucking company, and we could see out the windows how the drivers backed up with those huge things. I can back up with a regular car and trailer, but they have a large rear window, and I can see the corners of the trailer. But those guys have only a couple of mirrors, and once the trailer starts turning, it disappears from the mirrors on one side, while blocking the mirrors on the other.

    What I found out was that the mirros show a wider area, and so it's not quite as hard as I expected. On the other hand, the simulated mirrors have way low resolution, so detail further away (like the rear end of the trailer) become hard to see. As in how much do I need to turn to get the end of the trailer two pixels to the side when backing up the last four pixels.

    What disappointed me, though, was that it's actually a game, not a simulator. You need to take "jobs" to earn "money", and unless there's a hidden mode somewhere, there's no way to get to get around that and get to just play with the simulator part. Compared to e.g. Flight Gear, where I can just go for a flight, I don't need to worry about passengers or running an airline. And I can fly a Harrier from the local air strip, which probably never saw anything larger than a single propeller Cessna in real life.

    I also hoped for other combinations than the standard tractor-trailer setup, but apparently the game does not have those.

    So, somewhat a disappointment, but still worth the $6 I pad for it (Steam summer sale).

  • (Score: 1) by Tom on Friday July 25 2014, @09:21AM

    by Tom (4259) <tomNO@SPAMlemuria.org> on Friday July 25 2014, @09:21AM (#73676) Homepage

    Many, many years ago I played a "wolf simulator". Basically, you spend your days hunting for food, finding rivers to drink from, fighting for a better position in the pack and (important!) avoiding humans who want to shoot you. It was not very complicated, but incredibly fun. It was made by some wolf-protection group as an educational tool and it indeed taught me a bit about how wolves live.

    But what was fun about it? The ability to become someone else, much like the appeal of roleplaying games. It doesn't have to be a hero saving the world with his magic spells. Being a wolf in the forest is a ton of fun, because you can step away from your own life, into a life that is a lot simpler and - because it's a game and you're never in actual danger - much more relaxing. It's a holiday from the one million troubles of a modern life, where you can't make three steps without a list of TODOs falling on you.

    --
    Might & Fealty [mightandfealty.com], my political sandbox game
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @02:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @02:33PM (#73763)

      It's a holiday from the one million troubles of a modern life, where you can't make three steps without a list of TODOs falling on you.

      I take it you're not a console gamer then? From some of the console->PC ports I've seen, it seems you can't take three steps without a list of TODOs in those, either.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @03:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @03:12PM (#73786)

      that wolf simulator sounds fun, and if it was made many years ago probably my not so new computer can handle it too, you don't happen to remember the name of it so I can try to download it from somewhere?

  • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday July 25 2014, @09:45AM

    by Rivenaleem (3400) on Friday July 25 2014, @09:45AM (#73681)

    It should be noted that since the Cowpocalypse, and the rapture-ing of all the cow, the game is not as much fun as it once was. Cookie Clicker is still alive and well, however.

  • (Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday July 25 2014, @01:12PM

    by JeanCroix (573) on Friday July 25 2014, @01:12PM (#73736)

    And what makes people play them when you could just do the real thing?

    Sure, I could launch my body down the staircase once or maybe twice in real life. But there's no way I'd ever be able to do it as many times as I can in Stair Dismount. And the real thing offers no objective point system for injuries. Except for maybe the medical bills.

  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday July 25 2014, @04:05PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Friday July 25 2014, @04:05PM (#73816) Journal

    I played Euro Truck Simulator 2 one at a friends house. I sat there for an hour driving a lowboy with some equipment on the back for an hour and 15 minutes. That was it. For an hour and 15 minutes I drove a simulated truck with simulated freight. It was okay, but the routes were too damn long for my liking. And the collision physics were a bit off. While backing a truck into a tight space the trailer was hitting a wall when in my mirrors I had what appeared to be about a foot or so. My friend is a sim guy though. He has a full flightsim rig including throttles, pedals, sticks and yolks. He also has a nice steering wheel, pedals and shifting setup for driving games. He loves truck driving sims, helicopter sims, flight sims and racing games.

    Me? I'd rather play part time truck driver in IRL restoring my 1961 Mack B model. Costs quite a bit more than a sim though.

  • (Score: 1) by godshatter on Friday July 25 2014, @04:06PM

    by godshatter (3912) on Friday July 25 2014, @04:06PM (#73818)

    I live in a rural area without much in the way of large traffic structures and interchanges. Whenever I do drive somewhere with lots of merges and lanes and confusing (to me) ways of switching highways I get extremely nervous and often end up heading the wrong way with no clear idea of how to navigate back. Playing Euro Truck simulator, oddly enough, has helped me there. While it doesn't translate completely, it has served to give me a better idea how some of the more complicated interchanges and whatnot might be laid out, reducing the overall anxiety I feel when trying to navigate them.