PlayWay sort of fascinates me, and not just because I've put a lot of hours into things like House Flipper and Car Mechanic Simulator. This is a really good summation of suspicions I've had for a while - that they're 'playing the market' to see what will stick. (Maybe someone should introduce them to the concept of 'market research' and 'online focus groups'.)
I wouldn't really want to be a dev pitching to them, though. Does everyone actually want to make [Insert Vaguely Interesting Job] Simulator? I doubt it. But if you're a small dev in a non-Western country looking to make money, I can see why you'd take PlayWay's offers.
What also sort of jibes with me is that they've effectively tainted the moniker 'Simulator'. They're not the first - look at the branding of Farming Simulator by Giants (great game, fantastic community) which re-used the MS Flight Simulator logo style (which itself, ironically, comes from the mid-90s generic Microsoft branding as I recall). Unlike Giants though, PlayWay's pushed it to these absurd extremes as you noted (Bum Simulator, etc etc). I'm assuming they actually thought 'Jesus Simulator' was a step too far.
Still, what's frustrating is that sometimes the concepts are actually really good, but the execution is enormously lacking. Weirdly, if they took a page from other 'mega-pubs' like EA and actually got studios to share learnings and tech, it'd probably float all boats. Car Mechanic Simulator near-perfected the 'fiddle around with machines sim' sub-genre, but then you get sub-par stuff like Plane Mechanic Simulator which feel like copies of copies. Why not take what did well, replicate it and resell? It's not exactly rocket science. Hang on. Rocket Scientist Simulator. PlayWay, call me.
PlayWay sort of fascinates me, and not just because I've put a lot of hours into things like House Flipper and Car Mechanic Simulator. This is a really good summation of suspicions I've had for a while - that they're 'playing the market' to see what will stick. (Maybe someone should introduce them to the concept of 'market research' and 'online focus groups'.)
I wouldn't really want to be a dev pitching to them, though. Does everyone actually want to make [Insert Vaguely Interesting Job] Simulator? I doubt it. But if you're a small dev in a non-Western country looking to make money, I can see why you'd take PlayWay's offers.
What also sort of jibes with me is that they've effectively tainted the moniker 'Simulator'. They're not the first - look at the branding of Farming Simulator by Giants (great game, fantastic community) which re-used the MS Flight Simulator logo style (which itself, ironically, comes from the mid-90s generic Microsoft branding as I recall). Unlike Giants though, PlayWay's pushed it to these absurd extremes as you noted (Bum Simulator, etc etc). I'm assuming they actually thought 'Jesus Simulator' was a step too far.
Still, what's frustrating is that sometimes the concepts are actually really good, but the execution is enormously lacking. Weirdly, if they took a page from other 'mega-pubs' like EA and actually got studios to share learnings and tech, it'd probably float all boats. Car Mechanic Simulator near-perfected the 'fiddle around with machines sim' sub-genre, but then you get sub-par stuff like Plane Mechanic Simulator which feel like copies of copies. Why not take what did well, replicate it and resell? It's not exactly rocket science. Hang on. Rocket Scientist Simulator. PlayWay, call me.