9 Times The Simpsons Predicted The Future
2. Yard Work Simulator
After flaking out on sorting out the back garden ("There's gotta be a way out of this... quick, Lisa: chop off my hands." "No! Then who'll chop off my hands?"), Bart is enraptured by the Yard Work Simulator at the carnival. Jokes aside, theres now a whole scene of prima facie tedious simulator games which are beloved almost because of their lack of whizz-bang-whoops-a-daisy, shoot-em-up-by-numbers thrills and spills.
Their charm is in the innocuousness of the action, and the mundanity of the task at hand. Take Euro Truck Simulator for instance: the whole point is that you stick assiduously to the highway code, avoid damaging property, and cause as little fuss as possible while on the road.
Another one of the break-out hits was the sweet-hearted Farming Simulator. It bills itself, adorably, as the #1 farming simulator. Its not a crowded field guys. Metaphorically speaking, I mean - the virtual field is now very crowded with people virtually herding virtual cattle. That's before we even get onto Farmville and its ilk.
On top of that, Microsoft have announced that Windows 10 will feted manual labour simulator Minecraft on the Oculus Rift virtual reality set from spring 2016. If this proves anything, its that productivity in primary industries would fly through the roof if only they could work out a way of moving all interactions with natural resources to virtual reality. The kids would be falling over themselves to become agricultural labourers.