The Work of Nonfiction: Simulator Games in Germany

Abstract

With origins in flight and automobile simulation technologies developed in the 1970s, simulator games are one of the oldest genres of computer games and among the first commercially-available software products which offered users the opportunity to explore a computer-generated, 3D, interactive space. This project focuses on a critical moment in the history of the genre, beginning in the mid-2000s, when central and east European simulator game developers and publishers began to experiment with the genre. These experimentations led to a “new wave” of simulator games about farming, logistics, transportation, and public services which often embraced the “realism” of older simulator games but also experimented with newer game design practices. This project asks how playing games about work became a popular leisure-time activity and why the genre was so well-received, especially in German-speaking contexts. In studying simulator games, this project relies on multiple, interdisciplinary frameworks. It works comparatively, bringing simulator games into conversation with media practices of nonfiction and simulation in film, board games, military strategy, and corporate planning. It also works historically, asking how players, developers, publishers, and industry partners in German-speaking game industries and cultures shaped the simulator game genre. And throughout, the project works analytically by articulating the aesthetics and ideologies that undergird simulator games’ “realistic” representation of their subject matter. Using these frameworks, the project shows how simulator games are a flexible, process-oriented genre which often operate simultaneously as travelogue and advertising, or as documentary and as work simulation. This project represents a timely contribution to the study of nonfiction media practices, the history of game development in central and east Europe, and representations of work in digital media that will be of interest to scholars in German Studies, Game Studies, and Media Studies.