This Game Is Extremely Boring, And That’s Why It’s Blowing Up On Steam

it's time to tackle the big hit of 2022 which is power washing simulator i've played for like an hour matt though you have played for i think it's about 22-24 now you have power washed for a day straight it is is honestly more washing than i've done in my own home in the past year it is really it is such a boring game and that's where like the beauty of it comes in that's where you get almost everything you'd expect from like traditional game design and kind of mechanical complexity and joy and so little of its design so much if it's just because this is a really boring activity yeah it's beautiful and uh as banji points out in addition to house flipper it's a slice of gaming that is doing exceedingly well right now so it's had a crazy start for a game that launched out of steam early access and onto consoles and i mean there's only like i think one bug that's been found which is kind of funny on xbox multiplayer because you look at the sun too hard and it goes but basically it's been a very successful release it proves a lot of very interesting things about the games market um and i think behaviors of players that maybe a lot of companies don't think about as much maybe the big companies don't think about as much and maybe a lot of learning could happen so it's a game made by future lab and they have done games such as peaky blinders mastermind velocity 2x and mini mac mayhem i remember playing the velocity 2x before and going this is a pretty interesting indie not like super grip like oh this is this is like a decent promise from them yeah but like overall not the most like known about company right to most people and now what is interesting though and what made you realize you're giving them even more money is that it's a game backed by square enix collective which is their uk indie label so it's got proper backing um they could certainly get the game out there one of the things that you really get when you're kind of in with a publisher is you know their network of contacts so i imagine that's what maybe really helps a game like this be able to get in game pass i think game pass is a foundational part of this game's success and as a game really it's like if you look at any of those red it's like oddly satisfying it's exactly that it's the sort of thing if you think about what is you know what's a viral video what are those just things that are satisfying and when you look at even the basics of like opening a loot box and it's really really satisfying like visually right or you know any of the youtube the little segment of youtube it's puzzle boxes and it's just that thing that's like fundamentally satisfying on a human level i remember a while ago i think it was a father and son business the two of them would go around like power cleaning uh carpets and stuff and they were getting millions of views on youtube because there's something really satisfying about here's a disgusting carpet here's a perfect carpet look at that and i imagine they were actually making more money off the youtube videos of their carpet cleaning business than they were from the business itself which i mean hey awesome right and really power off simulator is able to tap into that yeah they were like cut the ama and they said it was busy that was where the idea came from it was the oddly satisfying videos of like that looks really fun can we make that a game and then they just went and did and it became very very huge because it's just that idea of like all you do is there's you you're loaded into a level or you're lowered into a garage with like a car or something like a massive like a nuclear power drill thing as well later on gets a little bit crazy sometimes but you just power wash it that's all it is it's a first person shooter where instead of a gun you have a you have a bar washer and you're just cleaning dirt off stuff meticulously and then that's where all of like the kind of almost in the same way that say cookie clicker is a game where you're like what do you do you click cookies well that's how's that engaging and it's like oh no bc number go up and like oh that like hooks into like a really deeply like satisfying part of the human experience of just oh i'm making the progress in this direction almost like in the virtual work sense that drew a lot of people to like early mmos where they felt that way like kind of oh people just love going and doing a virtual task that feels satisfying lawn mowing simulator yeah because the context in the virtual world is real it's like and it's easier to do than actually power washing because i mean i could have got my steam map out of the cupboard and cleaned my floor but power washing simulator is more fun not quite as productive but it's just about it's substantially more fun don't worry about the setup that way once this game is integrated into the metaverse you can go and virtually clean mark zuckerberg's office oh wonderful isn't that fantastic and you can live in in total squalor yeah but like what they have done well is the actual core game mechanics so like basically you've got your different washing fluids you're different like nozzles and stuff like that the different nozzles depending on like how wide they are they will clean off more or less dirt different pressure and then every individual panel so the the overall job is worth a certain number of dollars and for every individual panel that you clean you will you know get an amount of dollars per panel so they basically break down they make it really granular your success as you slowly make it around and then for when you're at the very end of cleaning something there is a button to highlight the little bits that you missed so they do a pretty good job then of minimizing those times where it's just kind of like a frustrating experience and they're essentially focusing most of the game onto the joy of cleaning and they remove the friction from that and it i've only played like the first level in a bit and it is just so damn satisfying that i completely understand how you've put a full literal day into playing it yeah it's got kind of the same vibes of like like you're saying a little bit like a loot box opening of being satisfying because of like the ux part of it they've got a little bit of that where as soon as you finish cleaning like one of the grinder elements it'll like have this nice little sound effect and like ping blue for a second so you know