11 ms·

The Anthropology of Farming Simulator

h2odragon 4y ago
Just like flight simulators: how else can you smash millions of dollars of precision machinery into a building without severe consequences?
- ivanmontillam 4y ago
  Just like GTA: How do you realize your wildest dreams without having to actually commit crimes?
- ChicagoBoy11 4y ago
  As someone who got a pilot's license because of flight simulator, I'm honestly shocked actually at how much the virtual experience can successfully scratch the itch of the real thing. Sure, there's a thrill that cannot be matched and despite a high-end VR set up at home, the graphics in real life are better, but there's a good amount of the joy I get from the real thing -- the technical challenge, the navigation, the brief escape of being immersed in this activity and not thinking about much else, etc. -- that nowadays you can very faithfully recreate in the sim. And, unlike real life, it is comparably 0 cost activity in terms of setup/price/time.
junon 4y ago
I love dogs. I don't want a dog (yet, I guess). It's a huge commitment. If I get a chance to periodically interact with a dog - just the good parts, especially, such as petting, playing, running around, etc. - then I'm going to take it. It still doesn't mean I want to adopt a dog. Apply this to being a farmer, which is a lot of work, and weigh this against the barrier to entry of being a farmer for just a few hours every so often, vs. doing it digitally.
- ksec 4y ago
  Not only that. The economics side of it. Not everyone could afford a dog. It is quite a bit of money, from the space required for living to the food and medical care. Also in farming. I do think there are people who like the hard work and simple life. But as a business it is terrible.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    $400 a month in food (two large dogs, both turned out to need specialty diets) gets old fast. That said, I dearly love my dogs and am trying rather hard to not think about the tens of thousands of dollars I will end up spending just on food alone.
    - Doxin 4y ago
      As a new dog owner, I'm pretty sure the dog mob could show up to beat me up and steal a kidney and I'd probably still think getting a dog was a great decision. Love is an odd thing.
- dylan604 4y ago
  You just described having grandkids vs having your own kid! A niece/nephew is similar as well. Be the cool aunt/uncle, be the grandparent that feeds the kids sugar just before the parents come to collect them, or any of the other ways of enjoying the time with the kiddos but being able to get back for all the times the kid/sibling was an ass to you!
- josefresco 4y ago
  >If I get a chance to periodically interact with a dog - just the good parts, especially, such as petting, playing, running around, etc. - then I'm going to take it. I had a couple of dogs who died of old age. I couldn't bring myself to get another dog so instead we dog sit! We use the Rover app and it's been pretty awesome. You get to be a "doggy grandparent" for a couple days, spoil the crap out of them and then poof! They go back to their owners and you don't have to deal with all their BS (because let's be honest: almost every dog his it's own BS)
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  These games almost never include the really shitty parts, even the "realistic" ones. Running to the farm & feed store (perhaps an hour round trip, or even more, depending on where you are, and it's getting in the way of getting actual work done) for something or another, mending fences, grading drive-ways and other roads, cleaning yourself and your clothes and boots up after you get covered in mud, cleaning equipment, getting tractors un-stuck, repairing tractors, and so on. And what they do include is a button press, not a process. Hook up a discer? Back up to it and press the button. No getting out, screwing with chocks and some kind of device or another for raising the tongue into place. No pinching the shit out of your hand because you were careless. No weed-eating around equipment that's parked outside. No re-painting the barn. No re-sealing some screw holes in the sheet metal roof that've been leaking. No diagnosing and fixing a slipped belt on the combine. No tossing square bales onto a trailer. No cuts on your arms from corn leaves. No itchiness from handling straw. No hay (ha, ha) fever. No spending an entire morning getting one damn cow or another in the chute for the veterinarian. These "realistic" simulators still almost always cut out all the worst crap that's the reason people don't have tons and tons of fun doing it in real life. The stuff you do in the game is maybe 5-10% of what you really do.
  - htrp 4y ago
    Man I can already feel the anger at having to repaint that fence.....
neaden 4y ago
I think a big part of this is that so many video games are based on violence, without many alternatives. And the ones that are non violent tend to be shorter and more story focused. I think a lot of people want a game that is non-violent, more open world, and has some grind. Farming and survival are two ways to do that, but I think something like a cafe-sim would scratch the same itch for many people.
- Doxin 4y ago
  Allow me to suggest sable for the category of non-violent open world games. It doesn't really have any grinding but the travel in the game forces a zen-like approach to it all. I kinda wish it didn't have fast travel to be honest.
- d4mi3n 4y ago
  This is true of a lot of main stream video games, but there's a whole genre of games that are much more wholesome, slice-of-life experiences. Consider: Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Slime Rancher, and Katamari Damacy—all of which are successful game IP without any of the stereotypical violence we see in AAA shooters. I've found the "cozy" genre on Steam to also be a great way to find games like these, though I suspect there are other terms that can be used to find them: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Cozy https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Cozy
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Stardew has multiple dungeons with sword fighting. Even Slime Rancher has turrets and fighting (though very cartoony/gentle).
- potatolicious 4y ago
  This is the crux of it for me. Don't get me wrong, I like me a shooter from time to time, but as I've gotten older I find myself not often liking the adrenaline-filled games being pitched. And Sim-type games really scratch that itch. They often have (relatively) deep gameplay mechanics that are easy to learn but hard to master, don't have a lot of time pressure (many are turn-based, or real-time but with no serious deadlines), and most importantly aren't multiplayer.
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
Obviously because it’s an innate part of our being. It has been with us for thousands of years. If we mostly stopped eating food because of some sort of breakthrough supplementation, we would likely have a food simulator.
- jackcosgrove 4y ago
  Can't wait for the persistence hunting sim to come out.
