Walking Simulators; Your Genre is in Another Castle by Samuel Gronseth

Walking Simulators

Your Genre is in Another Castle

by Samuel Gronseth

I think it’s time we acknowledge that the term “walking simulator” has outlived its usefulness.

Or, even more to the point, it isn’t even a good descriptor of its genre, never has been, and we would do well to retire it entirely.

This genre title has long been used to describe games with relatively simple interaction that mostly consists of exploring a space, with no complex gameplay systems or opportunity for failure. Firewatch, and many other games like it, have long been thrown into this category. But I think it’s long past time we look back and consider why this is, and whether it’s actually appropriate or helpful.

The concept of a game with simple, exploratory interaction isn’t as new as we might think. It has its origins in the 1983 game, The Forest, by Graham Relf, and the spiritual successor from the same creator, Explorer. They were early experiments in procedural generation, and the majority of the player’s time was simply spent navigating the environment. They were, and still are, generally considered to have more value as interesting and groundbreaking experiments than entertaining games in and of themselves.

But this kind of game didn’t really become common enough to form its own genre for a long time, and the term “walking simulator” didn’t catch on until 2012: around the commercial release of Dear Esther. While not the first game of its kind, it was the one that gained the most mainstream attention, and with that awareness came many attempts to understand, label, and discuss the game and its genre. As well as significantly more attempts to discredit and devalue it.

Dear Esther was not popular with a lot of gamers, due to the common belief that the simple act of walking through an environment was not enough of a challenge to qualify as a “game.” And also, of course, due to the belief that its worth as an interactive experience was largely or wholly dependent on meeting those criteria. Conversations can be had about the game’s quality, of course, but the level of vitriol for this random little mod-turned-Steam-game was not the kind that comes from such simple disagreements. Dear Esther was not hated for how good or bad it was, but for the fact that it was generating discussion and critical acclaim despite being, in the eyes of many gamers, “not a real game.”

And unfortunately, this was the conversation from which the critical language of the genre evolved.

We still seek to understand our games using a limited vocabulary based solely on mechanical actions, rather than broader experiences and more meaningful descriptors.

Let’s not beat around the bush: “walking simulator” is an intentionally denigrating term. By defining the genre only by the act of walking, it strips down the game’s entire identity to a simple, boring act that presents no challenge and provokes no thought. There are other elements to these games, of course: uncovering a story, exploring an environment, even just calmly enjoying some scenery. And even critics of the genre generally understand that these are the primary purpose of such games. But the label “walking simulator” intentionally disregards these elements in favor of emphasizing the most simple, boring thing about the game.

It’s clear, looking at the source of the term and the culture that birthed it, that this name came from a discourse that was largely critical and dismissive, and it was intended less as a legitimate descriptor than a sarcastic jab.

I think it goes without saying that such a label does a disservice to the genre, since it fails to communicate what the experience actually has to offer and why anyone would consider playing it. But ultimately, this is not without precedent. In fact, the naming convention that led to “walking simulator” is established through nearly every other accepted video game genre we have.

Video game genres are, with rare exception, named to describe the acts the player will most commonly be performing during play. This is how we get names like “shooter,” “hack-n-slash,” and “platformer.” Sometimes we add other descriptors to narrow them down, such as in first-person shooters vs. third-person shooters, and occasionally we have genre names that range from simply unhelpful (i.e. “adventure,” or “action,” very vague terms that fail to capture the dynamics of their genres in any distinct way) to what are essentially in-jokes (i.e. “Roguelike,” a term that references another specific game rather than do anything to actually describe its genre).

Continuing in this tradition, then, it is perhaps unsurprising that games like Firewatch would be described by the act the player most commonly performs; that is, walking. But I think, in doing so, we’ve come to the limits of this naming conventions usefulness. And perhaps even revealed the shortcomings it had all along.

After all, if I was asked to describe my experience with Firewatch in a few simple words, “walking” would not even be one of them. “Mysterious,” perhaps. “Exploratory,” for sure. “Dramatic,” absolutely. But the simple act of walking is not what defines the experience of Firewatch. It’s neither what the game is about, nor how one perceives their interaction with the world. It’s a thing the player does, probably even the thing they do most, but far from the thing that defines the game.

This is because the acts performed by the player are not, even in more traditionally-designed video games, the sole definition of what a game is. Technically speaking, the player is doing very similar things in Call of Duty, Borderlands, and Bioshock, but anyone who has played these three games would balk at any meaningful comparison between them. They are so distinct tonally, visually, and thematically (among other ways), and yet they are all “first-person shooters.” Clearly, it’s incredibly reductive to define games entirely, or even just primarily, by the things the player does in them. And yet, that’s what we most often do, and it’s in this tradition that the term “walking simulator” proudly stands.

When taking all this into account, a bigger picture begins to form. Between the toxic attitudes held toward this genre and the precedent provided in game genre naming conventions, the popularization of the term “walking simulator” says a lot about how we talk about video games, and how the discourse surrounding them has often failed to adjust to a still-growing medium.

When we look deeper at the way we categorize different kinds of video games, what we see is a nearly-exclusive focus on mechanical identity. What we do in a game, how we control a game, what we have to do in order to win a game.

Admittedly, for an interactive medium, the idea of basing categories on the player’s actions isn’t entirely without merit. Especially early on, when games were simpler and there was less variety in playstyles and fewer aesthetic options. But relying completely on this method is proving to be insufficient, and the categories we create become increasingly reductive as this medium continues to grow, experiment, and test the limits of its own definitions (as any budding art form can and should do).

And yet, we hold so stubbornly to this outdated routine that we not only continue to define games based on it, but even deride new genres and experiments by insisting that we must somehow fit them into these categories, even if doing so essentially erases the things that actually make a new game worth playing. We wield it as a weapon against change, to decry anything that dares to go against the grain and play with the expectations we’ve built for what games “should” look like.

The good news is that this hatred has been slowly overtaken since the term “walking simulator” first debuted. The tired tirades, thinly veiled in questions about game design and what “counts” as a game, are a lot less common for Firewatch than they were for games like Dear Esther and Gone Home. It’s out there, and certain corners of the gaming community still complain to each other about it in their own bubbles and harass the creators of such games under the protective cloak of online anonymity, but the rhetoric that’s dedicated to dismantling and hiding the value of nontraditional video games holds less power over the industry than ever.

The bad news, however, is that we’ve yet to root it out of the way we talk about games. We still seek to understand our games using a limited vocabulary based solely on mechanical actions, rather than broader experiences and more meaningful descriptors. We still give credence to gatekeeping efforts that question the worth of games that don’t fit with our preconceived notions. And we still haven’t figured out what to call games like Firewatch if not “walking simulators.”

The question that always follows this kind of claim is, “What do you suggest we call them, then?” But aside from being a long and difficult conversation to have, it’s also missing the forest for the trees.

I am absolutely in favor of retiring the term “walking simulator,” and establishing something more helpful and less inherently devaluing But without reconsidering the critical language we’re developing around video games, and without taking power away from people who would use that language to discourage experimentation and devalue new, non-traditional experiences, retiring this one derogatory genre name won’t be enough. It’s time we look at exactly what the problem is and how it got here. Then, maybe, the next game to break convention won’t get saddled with such a patronizing label.

SAMUEL GRONSETH is the creator, writer, and host of the popular YouTube channel, “Games as Lit. 101.” https://www.youtube.com/user/gamesasliterature

Photo Credit: Allon Kremer / https://www.artstation.com/sirallon