I’m talking more along the lines of, having simulator games where you work in a supermarket and you get to cause as much mayhem as possible. Not in terms of just simply killing, but more like, being a very disgruntled worker in a very annoyingly noisy environment with shitty customers. That game doesn’t exist to me and I wish it would.
Instead, we get more simulator games where you’re at the service of the people. That’s going backwards, if you ask me.
Try Job Simulator on VR
For the record, the science shows that Destruction Therapy is not effective at actually managing anger, and may actually cause more harm long term, as you’re normalizing that behavior in your brain.
But as for why we don’t see more games along those lines, I don’t know. It does seem like a genre that would sell well right now. I remember there was a series of desktop games when I was a kid called Stress Reducer that would give you a set of animated weapons to “destroy” your windows desktop (an image of it).
We do have these, they’re just not super popular or are not intended to be played that way.
Like your first example of causing chaos in a shop? You can do that in Supermarket Simulator. It just isn’t what you’re meant to do unless you’re Josh from Let’s Game it Out. 🤷♂️
If you want to shoot Nazis and klan members there are Wolfenstein games.
I bought just for some cathartic relief. Unfortunately the first person camera jostled around too much and gave me too much motion sickness.
Damn. Really needed that.
Here is a cool video from a small time creator about why we don’t get Nazi-killing games anymore.
I had similar idea a while ago but admittedly more political than mundane.
You’re a boss in your corporation. game’s objective is to be annoying and mess around with your worker. But somehow through your abuse you also have to keep your corporation alive financially.
It’s a mix of sandbox & tycoon. but the gameplay should be more sandboxed to really allow player create mess, and not very pressured by the goals created by the tycoon aspect.
Fuck the system before the system fucks you.
Love this concept.
I had an idea for a mobile game.
The premise. Circus/carnival games with gop theme.
So one would be where 3 orange clown heads move and you have to throw a baseball at, and knock off the crowns.
Another was like wack a mole but with ice agents and protestors. So make sure you only wack the ices.
The old game with the water gun filling up a balloon. But it’s just faces of Trump’s cabinet expanding until they pop.
Maybe something with those toy horse races.
The bulls eye one that dunks someone.
Ring toss
Ski ball
And letter boards with your friends.
So many possibilities here. But I don’t know how to design games. So.
Untitled Goose Game is what you are looking for :)
That takes like an hour to beat.
Reminds me of why I like driving games so much. Sure it’s nice to be in the driver’s seat on a street or racetrack in a way where it feels like I’m really there taking a hairpin turn in Times Square without any personal risk.
But there’s nothing quite like doing literally what my mind can come up with in a game with arcade physics, keeping just enough realism to give feedback on collision damage without breaking immersion.
My stress relief game is fallout 4. You get so OP so quickly that it’s like “ok, I don’t like you, or your whole crew. I’m going to wipe you out of existence like Im a Mr clean magic erase sponge.”
It’s just satisfying release.
Dynasty Warriors has been my stress relief game. I just love jumping into a hoard of enemies and just start swinging.
Tiny Glade and the entire diorama building genre are already mentioned. Do you have any interest in the P&C adventure genre?
Postal 2 immediately comes to mind for me. Just some dude trying to do mundane errands around town. Definitely a lot of killing tho…
Untitled Goose Game?
Goat sim is better.
Shoo! Shoo away from my garden, bird!!! SHOO!
Job Simulator? It’s VR only though.
My feeling, that I’ve learned after many years of doing it wrong, is that ‘taking out’ your stress with violent or aggressive acts, even virtual ones, isn’t a healthy way to deal with it. It reinforces it rather than releasing it. Calming exercises, deep breathing and letting stress go is a much more useful way to deal with it.
In that vein, I recommend Tiny Glade for stress relief. Or any so called ‘cosy’ game.
No, going to disagree here.
We’ve had this discussion many times over about what violent video games does with people. We’ve had it in the form of what the media decides to twist and falsely blame from the actions the individual does when there are other things at play.
Broken people are the ones who take the violence out from the digital realm of video games and apply it to real world. They are the ones who can’t manage their stress and anger levels regardless playing a game or handling a problem in person.
I’m not saying violent video games make you violent. I’m saying if you use those things, and it’s not just video games - punching a pillow, for example - as a way to deal with stress, then that’s going to become a habitual response to stressful situations.