  - harpiaharpyja 4y ago
    There are a few of those already, the "Survival Game" genre
mistrial9 4y ago
Why are so few of the many capable people, able to farm?
- shagie 4y ago
  Starting up a farm (even a hobby farm) is an enormous capital investment. https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/farm-loan-programs/beginning-farmers-and-ranchers-loans/index https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/farm-loan-pro... and https://www.farmers.gov/loans https://www.farmers.gov/loans > Farm Ownership Loans can be used to purchase or expand a farm or ranch. This loan can help with paying closing costs, constructing or improving buildings on the farm, or to help conserve and protect soil and water resources. > USDA’s Farm Service Agency offers up to $600,000 for eligible borrowers through Farm Ownership Loans. > Farm Operating Loans can be used to purchase livestock, seed and equipment. It can also cover farm operating costs and family living expenses while a farm gets up and running. > USDA’s Farm Service Agency offers up to $400,000 for eligible borrowers through Farm Operating Loans. Aside from the "grow things" there is an enormous amount of business sense and domain knowledge (what to grow when, how to fix that thing now, does this other thing need fixing?) that is needed to accompany it.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    Technically yes, but you can do it on the small (for a hobby farm anyway). You could start a small commercial farm, but you'd basically have bought yourself a sub-minimum wage job. I live on a horse farm and when we bought the property it didn't really cost that much more than a nice house in the suburbs. My 10 acres and a large new house cost far less than a lot of small houses on tiny lots in places like Seattle or SF. If we had wanted to be farther out (I'm about a 50 minute commute to Minneapolis), we could have gotten more land for even less. The major adjustments are (a) it's very difficult to take a vacation, (b) the amount of income that goes towards taking care of animals and (c) the work never ends (see [a] above). Besides that, it's all peachy :-)
- rybosworld 4y ago
  It's extremely hard to compete with the major farming conglomerates for one thing.
shagie 4y ago
I don't play Farming Simulator (though an older copy of it is sitting in my steam library)... I do play American Truck Simulator. For ATS, there's a certain relaxing of "just driving". You've got a goal, and simple, well defined tasks - go here, pick up the load, go there, deliver the load. The 'go there' part is largely an autopilot of a few decades of driving experience with a bit of "ok, this is different" when dealing with something that has a large trailer. For the most part, its something I can play without needing to do any deeper problem solving. To that end, the game is relaxing. With the nature of the game, its also something that one can "do" - there are few impossible tasks unlike what one encounters with a day job. The consequences for not completing something is a few points however they are measured - but rarely game ending (and in many cases, that's resolved with a save file). It is about getting something 'realistic' done in today's world of ever increasing demands. (very late edit) My current gaming binge is Hardspace Ship Breaker - which is a game about being a shipbreaker for space ships. Its got the "this can be routine" (though if you mess up the reactor it can get very interesting very fast). Ship breaking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_breaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_breaking ) is in the category of most dangerous jobs and space ships are obviously not realistic. But it's the game that you can just get into the grove and do. One of the best things about the game (for me) is that it is 15 minute shifts. So you can easily say "I'll play this game for 15 minutes on lunch break" and as long as you stick to one shift, that's 15 minutes. The shift ends and its done.
- bm3719 4y ago
  I feel the same about ATS. In fact, I wish it was even more boring, like real driving is. ATS has an unrealistic amount of curves and shortens the distances between cities that in real life would take many hours to travel between. It also is devoid of any of the (often catastrophic) downsides of making a mistake in real life. Turns out driving can be relaxing and fun if you remove anxiety involving death, injury, and property damage. Perhaps the same applies to farming sims.
  - mr_cyborg 4y ago
    You need to check out Desert Bus.
Apreche 4y ago
Because with virtual farming you don't have to shovel poop. You can also harvest an entire field with one mouse click. Pretty obvious why few people want to actually become farmers. Despite all the mechanization, it's still difficult, dangerous, and dirty.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Right, because when you fail in a game, you just insert another $.25 and continue. When the crops fail for a real farmer, there is no spawn point to start over. It might literally cost them the farm.
  - bequanna 4y ago
    Not exactly. In the US, subsidized crop insurance lowers the risk of low yields and provides a nice safety net.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Yes, this is why so many small family farms are being sold out to corpFarm left, right, center.
      - bequanna 4y ago
        I guess I’m not familiar with this. I live in northern midwestern farm country (corn/soybean fields) and can see some consolidation, but still almost all family farms.
        bluGill 4y ago
        There are no family farms for accounting reasons. The family still lives on the farm and looks like a family farm, but the legal situation is all corporate farm.
        wrycoder 4y ago
makz 4y ago
Because videogame farming is unlike real farming, the boring, tedious, hard parts are taken away.
- nightski 4y ago
  I'm not even sure it has anything to do with that. Boring & tedious parts exist in many video games. IMO, It's that you don't need to buy millions in assets using debt to generate a profit at great risk based on many factors that you have no control over.
- hitpointdrew 4y ago
  Have you played farming simulator? I'd rather do real farming, but I don't have the capital to invest in that sort of equipment, so I guess farming simulator it is then.
josefresco 4y ago
I read an article a while back that asked a farmer why he works all day and then comes home to play a farming sim. He basically said in the "real world" things constantly go wrong, but in the sim it's much smoother/easier etc. I totally get it.
adra 4y ago
With so few death cage fighters, why are there so many brawler games? With so few wanting to be soldiers, why are there so many shooters? Pedantic question to pedantic answers. But my real answer would be that some people are over stimulated at work, and some are over. The understimulated one's I think gravitate to the "grand feats" type of games while those who are overstimulated at work are more looking for either laid back or mundane games to play. All these "_ life sim" games are generally in that mundane category and that's the audience most captive for these forms of entertainment.
