Trigger Happy
And the remit of videogame “simulations” in Japan is sure to expand. Adult Japanese women, for example, want “a simulation game of being a housewife, giving experience of leading a happy married life including housework, having/raising children, sex”; “a simulation of buying a house”; “a game in which the user raises a human baby”; “a job simulation game”; “a game in which the user can date actors/singers”; “a simulation game of overseas travel”; “a game of cooking in which the user finds ingredients, cooks and becomes a master chef”; or “a climbing game in which the user tries to reach the summit. On the way rivers, valleys, birds and little animals appear.”
Now, this looks a little weird, to be sure; but just as with the deformed anime tradition, we must be careful not to imagine an unbridgeable cultural chasm where none exists. Again, in fact, this phenomenon of burgeoning “simulation” genres is a logical progression of facets in Western videogaming, albeit one powered by a characteristically Japanese conceptual tradition.
Most Japanese people live in cramped accommodation in sprawling cities. The idea of escaping to a rural idyll and lazily casting off by a babbling stream is largely an unattainable fantasy,
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