GameSpot Presents Rank: Street Cleaning Simulator (PC)
 

Gamespot is bringing you a healthy chunk of social realism with their indepth presentation of Street Cleaning Simulator:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sim/stree…video%3Bhd%3B1

They also made a video that sumarizes some of the raving reviews of the game;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyaCzyIp6I4

Jim Rossignol also offers his experiences on Rock, Paper SHOTGUN
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011…ing-simulator/

This appears to me to be one of the "simulator" games sold here in Germny with quite some success.

Who keeps buying these things? This is not the first very odd simulator to be released as a game in recent years. Ever wanted to drive a combine harvester? You can do it in this game. There are also real time truck driving simulators, where you go from town to town (in real time!) loading and unloading goods.

So-called "Farm Simulators" are hugely popular here in Germany - not among gamers of course.
Gamers both despise them and are puzzled about who might buy them at the same time.
It seems to me that these "Simulation Games" cover a "target group" that hasn't been targeted before. ;)
It must be a customer/buyer group completely parallel to the usual gamers groups, I think …

Not just Parallel to the usual gamer group, but also so far removed from it that we can't perceive its existence, outside of a few ripples it causes.
I've watched a few videos of these simulators on YouTube, and I really can't see why someone would play these games. Simulators of more glamorous or exciting jobs (pilot, fire fighter, police and so on) i can understand, but Road construction simulator actually managed to look less interesting than cleaning my apartment. What kind of person suddenly gets the urge to play a construction worker, on a computer, when all you do is some very mundane tasks?

Casual gamers, and I tend to believe its casual gamers of an higher age. People who just don't play Crysis.

Well, the gameplay looks more complex than some AAA games these days, to be honest.

Anyway, I don't know who the target group is (although I assume Alrik is on the right track), but it is clearly a viable niche. Just look at the portfolio of these guys:
http://www.astragon.de/simulationen.html
Heh - demolition company simulator could be fun… ;)

GBG is "Rasmus Modsat" today ;)

That said, I always appreciate simulators like this - even if I'd never - ever - play them myself. I think they're worth it, just to give people an idea of how something might work in reality. Any actual knowledge taught to the interested (or, perhaps especially, the disinterested) is potentially a positive.

Who???
(GBG needs to exceed pesky character limit)

It's a Danish expression used to describe a person who says, thinks, or acts in a way opposite to everyone else :)

Oh come on! Bearded dunmer, street cleaing simulators - who could possibly resist! ;)

Yeah, I get your point ;)

I wrote from the last year's Games Com, where there was a banner hanging over the booth of such a Simulation-game developing firm, saying they had had more buyers than WOW …

So do you guys think this game's target group is much larger than the amount of gamers who aren't intimidated and terrified by things like character generation in an RPG?

Probably. Maybe we should just sell our niche as "Role Playing Gamer Simulator"! :p

Aren't recent Bioware RPGs actually RPG simulations? ;)

I thought they were dating simulations :P

They might become good dating simulators once they hire a designer who's been on an actual date ;)

If I understood it correctly, "dating simulators" actually do exist - for the Japanese market.

Thread Necromancer brings you: The agriculture simulator!

The review is in German - unfortunately, because it is quite funny…
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/games…-a-841094.html