- mradek 4y ago
  Experience the risk without actually taking any risk. Although, I can offer an anecdote. I really enjoy playing truck simulators, namely American and European Truck Simulator. I had to drive a large box truck recently and I found it super easy - the high up position, looking at the mirrors to back up and parallel park perfectly, and the joy of the open road. Then I realized that truck drivers do this every day for weeks on end as a job. Really appreciate the folks who keep our economy moving.
  - jerf 4y ago
    I think one of the underappreciated issues with the 21st century economy is how many of us do the same thing, day in, day out, hyperoptimized to the point it's economically hard to justify switching tasks. (Or, perhaps more accurately, the 20th century economy, which is still largely with us.) Do a little of this today, a little of that tomorrow, even a little of this and that within a day, and I feel like we could all tolerate a bit more mundanity (for lack of a better word) in our lives. Cut vegetables, drive a truck, pump sewage, work a factory line, it'd all be easier if we weren't doing the same thing all the time, 40+ hours a week.
    - m463 4y ago
      > economically hard to justify switching tasks. I vaguely remember some factories would not let workers change jobs once they got good at them, to their detriment (with carpal tunnel and other RSIs)
speeder 4y ago
For me it is because I found no way to own a real farm. I would love to have one, but couldn't figure out how to get one. Sad part of that is that I have a bunch of relatives that do own farms, but have no interest in farming, the only reason they have those farms is so they can wait the land price to raise before they sell it eventually.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Yeah farming is a several million dollar investment in land and equipment, for the dubious privilege of being lower-middle-class
  - bequanna 4y ago
    Lower middle class? Come to Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, etc and visit a farm. Their reported annual income may be small because of amortization/depreciation, but net worth is very typically several million. If you’re a poor farmer, you’re not doing it right.
    - AngryData 4y ago
      Their net worth doesn't really reflect their income though. Most farms are running on sub 1% profit margins. You dump 5 million dollars on your fields and you would consider $50,000 profit a successful year.
      - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
        Yes exactly my point. Net worth is because of the enormous up-front investment. Cash flow does not justify that investment. And yes, I'm from Iowa.
      - bequanna 4y ago
        Why wouldn't you finance the purchase of the land? You can get by with putting 0-10% down. Additionally, you're completely ignoring appreciation and paying down the loan. Farmland has went from ~2k /acre to 12k in about 20 years.
pwinnski 4y ago
"With so few ghosts, why is Pac-man so popular?" "With so few alien invaders, why are video games about invading aliens so popular?" "With so few NFL teams, why are video games about managing NFL teams so popular?"
avidphantasm 4y ago
Imagined social relations.
throw0101a 4y ago
Penny Arcade had a comic on this recently: * https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2022/09/16/farm-minimization https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2022/09/16/farm-minimizat...
NDizzle 4y ago
For me, it's Snow Runner. Mud Runner had a more challenging UI. Snow Runner is a bit better. Not perfect, but better. You have simple tasks and an open world for you to decide how to accomplish the task. There's typically an easy way, which requires more time to complete due to the travel distance involved. And then you can scale all the way up however difficult you want. And then there's the recovery effort, when your "it didn't look that deep/muddy/steep" plan falls through. I do like the farming games though. Or at least I did, until I bought 5 acres in the country and got out here. Now if I get the itch for a farming game, I do some kind of project.
giantg2 4y ago
Videogames allow you to do stuff you wouldn't in real life. There are a lot of non-farmers out there.
croes 4y ago
Knowing the difference between a job and a game.
cybaz 4y ago
I met a guy once who was a roofer. He told me "Putting on roofs is the easy part. It's the making a living doing it that's tough"
emrah 4y ago
Because a lot of people want to buy a farm and grow their own food and cattle, live with nature in nature yada yada. But they realize they either can't afford it or it's too difficult physically. Games offer an alternative. It's not the real deal but the brain makes it sort of real and that's good enough for some. They can live the fantasy without any of the cow dodo
ISL 4y ago
Precisely because so many people would like to farm, small-scale farming is a brutal economic environment. In that respect, it isn't terribly different from academia -- people are doing it for love and the experience, not for money. Simulating the farming experience without the massive financial risk (and the back-breaking work/unforgiving hours) gives some of that joy without most of the downside. If you're willing to volunteer to cover night-time calving for cattle in snowstorms in February, you can probably get the real experience for free.
PeterStuer 4y ago
A huge difference between a game and a job is that you can quit the game at any time without consequences. That creates an entirely different state of mind.
mikkergp 4y ago
I watch a lot of the historical farming series, Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series) And, despite the many different ways people choose to live, there's still this idea that the way we live now is the best way. The title of this is article is a bit strange, but I've noticed in some of the, maybe it's hustle porn communities on Twitter, there's this notion that if you're not automating all of the manual labor in your life you're doing it wrong. But there's something very nourishing about the idea of living in a world where you're interacting with and directly influencing the physical world around you. Both to care for a plot of land and to make things by hand. I think there's also something nice about living in a small world. No grandiose interconnectedness. You, your family, your community, your livestock and the land around you. It's so hard to get some of that I think unless you're also willing to completely give up living modern life and move out to the middle of nowhere ala Life Below Zero, or if you're wealthy enough to own land close to town (I'm fortunate enough to have found a nice 2 acres close to town, but it costs a premium compared to other houses the same size). Simulation is a great way to get some of that in small doses.
- mason55 4y ago
