Living In Sim is our new column on "simulation", whatever that means
Simulation is a huge genre, no two people will agree where it begins or ends. When a game nails "simulator" to the end of its name, like a big plank of wood, the case seems clear cut. Flight Simulator. Gas Station Simulator. Goat Simulator. But then you have all the high-level systemic games which simulate historical nation building or space exploration. Cities Skylines calls itself a simulation, so does Crusader Kings, Rimworld, Mount & Blade, and Dwarf Fortress. Racing sims distinguish themselves from arcade racers. And sports games can veer that way too. Session is a skateboarding sim in a way that Tony Hawk's is not. Football Manager 2026 is a sim, but Rematch? Hmmm.
As I am constantly reminding Jank readers, all taxonomy is folly. Viewed from the firmament, every game is a simulation. But there is often some extra pedantry or detail that pushes a game into being classified a sim. For the purposes of this column, I don't care where that fuzzy border falls, I only care that it exists. A sim is just any videogame that commits hard to the bit.
Why sims, of all genres? Well, we're a PC gaming site, and the PC does