Most "simulation" games aren't simulators

serpineslair@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 94 points –

I was just browsing the Google Play Store and I am getting frustrated seeing games being tagged with the genre, but aren't actually simulating anything. E.g. Idle Miner/Mining Tycoon (can't remember name). Nothing in the game is accurate or even tries to represent real life. It even has cartoon graphics. Now I'm not getting mad about the games themselves, just the fact that they are being labelled as sims. Anyone else annoyed by this?

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Play store is a shitshow. It's so hard to spot the few actual gems in the absolute avalanche of ad-ridden asset flip time wasters that have the only goal of harvesting your data or running a monero miner in the background. The chances are better with paid games, but even then it's hit-or-miss.
I gave up on mobile gaming long ago.

I haven't played a decent mobile game in ages. How else am I supposed to get my dopamine fix 🙄😂. I am currently enjoying the small open source games on F-Droid however.

The Mobile port for Final Fantasy Tactics is still superb. The UI is a bit outdated but the strategy game itself is not.

Wait. Are you telling me Goat Simulator isn't accurate?

Goat Simulator suffers from the same issue. It's not a SIMULATOR. Sure, they put in the effort to make it seem like one, but in the background they just attach a camera to a real goat that you control remotely via wires into it's brain.

It's just lazy programming really.

At the danger of being whooshed here - with Goat simulator specifically, I think it's pretty obvious that the game is overall not meant to be taken seriously, including the title.

Open marketplaces will tag their products with anything and everything in the hope of showing up in “featured” lists.

This is another one of the consequences of over SEO in the current age of the internet

Technically a simulation is some mathematical model that captures some but not all aspects of a system. (A model that captures every aspect is the system itself)

So like “Idle Miner” models the basic concept of buying capital then putting it to work extracting value. Yeah it’s an ultra-simple model, but it is a model.

Are there any good mobile games out there?

Bloons

Kingdom rush

Monument valley

Machinarium

The Room

Shattered pixel dungeon

They exist, you just need to hunt a bit harder and be prepared to pay a little for them.

Krumit tale, Life in adventure, pocket city, lock screen, setting, kwgt

I HATE idle games with all my heart and soul. I love management games and those shitty excuse for a game are everywhere.

If you like management and friendly strategy games look for Kairosoft they are the only ones I know are not Idle shit. Also they are mainly pay once so most of them (except dream house story) don't have in game stores.

FYI: Reddit has a good Kairosoft community if anyone is interested in going there

I think that, in theory, idle games wouldn't be TOO bad on their own. However, they happen to encourage/allow developers to add tons of microtransactions and because of the simple gameplay: many devs make clones of existing games or games with the same game loop. This leads to a shit show of shitty games in the genre. So I believe the concept is meh, but in practice they are all terrible.

I just wish there was a way to hide games. I don't care about the 15th clone of clash of clans or match 3 games.

Hell I wish google would do that for any product, exclude particular domains from all searches for instance.

Like others have said already: it sells. It's the same reason why seemingly every single fantasy/adventure game is called an "RPG" regardless of whether or not it contains actual RPG elements, like creating your own character.

Also, most albums tagged with shoegaze on Bandcamp are not shoegaze. It's a travesty.

Give me your top 5 shoe gaze albums, for calibration, and also because I love recommendations.

The shoegaze like emo music? like those emo kids in South Park that just look at the floor and kind of not dance?