You can make a game just about buying, cleaning, and flipping houses.Īre these the gaming equivalent of reality/docudrama TV-relatively cheap-to-make serotonin rushes in a can with not a lot to say? Yes and that's fine. You can make a space-faring game with a procedurally-generated universe that you share with other players while having the entire game loop be about mining different color minerals. Games can be larger and more complex as technology improves, but the democratization of development means games can also be more mundane.
This form of losing yourself in the routine of a game (instead of the spectacle, characters, or plot) is certainly not new, but feels like it's turning a corner. It's not a story about rebellion or liberation, it just looks like it could have been. There are echoes of a story here, but that's window dressing on what we're doing (read: sell drugs, feel cool).
#Drug dealer simulator review full#
Walls surround the entire gamespace, guard towers dot the perimeter, police casually patrol in full riot gear, fences with barbed wire guard half blown-up buildings. The unnamed city you're in looks like a city block and a prison and a war zone at all times. And Drug Dealer Simulator could have a story (if it wanted to, but I think it doesn't). We know what we're doing here and why-sell drugs, make money, see the numbers go up, feel cool. If you're asking "why," you'll only find a void in response.
#Drug dealer simulator review how to#
What Drug Dealer Simulator taps into is a sense of activity ("here are things to do and keep up with"), a sense of urgency ("here are deadlines and dangers"), and a sense of space ("here is a small cityspace, learn how to get around"). I could describe the game, but it's pretty much what's on the tin you buy drugs, you cut drugs, you sell drugs, you avoid the cops.
I felt a lot of that in last year's Death Stranding, in the Grow Home series, in Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs, in No Man's Sky, and I feel it in Drug Dealer Simulator. It's an act of physics that feels good and rewarding *to do*. (It is at this point the writer worries he's written 300 words on the value of imagination.) What I'm describing is a type of mindless-not an act of stupidity.
I'm sure we all find ways to internally transform our daily lives: doing something, building out a new reality, and letting our mind wander while the body works. (Maybe that's a by-product of a car-heavy culture in America, making a game where the majority of it is driving from place to place.) And it was a completely insular activity-this is one of the only times I've ever brought that thinking out into shared space. I wouldn't even get off the bike or actually "do" anything, I'd just bike around and stop every so often. I'd go ride around and pretend I was in GTA3, stopping every so often like I was doing a mission or something and then start up again to another place to stop. There wasn't anything particularly special about it other than it had a lot of walkways. It was pretty big, lots of paths with greenspaces, and it was near a lake with a lot of ducks. When I was in 6th or 7th grade, I'd get on my bike and cycle down to an apartment complex about a half mile from my house. About 10-12 hours in, I feel really strongly that there's something special here that we're only starting to re-explore in games: playgrounds. Jeff from Rage Select tipped me off to Drug Dealer Simulator last week and, after seeing it in action on Twitch, I had to try it out.
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