  IMO the big difference is doing it at your leisure and being able to take a break vs. being required to do it 24/7. When I’m frustrated with my job and modern life in general it’s easy to imagine running away and living on a farm. When I’m sleeping in on a Saturday or taking a spontaneous weekend getaway I’m very glad that I don’t live on a farm.
  - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
    I mean, you could easily have a farm with enough communal labor that someone could pick up your slack if you took a few days off. Vacation isn't a modern luxury, serf farmers were basically off 50% of the time
davesque 4y ago
I think one reason people like farming games (and games in general really) is that they're fair. You perform a set of actions and get a reward. Sure, some games feel sort of unfair if they're poorly designed. But I think all video games are fair in the sense that they're deterministic. And I know that when I've enjoyed playing farming games, I enjoy the sense of growth that I know is guaranteed to those that learn the rules. Real life is not the same. You can follow all the rules, play fair, and still lose.
CuriouslyC 4y ago
Transforming a piece of land and raising animals is fun and rewarding, hence why people garden and have pets. Unfortunately modern farming requires you to sacrifice the aesthetic and humane in order to be profitable unless you can build a dedicated clientele of people willing to pay a 400% markup for your food, or your farm's actual business is agro-tourism/goat yoga/etc.
- bequanna 4y ago
  Not true. Organic agriculture/horticulture on a scale large enough to survive is definitely possible and best practices are usually well-documented by your state’s extension. Conventional, factory farming is “easier” and more widespread, so there is more comfort in numbers doing that.
incomingpain 4y ago
Besides "Americas army" there really arent any video games with an intention of bringing you to the profession. It's really just about having fun. I do recall a US general talking about how this doesn't work and the overweight/obesity epidemic amongst gamers is a huge impediment to enrollment. Video games aside. Really the question, why so few farmers? Government education has specifically trained and discouraged people from becoming farmers, intentionally reducing the number of farmers. Biosciences has made farming quite unprofitable. The use of fertilizers, gmos, pesticides, etc have made a small time farmer basically unprofitable compared to the farmer with 80,000 acres and large machines. There are better professions to earn a living. Hell, the cost of startup is ridiculous. ~86 acres near where i live is $5 million. You also cant really live near cities. There's no rockstars coming to rural canada. You have to live in toronto to get those rockstars. Good internet is also not in rural areas. But then you also have governments actively taxing farmers to tremendous degree. For example, Carbon taxes disproportionately impact a farmer's old diesel in his massive tractor compared to a econobox tiny car. Farmers obviously don't care. A wide carbon tax like that ends up in the consumer's hands as food inflation. https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/food-inflation https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/food-inflation Basically nobody has normal/low food inflation because of this. Then you have the 'fertilizer reductions'... https://wheatgrowers.ca/advocacy-resources/fertilizer-reduction/ https://wheatgrowers.ca/advocacy-resources/fertilizer-reduct... IF you work in an industry where the government is actively screwing you over so much. You choose a new profession right away. Hence no farmers.
mbfg 4y ago
The idea of farming is very alluring, Be your own boss, live a healthy lifestyle with family, produce something very useful for society. The reality of farming is that of a death trap. Brutal work, low pay, total imprisonment. (Except potentially for the biggest of operations, don't know about that). There's a common quip... It is very easy to become a millionaire as a farmer, it's a two step process. 1) Be a billionaire 2) Buy a farm
gmuslera 4y ago
Farming: The Good Parts. And some of those games include also the good parts of social interaction, fishing, foraging and more, in a simple enough way, not the complex, messy and tiresome reality. Probably some farmers enjoy those games, but the gamers may not like all what is involved in real life farming (and things that works around it, like i.e. economy).
TheCoelacanth 4y ago
Yeah, why aren't there more games about making spreadsheets and powerpoints? Obviously, there's EVE Online, but that's only one game.
mywittyname 4y ago
> The popularity of farming simulators points to people’s enduring engagement with farming as a way to understand our relationship with the natural world, not just a system of food production. Farming has been fundamental [...] This is really overthinking the subject. Simulation games often have really tight, addicting game play loops. The player starts with nothing and has to do everything in a grueling, manual fashion. But each iteration of the game loop, the player gets a minor upgrade that makes them slightly more effective and/or adds an additional challenge to consider. After a few hundred iterations, the player has built a gargantuan automata that handles the core gameplay loop, freeing them up to focus on ancillary projects like decorating or collecting. This is exactly the kind of situation that hammers on the dopamine receptors of a lot of people. Do something challenging, get a reward, then invest that reward to get a better one the next time. It's basically gambling. Farming happens to be a subject that carries a lot of preconceptions, allowing players to pickup the game concepts a lot more quickly without as many tutorials. But there are plenty of simulation games out there with different subjects but similar game play loops. I spent like 40 hours playing a game about salvaging space ships. I don't have any particular desire to be in space not do I like space ships or anything. It just happens to be a game that follows this formula, so it's fun.
liampulles 4y ago
My father was a farmer. Pretty stressful business in real life - not fun when your ostriches get bird flu. But a farm is certainly a beautiful break from city life.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
From this I gather the reason is quite simple: air conditioning.
Animats 4y ago
There are even more banal games. Check out Lawn Mower Simulator and Power Wash Simulator. Second Life hit this three years ago. You can buy land, build a house or buy and install a prefab one, and build pretty much anything you want. But about a hundred thousand users paid for a premium membership so they could get a nice, but rather banal, pre-built American suburban house. A house in an enormous suburbs with strict rules and a sort of homeowner's association. There's even a mini-game where you can put out a trash can on specified days and people come around with the garbage truck and empty it. Given the ability to do anything, most of the population runs out of ideas fast.

