Lunchtime Discussion: Sims

I was today informed via Twitter that that this year’s big hit, German Truck Simulator, is going to hit shelves soon. In all seriousness I do wonder who’s buying these titles? Clearly enough people are purchasing sim titles to keep the industry going, and Space Shuttle Mission Simulator does sound pretty awesome, but it does seem odd that people are buying the truck and tractor simulators.

Of course there are totally different level of sim titles. At the more game focused end you’ve got titles like Forza and Gran Turismo, both peak examples of what happens when you create an incredibly detailed racing simulator and add game mechanics on top of it. These kind of simulators are brilliant, and definitely focused on the game end of things. They have a clear win/loss mechanic, but they definitely feel very real and the amount of tweaking you can do to your cars and the depth with which you can apply them is truly impressive.

On the other end of the scale you have the aforementioned German Truck Simulator and more populist titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator. In my misspent youth – don’t worry my time is still misspent, I’m just a little older – I spent many hours with Flight Simulator. I know that sounds incredibly geeky, but it’s just entertaining. Trying to fly a helicopter is hours of insanity, and whilst flying a flight plan between two airports sound incredibly dull, having a friend set up random equipment failures at certain intervals quickly breaks up the dullness.

What level of simulation do you like? If it’s too detailed and deep do you just get bored? Does it need some level of gaming added on top to make it fun, or can they be fun in their own right?