you're done and you're just going like meticulously power washing because what i tend to do is i tend to have the like the flat 25 degree nozzle and i just kind of go down move left up move left very meticulously because that's kind of how i like to clean as opposed to going mental you know you see people and they're just kind of cleaning whatever part whatever i have like a very structured approach and that may sound like i'm kind of making it sound a little bit boring but the thing is that you you can see different people tackle the like and approach the level in different ways and there's something about that that makes it really satisfying yeah in the sense that any kind of simulation game is literally like the mechanics of what you're simulating are opened up to you in a way where it's not quite as simple as kind of you know just a just just clean it job done that's kind of true but it's all of the possibility in the same way that like movement in a 3d platformer is what makes it important sure you can go oh well it's satisfying enough to kind of just go forward and do it like reasonably but the point of a 3d platform is you have so much freedom and so many ways to approach the level there's a lot exploration there's all that kind of discovery there's can you make that jump can you find different ways to get around the level there's a little bit of that going on here in terms of like the i guess the surprising mechanical depth despite the game being mechanically very simple because it's not realistic at all it is nowhere near realistic like there's none of the runoff calculated nothing like that it is very simply you have pressure that you're applying with your hose and based on your hoses stats and the like stats of the dirt you'll either clean it or not sometimes you have to go slower and harder to get more pressure on it sometimes you can get the 40 degree also just go blah the whole thing's clean and that's the thing where that's just like that's video game yeah that is just video game you're suddenly thinking about the geometry of the thing in front of you rather than a game system and i think about uh saving the lawnmower sim game that i don't think it's been like an explosive success but i'm fairly sure the lawnmower sim has actually been successful enough now i think back to mowing lawns and you know if it's the generic case of you have a square of grass there's going to be a perfectly efficient way to do that but i remember part of our garden kind of goes in like that and it goes in like that almost uh like a big cue balls or pool cube not pool uh bowling balls bowling queue what are they called bowling eye rolling alley the things you knock over rolling pin that's it almost like a bowling pin shape yeah and for that it would mean that with you know there would be a different optimal method of cleaning that because of its unique geometry so in the same way that like the same way they're just tapping into oh well this is a van this is a play park whatever the object that you're power cleaning is um yeah it's like the very literal specifics of minutia of the game world i guess it's that thing like in mmos uh like say world of warcraft they've really tried to get people to actually pay attention i think they've probably failed but they want like the reason why they don't have the quest tracker uh they don't want that in wrath of the chicken classic is because they want people to actually pay attention to the world and you look at so many of the open world uh ostensibly narrative games like uh horizon and some of the ubisoft assassin's creeds and it's like map markers everywhere and it's like you then look at elven ring why do people like alvin ring oh because you're actually paying attention to the world and the mechanics there's level design yeah you're not thinking as much about like the systems and stuff and this is i think just a really pure distillation of that it's exactly that where it's what i would say is like really naturalistic level design where one of the things was it um uh i can't remember was it miyamoto talking about like how much inspiration he takes from the real world for like designing mario stuff i like how much so many things were inspired to like a specific visit to a shrine in the locale and location and stuff kind of really made some parts of it click together in his head and that to me is kind of where this comes from because like you start off cleaning simple stuff it's like here's a fence and the fence is like flat so you just go up and down but then something protrudes so you have to hit it from you have to get in the front you have to go around the side you have to go on the other side and then if there's a bottom you have to crouch down and go into the prune position because it just plays like a shooter you just have to you know double tap control to get down and clean underneath it and this is like really naturalistic level design that makes you kind of actually literally look at like a building go hi am i going to clean that and then because it's not realistic you've got like reasonable like first person shooter jumping mechanics you've got step like stepping stools and ladders and stuff but you can also like platform a little bit so you can sprint off like a scaffolding to land on top of a house so you can crouch on the house and get a little bit that's really hard to reach underneath the windowsill on like a roof window and it's stuff like that that just makes it like really enjoyable and fun and that's the thing where you go well it's power similar what do you mean and it's like a goat simulator is a really sand boxy kind of do whatever you want there's some design here then there's the what i'm going to call the more let's say german-oriented simulator games that are really realistic and really very like uh for people who you know a professional would go and maybe enjoy the simulator because it's so realistic whereas this is literally a game like it is just an interesting game design form but so much if it speaks out of the real world and that's what i've really enjoyed playing it thinking about that stuff and going this is really satisfying and i kind of have a feel for i know why now and even comparing it to like because this kind of popped in my head earlier was talking about uh movement mechanics you know whenever you're playing a modern aaa game right you're playing something from ubisoft something from maybe sony maybe you're going back and playing it