What my zen week with a virtual power-washer taught me about gaming – and life | Imogen West-Knights
Some of the most popular simulator games are outlandishly boring. But curiously, it’s satisfying to complete pointless tasks when the stakes are so low
When I was at university I had a friend who had a strange hobby. He would sit in his room and play a hunting simulation game on his computer. “Game” struck me as a misleading word for what this program allowed you to do, though. You’d have to sit hunkered in the digital undergrowth waiting long, long stretches for a deer to walk through your gun sights. So long, in fact, that the game came with an inbuilt noughts and crosses function so you had something to entertain you while doing this supposedly entertaining thing.
His other friends and I thought this noughts and crosses thing was hysterical. Why play a game so dull that it needs another game inside it? But simulator games, of which hunting is just one type, have only grown more popular since then – and to an astonishing degree. The global simulation games market was worth an estimated $4.86bn (£3.6bn) in 2020, and is expected to generate about $21bn by 2030. And I don’t just mean games like The Sims or Rollercoaster Tycoon or Stardew Valley: brightly coloured games in which there are clearly exciting objectives and lots of things to do. I mean games that are almost outlandishly dull in their conceit. There is Farming Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator, where you drive an HGV across the continent, another where you pilot commercial flights in real time – and many, many more.
I write video games myself, narrative point-and-click stuff, so I have watched this trend with interest and confusion. I wanted to know: what is it about these games? Lawn Mowing simulator seemed the most purely boring to me, but sadly it is only available on PC. You can download an expansion pack for that one that allows you to mow lawns in “ancient Britain”. Wonders never cease. So instead I went for the PowerWash simulator as the game to try to get into – because when I was in the throes of an acute heartbreak some years ago, my poor mother suggested that instead of crying all day in the kitchen I might like to power-wash her patio while crying instead. Which I did, and remember finding it an oddly satisfying if abject experience. Power washers work very well. The patio became clean. Something was not going to shit.
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