Just like flight simulators: how else can you smash millions of dollars of precision machinery into a building without severe consequences?

ivanmontillam 4y ago
Just like GTA: How do you realize your wildest dreams without having to actually commit crimes?
ChicagoBoy11 4y ago
As someone who got a pilot's license because of flight simulator, I'm honestly shocked actually at how much the virtual experience can successfully scratch the itch of the real thing. Sure, there's a thrill that cannot be matched and despite a high-end VR set up at home, the graphics in real life are better, but there's a good amount of the joy I get from the real thing -- the technical challenge, the navigation, the brief escape of being immersed in this activity and not thinking about much else, etc. -- that nowadays you can very faithfully recreate in the sim. And, unlike real life, it is comparably 0 cost activity in terms of setup/price/time.

junon 4y ago

I love dogs. I don't want a dog (yet, I guess). It's a huge commitment. If I get a chance to periodically interact with a dog - just the good parts, especially, such as petting, playing, running around, etc. - then I'm going to take it. It still doesn't mean I want to adopt a dog. Apply this to being a farmer, which is a lot of work, and weigh this against the barrier to entry of being a farmer for just a few hours every so often, vs. doing it digitally.

ksec 4y ago
Not only that. The economics side of it. Not everyone could afford a dog. It is quite a bit of money, from the space required for living to the food and medical care. Also in farming. I do think there are people who like the hard work and simple life. But as a business it is terrible.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  $400 a month in food (two large dogs, both turned out to need specialty diets) gets old fast. That said, I dearly love my dogs and am trying rather hard to not think about the tens of thousands of dollars I will end up spending just on food alone.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    As a new dog owner, I'm pretty sure the dog mob could show up to beat me up and steal a kidney and I'd probably still think getting a dog was a great decision. Love is an odd thing.
dylan604 4y ago
You just described having grandkids vs having your own kid! A niece/nephew is similar as well. Be the cool aunt/uncle, be the grandparent that feeds the kids sugar just before the parents come to collect them, or any of the other ways of enjoying the time with the kiddos but being able to get back for all the times the kid/sibling was an ass to you!
josefresco 4y ago
>If I get a chance to periodically interact with a dog - just the good parts, especially, such as petting, playing, running around, etc. - then I'm going to take it. I had a couple of dogs who died of old age. I couldn't bring myself to get another dog so instead we dog sit! We use the Rover app and it's been pretty awesome. You get to be a "doggy grandparent" for a couple days, spoil the crap out of them and then poof! They go back to their owners and you don't have to deal with all their BS (because let's be honest: almost every dog his it's own BS)
yamtaddle 4y ago
These games almost never include the really shitty parts, even the "realistic" ones. Running to the farm & feed store (perhaps an hour round trip, or even more, depending on where you are, and it's getting in the way of getting actual work done) for something or another, mending fences, grading drive-ways and other roads, cleaning yourself and your clothes and boots up after you get covered in mud, cleaning equipment, getting tractors un-stuck, repairing tractors, and so on. And what they do include is a button press, not a process. Hook up a discer? Back up to it and press the button. No getting out, screwing with chocks and some kind of device or another for raising the tongue into place. No pinching the shit out of your hand because you were careless. No weed-eating around equipment that's parked outside. No re-painting the barn. No re-sealing some screw holes in the sheet metal roof that've been leaking. No diagnosing and fixing a slipped belt on the combine. No tossing square bales onto a trailer. No cuts on your arms from corn leaves. No itchiness from handling straw. No hay (ha, ha) fever. No spending an entire morning getting one damn cow or another in the chute for the veterinarian. These "realistic" simulators still almost always cut out all the worst crap that's the reason people don't have tons and tons of fun doing it in real life. The stuff you do in the game is maybe 5-10% of what you really do.
- htrp 4y ago
  Man I can already feel the anger at having to repaint that fence.....

neaden 4y ago

I think a big part of this is that so many video games are based on violence, without many alternatives. And the ones that are non violent tend to be shorter and more story focused. I think a lot of people want a game that is non-violent, more open world, and has some grind. Farming and survival are two ways to do that, but I think something like a cafe-sim would scratch the same itch for many people.

Doxin 4y ago
Allow me to suggest sable for the category of non-violent open world games. It doesn't really have any grinding but the travel in the game forces a zen-like approach to it all. I kinda wish it didn't have fast travel to be honest.
d4mi3n 4y ago
This is true of a lot of main stream video games, but there's a whole genre of games that are much more wholesome, slice-of-life experiences. Consider: Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Slime Rancher, and Katamari Damacy—all of which are successful game IP without any of the stereotypical violence we see in AAA shooters. I've found the "cozy" genre on Steam to also be a great way to find games like these, though I suspect there are other terms that can be used to find them: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Cozy https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Cozy
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Stardew has multiple dungeons with sword fighting. Even Slime Rancher has turrets and fighting (though very cartoony/gentle).
potatolicious 4y ago
This is the crux of it for me. Don't get me wrong, I like me a shooter from time to time, but as I've gotten older I find myself not often liking the adrenaline-filled games being pitched. And Sim-type games really scratch that itch. They often have (relatively) deep gameplay mechanics that are easy to learn but hard to master, don't have a lot of time pressure (many are turn-based, or real-time but with no serious deadlines), and most importantly aren't multiplayer.

