Simulation is a game genre that has no specific mechanics, aesthetic design or a shared purpose. Now that I think about it, simulation is more of an adjective than a genre. Forza is a racing simulation but has more in common with need for speed than Sim City. This genre/adjective is less about how a game is played and more about why a game is played; the generalized reasons people play them outside the standard reasons for anyone to play anything, might mostly boil down to, some more grounded fantasy or just wanting to see what would happen if you tried some really stupid stuff but there is some greater uses of simulation games than just seeing how long it takes your sim family to set themselves on fire.
Depending on the level of simplicity the game applies to any given scenario, a scenario should be able to reflect reality if such a scenario were to really play out. In racing simulators such as Forza or Gan Turismo, the cars supposedly behave as realistically as possible in any given scenario; if you and a friend is arguing about which of your dream cars are better, race them. Games like Sim City are supposed to show you vaguely how to run a city, minus a lot of red tape of course. Military sims such as Arma give players are more refined and realistic experience than a shooter like Call of Duty, instead of mowing down every Russian, German or Middle Eastern in sight like an Arnold Schwarzenegger knockoff, you can't aim to save you life, all of your equipment is too complicated to use in a gun fight and you are cowering in a tool shed hiding from six guys from a morally ambiguous nation state and praying to god back up gets there soon, just like the real military.
The idea for a simulation game can come from two trains of thought, making a game more realistic for fun or for training. Now the simplest introduction to simulations for training, aside from hearing the american army has been playing games for years as a form of training (even making a Doom mod for it), would be the training simulations everyone knows about, flight simulators.
Flight sims weren't made to be videogames, they were made to train pilots without the risk of crashing a real plane, they don't even seem to use the same technology, even the ones the ADF use still look like crap, but they get the job done. The entire cockpit has been built to be the exact copy of some real aircraft so when the pilot in training enters a real plane, they know exactly what they are doing.
The idea of using simulations for training is not a new one; remember back to any war film where they are moving little tokens around a map to represent troops, well that's basically a game of risk. Using a form of board game to assess as many actions and outcomes is a form of simulation, of course its not a very accurate one as for it to work properly one would need to think like the enemy, which we all know would require some kind of mind swapping device like from a cheesy 80's movie.
In conclusion, the best movie ever would be a WWII Freaky Friday, Lindsay Lohan running around acting all like Hitler, behind the scenes it would just be her taking acid before stepping on set.
No comments:
Post a Comment