all uncharted and well this is like a tweet i remember from the tomb raider game where someone just remade like one of the climbing scenes but in grey box form and it looked so like oh this isn't this is all smoke and mirrors this is literally all smoke and mirrors all of the danger is completely fake it's all oh the camera's shaking but the character's not you just hold the thumbstick forward and close your eyes and you get to the end of the segment it's all supposed to be kind of fake feeling this is like the opposite of that where there's no fakery whatsoever and obviously it's a little bit boring in that degree that degree but you've got like the freedom of movement within these mechanics and that's what makes it so enjoyable that's where like to me it is basically this is where this is what tripoli game designers lost in a large amount of like their movement and their climbing and all that stuff which is freedom and not even like freedom to fail just freedom to kind of be a little bit creative and how you go about it and that's it weird that i had all of those thoughts from [ __ ] powerhouses yeah well yeah but but it's interesting why it works it appears on this fundamental level yeah and even like the upgraded loop right it's you go play god of war and the upgrade loop is kind of there for no reason and kind of pointless not really satisfying and kind of distracting something else but then because this is so simple the upgraded loop of upgrading your power washer so you're cleaning faster it's just like multiplicative oh i'm cleaning faster oh i feel like i'm a better power washer and you probably are a better power washer because you've again gained the skill of knowing how quick to move your mouse or how much to your control stick whatever else but the little upgraded loop is just that extra little bit of juice to kind of go yeah here and it's not big it's not being souped up it's not like the chest from vampire survivors which are almost a parody of what loot boxes and chests feel like it is just raw straight up yeah you earn some money trying to get a better power washer and when you do you're like i can't wait to try this thing out it's not even any different like it would be in like a say a character action games new weapon it's not even much different it's just like stronger but you're like hell yeah this is like a cool loop of i'm doing some virtual work the work is satisfying i'm getting paid and i'm getting reward it is that little microcosm of what humans have evolved to find beautifully beautifully satisfying which is what helped our survival and it's that encapsulated in game form perfectly it is a game that has cut absolutely to the core of what is satisfying in a way that so many games spend as you said like so much money in expensive set pieces and stuff like that they're just able to get it i think that's perhaps some of the secret of uh the secret of this genre so to just take a look at how the financial performance has been so 10th in global top sellers on steam that is a i mean it's look at there steam deck power sim it is doing so well uh that's massive it's despite again that's despite being free on game pass yeah and so with that right all while you can get for free in game pass uh 10 000 all-time peak and this is not a multi-player or i mean it it does give a multiplayer but it's not like uh you know a large primarily multi-player not multiplayer some background noise gamepl podcast on because it is wonderful for just letting time slip into the abyss so it explodes out of early access then with its peak it actually does super well on twitch i can't imagine that will last for too long though that's just it's the new hotness so people will cover it but if you can get yourself to actually be the new hotness on twitch that is an incredible thing so it had a 9 000 increase of viewers at its height just under 60 000 people watching the game i know like skill up did a video on it that was like super well received that's what convinced me to download it on game pass you look at the steam reviews i mean that is absurdly positive basically people are thrilled steam 250 is even tallying that it's the third most positively rated game in 2022 which you know number one you've got stray god of war power wash scene and you want right after power wash sim tear down yep and that is another game that's like fundamentally appealing if it is at least the game i think is my memories right it's also just going there for like what is at its core very satisfying i mean even there's like door formatting below it that's the city builder yeah crazy it just goes to show something like what can actually do well on steam which to be honest i find to be really heartening because often those steam charts they can actually cut through a lot of the aaa negativity that happens on the news like if you you know we're just covering games like that it would probably be happier time yeah people are basically it feels like i don't even know if people are breaking it but it's just the conditioning of aaa is just doesn't exist on steam it's such an incredible platform people like yep [ __ ] what looks cool today i'm gonna buy it and steam have done a great job of letting those actually stand out instead of letting like because i think that's what happens a lot on the consoles right especially because they're kind of very happy to kind of push their own stuff or take aaa money to be very prominent not to say this is like some sort of bribery stuff but kind of what benefits them the most is that we're a steamer just like as always just the the libertarian paradise for video games mostly where it's just yeah is your game going to sell yeah there it is we'll give you the display because it's going to sell oh your game's selling more than we thought you get a higher spot because you're selling better than we thought that kind of what the customer wants the most will be most prominently displayed and has that kind of the chance for success it's always interesting the uh positives and negatives to valve's philosophical uh i mean their rather philosophical approach to running steam yeah it certainly hasn't helped them make any games that's for sure definitely not but it certainly is like it is a unique place for a platform to be today and we get to see a lot of the benefits for some of the smaller creators which is pretty nice yes yeah absolutely no steam is really good at surfacing again it is into people yeah it is just also