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

Obviously because it’s an innate part of our being. It has been with us for thousands of years. If we mostly stopped eating food because of some sort of breakthrough supplementation, we would likely have a food simulator.

jackcosgrove 4y ago
Can't wait for the persistence hunting sim to come out.
- harpiaharpyja 4y ago
  There are a few of those already, the "Survival Game" genre

mistrial9 4y ago

Why are so few of the many capable people, able to farm?

shagie 4y ago
Starting up a farm (even a hobby farm) is an enormous capital investment. https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/farm-loan-programs/beginning-farmers-and-ranchers-loans/index https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/farm-loan-pro... and https://www.farmers.gov/loans https://www.farmers.gov/loans > Farm Ownership Loans can be used to purchase or expand a farm or ranch. This loan can help with paying closing costs, constructing or improving buildings on the farm, or to help conserve and protect soil and water resources. > USDA’s Farm Service Agency offers up to $600,000 for eligible borrowers through Farm Ownership Loans. > Farm Operating Loans can be used to purchase livestock, seed and equipment. It can also cover farm operating costs and family living expenses while a farm gets up and running. > USDA’s Farm Service Agency offers up to $400,000 for eligible borrowers through Farm Operating Loans. Aside from the "grow things" there is an enormous amount of business sense and domain knowledge (what to grow when, how to fix that thing now, does this other thing need fixing?) that is needed to accompany it.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  Technically yes, but you can do it on the small (for a hobby farm anyway). You could start a small commercial farm, but you'd basically have bought yourself a sub-minimum wage job. I live on a horse farm and when we bought the property it didn't really cost that much more than a nice house in the suburbs. My 10 acres and a large new house cost far less than a lot of small houses on tiny lots in places like Seattle or SF. If we had wanted to be farther out (I'm about a 50 minute commute to Minneapolis), we could have gotten more land for even less. The major adjustments are (a) it's very difficult to take a vacation, (b) the amount of income that goes towards taking care of animals and (c) the work never ends (see [a] above). Besides that, it's all peachy :-)
rybosworld 4y ago
It's extremely hard to compete with the major farming conglomerates for one thing.

shagie 4y ago

I don't play Farming Simulator (though an older copy of it is sitting in my steam library)... I do play American Truck Simulator. For ATS, there's a certain relaxing of "just driving". You've got a goal, and simple, well defined tasks - go here, pick up the load, go there, deliver the load. The 'go there' part is largely an autopilot of a few decades of driving experience with a bit of "ok, this is different" when dealing with something that has a large trailer. For the most part, its something I can play without needing to do any deeper problem solving. To that end, the game is relaxing. With the nature of the game, its also something that one can "do" - there are few impossible tasks unlike what one encounters with a day job. The consequences for not completing something is a few points however they are measured - but rarely game ending (and in many cases, that's resolved with a save file). It is about getting something 'realistic' done in today's world of ever increasing demands. (very late edit) My current gaming binge is Hardspace Ship Breaker - which is a game about being a shipbreaker for space ships. Its got the "this can be routine" (though if you mess up the reactor it can get very interesting very fast). Ship breaking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_breaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_breaking ) is in the category of most dangerous jobs and space ships are obviously not realistic. But it's the game that you can just get into the grove and do. One of the best things about the game (for me) is that it is 15 minute shifts. So you can easily say "I'll play this game for 15 minutes on lunch break" and as long as you stick to one shift, that's 15 minutes. The shift ends and its done.

bm3719 4y ago
I feel the same about ATS. In fact, I wish it was even more boring, like real driving is. ATS has an unrealistic amount of curves and shortens the distances between cities that in real life would take many hours to travel between. It also is devoid of any of the (often catastrophic) downsides of making a mistake in real life. Turns out driving can be relaxing and fun if you remove anxiety involving death, injury, and property damage. Perhaps the same applies to farming sims.
- mr_cyborg 4y ago
  You need to check out Desert Bus.

Apreche 4y ago

Because with virtual farming you don't have to shovel poop. You can also harvest an entire field with one mouse click. Pretty obvious why few people want to actually become farmers. Despite all the mechanization, it's still difficult, dangerous, and dirty.

dylan604 4y ago
Right, because when you fail in a game, you just insert another $.25 and continue. When the crops fail for a real farmer, there is no spawn point to start over. It might literally cost them the farm.
- bequanna 4y ago
  Not exactly. In the US, subsidized crop insurance lowers the risk of low yields and provides a nice safety net.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Yes, this is why so many small family farms are being sold out to corpFarm left, right, center.
    - bequanna 4y ago
      I guess I’m not familiar with this. I live in northern midwestern farm country (corn/soybean fields) and can see some consolidation, but still almost all family farms.
      - bluGill 4y ago
        There are no family farms for accounting reasons. The family still lives on the farm and looks like a family farm, but the legal situation is all corporate farm.
        wrycoder 4y ago

makz 4y ago

Because videogame farming is unlike real farming, the boring, tedious, hard parts are taken away.

nightski 4y ago
I'm not even sure it has anything to do with that. Boring & tedious parts exist in many video games. IMO, It's that you don't need to buy millions in assets using debt to generate a profit at great risk based on many factors that you have no control over.
hitpointdrew 4y ago
Have you played farming simulator? I'd rather do real farming, but I don't have the capital to invest in that sort of equipment, so I guess farming simulator it is then.

josefresco 4y ago

I read an article a while back that asked a farmer why he works all day and then comes home to play a farming sim. He basically said in the "real world" things constantly go wrong, but in the sim it's much smoother/easier etc. I totally get it.

adra 4y ago

With so few death cage fighters, why are there so many brawler games? With so few wanting to be soldiers, why are there so many shooters? Pedantic question to pedantic answers. But my real answer would be that some people are over stimulated at work, and some are over. The understimulated one's I think gravitate to the "grand feats" type of games while those who are overstimulated at work are more looking for either laid back or mundane games to play. All these "_ life sim" games are generally in that mundane category and that's the audience most captive for these forms of entertainment.

