Who knew that driving a street sweeper all over town, cleaning streets and stuff, wouldn't make for a good video game? Probably everyone who has ever played a video game and doesn't work as a street sweeper. Heck, I'd venture to guess that even a professional street sweeper wouldn't want to go home and play a game involving street sweeping!
So, the question I have as an avid gamer is this- how do these awful video games keep getting made and released upon an unsuspecting public? My guess is an anti-video game conspiracy bent on turning gamers against their favorite pastime. Stop shaking your cane at me!
Link --via Ology
@ algomeysa-great insight, and how great would a crazy easter egg be in an otherwise mundane game?!
@ nick-the game is probably good "clean" fun, but I think most kids would find it boring compared to all the other games on the market. Maybe if this was the first game the kid ever played...
@ feodor-you make some great points, and I agree that having this stinkbomb dropped on your desk would make you rethink your interest in being a professional game reviewer.
@ ted-the player reviews were so funny that I was tempted to check out the game myself! Then I turned on my xbox and forgot all about it...
@ anonymous-i guess i'm just a jaded old gamer, since I enjoy playing games that don't simulate the mundane activities found in real life.
@ jason-i really hope they were planning on ending up in the cheap games bin, because if this was a labor of love then someone's heart was surely broken!
As you can see, this company makes a lot of these kind of simulation games:
http://www.excalibur-publishing.com/games_sims.htm
I think there's a basic rule that many people's hobbies are going to be incomprehensible to those who aren't into them.
Train buffs like watching trains, for example. You might think that's boring. But even some really gonzo train buffs would scratch their heads at the British hobby of "trainspotting", where you're actually writing down the serial numbers on railroad cars and keeping a log, like someone birdwatching.
So similarly, model railroading might seem incomprehensible to someone who's not into it. But for someone who is, these train simulator programs are probably quite interesting.
Or, say, truck driving simulators. A lot of guys think trucks are cool. They may not ever get a chance to drive an 18-wheeler. But with one of these programs, you can.
These players might be equally mystified why anyone would want to play some 3-D shooter game that involves your character going into a hell dimension and pumping bullets into monsters that burst into gore patterns when shot.
And these players would want a real truck simulator, not something that devolves into GRAND THEFT AUTO mayhem.
And similarly, most of us are never going to drive a bulldozer or operate a giant crane or whatever in real life, so simulators like that could have some appeal.
And even if that doesn't appeal, some of their things like DEMOLITION SIMULATOR, you can probably see the appeal: Get a big old wrecking ball and go to town on some buildings.
Since I've made some simple games myself, I find myself curious about their digging simulator, just from a programming point of view: Making a 3-D environment that you could really go in and start scooping up dirt, sounds pretty complicated.
I note that a lot of these games seem to be European, and specifically German. I think there may be a tendency for these simulations that might seem to be boring things but might appeal to a certain orderly mindset. It might even be meditative to do these sort of ordinary tasks in them.
Even by those standards though, it seems like titles like GARBAGE TRUCK SIMULATOR or STREET CLEANER are pushing it. You might think they're self-parody, but they don't appear to be.
If I were a programmer on them though, I'd think the urge to put in rare Easter Eggs in the game would be overpowering.
You know, the kind of 1 in 10,000 times thing that would cause players to post on messagebases, "I swear, I was playing GARBAGE TRUCK SIMULATOR last night and suddenly this car pulled up in front of the bank and these guys got out and ROBBED THE BANK!"
Only to be roundly derided on these forums, like someone claiming to have seen Bigfoot in the real world.