completely heartless if your game doesn't sell very well which is the dark side of that but not the side you often see yeah yeah so when you think about game pass then it's interesting sorts of games that they're actually bringing on because they're not just breaking on games that they kind of know people already like they are bringing on interesting games that i think they have a high confidence that people would enjoy but may not necessarily pick up you know hard space shipbreaker house flipper those have both uh appeared and uh been they've been popular they have a few other interesting strategies uh back for blood um golf with friends golf with your friends i think it's called um and then a wild thing crusader kings three is on game pass so that's a lot of things where you know there are games that certainly people are more willing to try out if they can do it for free under a subscription service and it seems to be working out really quite well so i guess for those perhaps multiplayer games where as a consumer you feel a degree of risk buying them because you don't know if you're going to have friends to play them with you know you don't have confidence that that game is going to go the distance at least with game pass you you know this while you lose some some time if you check a game out and you end up not liking it or it's not being people playing it so i think there's definitely there's just a slice of games that if they can get created into game pass they can be successful where they otherwise would have had a lot of things holding them back i would love to see for aliens uh fire team elite what it's pre and post numbers are because we know that that is a game that struggled quite a bit i think it had a decent enough little launch but it was very much a spike and then it went way down then back for blood comes and that ends up getting quite a lot more but then aliens fire team elite and funny enough back for blood are both just sitting there in game pass so does that mean it's a situation actually both games can be pretty happy who knows who knows basically but point being here there's something very essential very human and a lot of these games are able to tap into it another one uh another game that did this really well is is unpacked you know the game where you're basically yeah and they have the environmental storytelling of like well this is clearly this person's childhood bedroom this person's you know uni halls yeah and you can through the bits that you are unpacking piece together what's happened to that character it actually works really well and also it's fundamentally satisfying think about like the things that have taken off on netflix i mean okay this was years ago but the whole like um very condo thing right there was very very big yeah yeah and i didn't know this but apparently the whole thing of plastic containers they started selling like absolute hotcakes in america um based off some tv show that i think was a tv show that was basically about finally sorting things and putting them in containers like color-coded containers it's like that people watch that [ __ ] because it's satisfying the sorts of things that end up being tick-tocks that are satisfying um yeah i mean if you were to take this to the extreme and go r-rated i know there is an entire niche of popping zits oh god and stuff that completely like it gives me the uh reflex and i see it but that's massive in youtube i mean so who's gonna make the simulator for that yeah i mean it probably follows the same logic as like mukbang stuff yeah where that's just like yeah that's like a fundamental human desire that you get to see unfold and you're like satisfying that's it okay avocado simulator let's go yeah i mean hopefully hopefully yeah hopefully him taking a break from youtube was holding better health oh i just want to laugh yeah i took a break from youtube he apparently said he just go once he hits 30 he's done he had 30 recently so hopefully hopefully appears in better form all i knew is that he was a meme and i kind of thought he was a copper cab like situation where he kind of plays it all up for the character but i have no idea a 100 definitely is a very big very big character but also you can't you know yeah you can't be a character and also 400 pounds but yes yeah yeah yeah yeah um so anyway i suppose if you're thinking about a game to make um one way of doing it is you know i mean our way which is just hey there's a story you want to tell we want to make it really cool another way arguably one that could probably get you more success is to think about things that humans are that we just gravitate to you know using some very fundamental things like magnets people [ __ ] love magnets puzzle boxes you know those like genres in youtube that people just seem to watch and watch and watch and watch because there's just something very raw very elemental in its appeal that's what power washing sim was able to do yeah and it might seem very boring on the surface but it turns out that a video game doesn't have to be exciting to be fun it can be meditative fun can come in many different forms and even like the meditative stuff feels good because i think that's what people don't understand whenever you know when people want to play a game like diablo they don't want high-stakes action that's really difficult they kind of want to i guess just chill out you mean all the people who playing diablo immortal they're not there because they're thinking oh [ __ ] bros we've got to collect the shards of the souls the wild stone no oh no the demons will get the word yeah [Music] it's just their version of power washing sim uh right like those arpg's it's again the very fundamental human thing so yeah hey it is food for a thought fundamental [ __ ] that works let me know what you think what's your experience been like in this game and i guess are there any games along the same lines as power washing sim that maybe you've played you've enjoyed similarly but they haven't quite had that big explosion yet because i wonder how little marketing would it do to tip the scales enough that based off the success of this there's something else that appeals to just something that's very raw something very tangible if you watch any footage of this game it's tangible gameplay do

Channel: Bellular News

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Id: F6jbhY1dbDI

Length: 24min 19sec (1459 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022