mradek 4y ago
Experience the risk without actually taking any risk. Although, I can offer an anecdote. I really enjoy playing truck simulators, namely American and European Truck Simulator. I had to drive a large box truck recently and I found it super easy - the high up position, looking at the mirrors to back up and parallel park perfectly, and the joy of the open road. Then I realized that truck drivers do this every day for weeks on end as a job. Really appreciate the folks who keep our economy moving.
- jerf 4y ago
  I think one of the underappreciated issues with the 21st century economy is how many of us do the same thing, day in, day out, hyperoptimized to the point it's economically hard to justify switching tasks. (Or, perhaps more accurately, the 20th century economy, which is still largely with us.) Do a little of this today, a little of that tomorrow, even a little of this and that within a day, and I feel like we could all tolerate a bit more mundanity (for lack of a better word) in our lives. Cut vegetables, drive a truck, pump sewage, work a factory line, it'd all be easier if we weren't doing the same thing all the time, 40+ hours a week.
  - m463 4y ago
    > economically hard to justify switching tasks. I vaguely remember some factories would not let workers change jobs once they got good at them, to their detriment (with carpal tunnel and other RSIs)

speeder 4y ago

For me it is because I found no way to own a real farm. I would love to have one, but couldn't figure out how to get one. Sad part of that is that I have a bunch of relatives that do own farms, but have no interest in farming, the only reason they have those farms is so they can wait the land price to raise before they sell it eventually.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Yeah farming is a several million dollar investment in land and equipment, for the dubious privilege of being lower-middle-class
- bequanna 4y ago
  Lower middle class? Come to Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, etc and visit a farm. Their reported annual income may be small because of amortization/depreciation, but net worth is very typically several million. If you’re a poor farmer, you’re not doing it right.
  - AngryData 4y ago
    Their net worth doesn't really reflect their income though. Most farms are running on sub 1% profit margins. You dump 5 million dollars on your fields and you would consider $50,000 profit a successful year.
    - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
      Yes exactly my point. Net worth is because of the enormous up-front investment. Cash flow does not justify that investment. And yes, I'm from Iowa.
    - bequanna 4y ago
      Why wouldn't you finance the purchase of the land? You can get by with putting 0-10% down. Additionally, you're completely ignoring appreciation and paying down the loan. Farmland has went from ~2k /acre to 12k in about 20 years.

pwinnski 4y ago

"With so few ghosts, why is Pac-man so popular?" "With so few alien invaders, why are video games about invading aliens so popular?" "With so few NFL teams, why are video games about managing NFL teams so popular?"

avidphantasm 4y ago

Imagined social relations.

throw0101a 4y ago

Penny Arcade had a comic on this recently: * https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2022/09/16/farm-minimization https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2022/09/16/farm-minimizat...

NDizzle 4y ago

For me, it's Snow Runner. Mud Runner had a more challenging UI. Snow Runner is a bit better. Not perfect, but better. You have simple tasks and an open world for you to decide how to accomplish the task. There's typically an easy way, which requires more time to complete due to the travel distance involved. And then you can scale all the way up however difficult you want. And then there's the recovery effort, when your "it didn't look that deep/muddy/steep" plan falls through. I do like the farming games though. Or at least I did, until I bought 5 acres in the country and got out here. Now if I get the itch for a farming game, I do some kind of project.

giantg2 4y ago

Videogames allow you to do stuff you wouldn't in real life. There are a lot of non-farmers out there.

croes 4y ago

Knowing the difference between a job and a game.

cybaz 4y ago

I met a guy once who was a roofer. He told me "Putting on roofs is the easy part. It's the making a living doing it that's tough"

emrah 4y ago

Because a lot of people want to buy a farm and grow their own food and cattle, live with nature in nature yada yada. But they realize they either can't afford it or it's too difficult physically. Games offer an alternative. It's not the real deal but the brain makes it sort of real and that's good enough for some. They can live the fantasy without any of the cow dodo

ISL 4y ago

Precisely because so many people would like to farm, small-scale farming is a brutal economic environment. In that respect, it isn't terribly different from academia -- people are doing it for love and the experience, not for money. Simulating the farming experience without the massive financial risk (and the back-breaking work/unforgiving hours) gives some of that joy without most of the downside. If you're willing to volunteer to cover night-time calving for cattle in snowstorms in February, you can probably get the real experience for free.

PeterStuer 4y ago

A huge difference between a game and a job is that you can quit the game at any time without consequences. That creates an entirely different state of mind.

mikkergp 4y ago

I watch a lot of the historical farming series, Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series) And, despite the many different ways people choose to live, there's still this idea that the way we live now is the best way. The title of this is article is a bit strange, but I've noticed in some of the, maybe it's hustle porn communities on Twitter, there's this notion that if you're not automating all of the manual labor in your life you're doing it wrong. But there's something very nourishing about the idea of living in a world where you're interacting with and directly influencing the physical world around you. Both to care for a plot of land and to make things by hand. I think there's also something nice about living in a small world. No grandiose interconnectedness. You, your family, your community, your livestock and the land around you. It's so hard to get some of that I think unless you're also willing to completely give up living modern life and move out to the middle of nowhere ala Life Below Zero, or if you're wealthy enough to own land close to town (I'm fortunate enough to have found a nice 2 acres close to town, but it costs a premium compared to other houses the same size). Simulation is a great way to get some of that in small doses.

mason55 4y ago
IMO the big difference is doing it at your leisure and being able to take a break vs. being required to do it 24/7. When I’m frustrated with my job and modern life in general it’s easy to imagine running away and living on a farm. When I’m sleeping in on a Saturday or taking a spontaneous weekend getaway I’m very glad that I don’t live on a farm.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  I mean, you could easily have a farm with enough communal labor that someone could pick up your slack if you took a few days off. Vacation isn't a modern luxury, serf farmers were basically off 50% of the time

davesque 4y ago

I think one reason people like farming games (and games in general really) is that they're fair. You perform a set of actions and get a reward. Sure, some games feel sort of unfair if they're poorly designed. But I think all video games are fair in the sense that they're deterministic. And I know that when I've enjoyed playing farming games, I enjoy the sense of growth that I know is guaranteed to those that learn the rules. Real life is not the same. You can follow all the rules, play fair, and still lose.

