The most important story

These days for work reasons I am playing a bunch of simulation games (sims) of different nature. I am making in my spare time a sandbox simulator of a police dog, and then for other reasons I am playing other sims.

They all have a single thing in common, despite belonging to different genres. In fact, immersive sims come from first person shooters, a specific type of action game. Colony sims come from strategy games. Sandbox sims come from adventure games.

They all share a single reason of why Players do love them: they foster the player agency, letting them create their own story.

Everytime I join one of their Discord for research I feel that. Every player has a different story to tell. That is, in my opinion, the single most important motivation for the core audience of sim games. Simulation doesn’t mean simulator, high realism and fidelity (also if some simulation game puts “simulator” in its name).

It means to have many levers to move to create your own story for your friends, Discord, or a livestream.