By Sophie Ulanoff

As of late, games with the word "simulator" attached at the end have become a trend, attracting players with the offer of simply doing a real-life job. Simulators have been around for a while; games such as House Flipper, the Farming Simulator series, Microsoft Flight Simulator, aren't exactly new. They all offer realistic settings within actual careers that exist, where players aim to succeed in doing these jobs that they don't have in real life. For me, I was finally pulled into one of these simulator-type games with the release of PowerWash Simulator. I think I'm one of the only people to beat the main career; seriously, I got a rare Xbox achievement for it. Since then, however, I've noticed a slow but steady increase in games that call themselves some sort of simulator, and just like PowerWash Simulator, manage to gain an impressive amount of popularity despite offering an activity anyone could do in real life.

In the last year, the trend has felt like it's hit its stride; new and more niche simulations continue to come out. This most recent Steam Next Fest featured plenty of demos for simulation games, with some making the top 50 demos played during the event, such as RoadCraft, Football Life Simulator, and Night Club Simulator. Barring Football Life Simulator, all of these offer activities that any person could feasibly do. Video games are meant to be an escape from real life, and yet simulating true-to-life activities and jobs has become a profitable market in the gaming industry.

Why Do We Gravitate Towards Simulation Games?

Simulators Tend to Be Some of the Most Addictive Games Around

For me, playing PowerWash Simulator scratched that itch of completing a job well-done, the satisfaction of watching the dirt wash away unmatched. Of course, in real life, cleaning is a hassle, and while I do enjoy the feeling of a job well done afterward, you won't see me happily getting into the activity the way I do when starting a job in PowerWash. These simulators offer a wide variety of careers and jobs that no one wants to do. There's even a Crime Scene Simulator that boasts an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, despite being a simulation of one of the most undesirable jobs.

Simulators have also become popular viewing material on Twitch, with games such as Fast Food Simulator and Supermarket Simulator being frequent games for Twitch streamers to play. Even viewers enjoy watching someone navigate jobs that, in real life, are everyone's nightmare first job. Of course, not all of us have had these specific jobs, making them enjoyable to play. As someone who has prepped popcorn and drinks and been in the trenches of retail and customer service, I have no desire to play either of those games or ones like them. That would simply be a masochistic activity for myself; but for others, it's something they can dig into and experience for the first time.

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Simulators are as real as it gets, with the first-person POV being a necessary staple of the genre, which is part of what makes them so popular: the immersion. The immersion, of course, comes at the cost I mentioned above, which is putting some players off due to having spent plenty of time in similar jobs in real life. Still, there's such a wide variety of these simulator games that most of them find their own pocket of success. The reason a game like PowerWash Simulator has enjoyed such longevity is due to the fact that it's a far less common career. It also helps that they've added DLCs that step out of the realm of true-to-life – I particularly enjoyed cleaning up the Dirty Bubble's reign of terror in the Spongebob DLC.

When taking into consideration how a game such as PowerWash Simulator has found such long-term success due to its more rare choice of career and outlandish DLC, it is a bit perplexing that more simulators that feature much more tedious—or even tortuous—jobs have become more popular.

The Appeal of Simulation Games Comes Down to Control

Games Like Parcel Simulator and Microsoft Flight Simulator Give Players a Sense of Accomplishment

Image via Dansan Digital

Life is messy, but these simulators aren't. Simulators provide players with a different type of escape; not one that takes them to a different time period, a fantasy land, or a different planet. No, it takes them to a place where life makes a bit more sense. When I was playing Minecraft in high school, creating chests full of materials and making everything just right, it helped alleviate the overwhelming stress I felt in being a teenager because it gave me a sense of control. Simulators achieve this by putting players in real-life situations and giving them a chance to feel as though they have control over something in life.

Recently, I started playing the demo for Parcel Simulator. It's quite literally a simulator where you are one man managing a shipment facility, and it's hard. At one point, I got overwhelmed by the amount of conveyor belts I'd ordered, realizing I wasn't sure where to put them and how to best capitalize on the potential automation. So, I closed out the game. But I still came back the next day and made it work because it gave me a sense of accomplishment, and I enjoyed seeing everything moving and working as it should.

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Parcel Simulator is far from the only difficult or sometimes overwhelming simulator out there; have you ever tried to play Microsoft Flight Simulator? It's terrifying, and I don't understand why I'm expected to know anything about planes. But, it's one of the most popular simulators out there, with its first release being in 1982, over 40 years ago.

There's a reason even the difficult and stressful simulators have swathes of fans playing them; there's the satisfaction of defeating a really hard boss in a video game, and then there's the satisfaction of a job well done and making the system work. They're very different, but both provide a necessary win for the player. The simulator genre is well on its way to over-saturation, if it hasn't already reached that point, but for now it's a growing pocket of gaming that provides players with some sense of control.

Whether it's power washing, cleaning up a crime scene, or reconstructing destroyed buildings, simulators provide players with hours of fun and stress that culminate in a feeling of accomplishment. It's a desperately needed genre at the moment, and I can't wait to continue exploring it.