CuriouslyC 4y ago

Transforming a piece of land and raising animals is fun and rewarding, hence why people garden and have pets. Unfortunately modern farming requires you to sacrifice the aesthetic and humane in order to be profitable unless you can build a dedicated clientele of people willing to pay a 400% markup for your food, or your farm's actual business is agro-tourism/goat yoga/etc.

bequanna 4y ago
Not true. Organic agriculture/horticulture on a scale large enough to survive is definitely possible and best practices are usually well-documented by your state’s extension. Conventional, factory farming is “easier” and more widespread, so there is more comfort in numbers doing that.

incomingpain 4y ago

Besides "Americas army" there really arent any video games with an intention of bringing you to the profession. It's really just about having fun. I do recall a US general talking about how this doesn't work and the overweight/obesity epidemic amongst gamers is a huge impediment to enrollment. Video games aside. Really the question, why so few farmers? Government education has specifically trained and discouraged people from becoming farmers, intentionally reducing the number of farmers. Biosciences has made farming quite unprofitable. The use of fertilizers, gmos, pesticides, etc have made a small time farmer basically unprofitable compared to the farmer with 80,000 acres and large machines. There are better professions to earn a living. Hell, the cost of startup is ridiculous. ~86 acres near where i live is $5 million. You also cant really live near cities. There's no rockstars coming to rural canada. You have to live in toronto to get those rockstars. Good internet is also not in rural areas. But then you also have governments actively taxing farmers to tremendous degree. For example, Carbon taxes disproportionately impact a farmer's old diesel in his massive tractor compared to a econobox tiny car. Farmers obviously don't care. A wide carbon tax like that ends up in the consumer's hands as food inflation. https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/food-inflation https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/food-inflation Basically nobody has normal/low food inflation because of this. Then you have the 'fertilizer reductions'... https://wheatgrowers.ca/advocacy-resources/fertilizer-reduction/ https://wheatgrowers.ca/advocacy-resources/fertilizer-reduct... IF you work in an industry where the government is actively screwing you over so much. You choose a new profession right away. Hence no farmers.

mbfg 4y ago

The idea of farming is very alluring, Be your own boss, live a healthy lifestyle with family, produce something very useful for society. The reality of farming is that of a death trap. Brutal work, low pay, total imprisonment. (Except potentially for the biggest of operations, don't know about that). There's a common quip... It is very easy to become a millionaire as a farmer, it's a two step process. 1) Be a billionaire 2) Buy a farm

gmuslera 4y ago

Farming: The Good Parts. And some of those games include also the good parts of social interaction, fishing, foraging and more, in a simple enough way, not the complex, messy and tiresome reality. Probably some farmers enjoy those games, but the gamers may not like all what is involved in real life farming (and things that works around it, like i.e. economy).

TheCoelacanth 4y ago

Yeah, why aren't there more games about making spreadsheets and powerpoints? Obviously, there's EVE Online, but that's only one game.

mywittyname 4y ago

> The popularity of farming simulators points to people’s enduring engagement with farming as a way to understand our relationship with the natural world, not just a system of food production. Farming has been fundamental [...] This is really overthinking the subject. Simulation games often have really tight, addicting game play loops. The player starts with nothing and has to do everything in a grueling, manual fashion. But each iteration of the game loop, the player gets a minor upgrade that makes them slightly more effective and/or adds an additional challenge to consider. After a few hundred iterations, the player has built a gargantuan automata that handles the core gameplay loop, freeing them up to focus on ancillary projects like decorating or collecting. This is exactly the kind of situation that hammers on the dopamine receptors of a lot of people. Do something challenging, get a reward, then invest that reward to get a better one the next time. It's basically gambling. Farming happens to be a subject that carries a lot of preconceptions, allowing players to pickup the game concepts a lot more quickly without as many tutorials. But there are plenty of simulation games out there with different subjects but similar game play loops. I spent like 40 hours playing a game about salvaging space ships. I don't have any particular desire to be in space not do I like space ships or anything. It just happens to be a game that follows this formula, so it's fun.

liampulles 4y ago

My father was a farmer. Pretty stressful business in real life - not fun when your ostriches get bird flu. But a farm is certainly a beautiful break from city life.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

From this I gather the reason is quite simple: air conditioning.

Animats 4y ago

There are even more banal games. Check out Lawn Mower Simulator and Power Wash Simulator. Second Life hit this three years ago. You can buy land, build a house or buy and install a prefab one, and build pretty much anything you want. But about a hundred thousand users paid for a premium membership so they could get a nice, but rather banal, pre-built American suburban house. A house in an enormous suburbs with strict rules and a sort of homeowner's association. There's even a mini-game where you can put out a trash can on specified days and people come around with the garbage truck and empty it. Given the ability to do anything, most of the population runs out of ideas fast.