Behold the birth, and resonance, of walking simulators

The battle around the walking simulator term, like many definitional fights, was a political one. Calling something a walking simulator carried a declarative weight to it, as if the act of walking was so surface level and pointless that to call it a "game" had no value. At the time, Paste Magazine's Austin Walker connected the motivating conversations in game design and criticism together, noting that discussions of form and content always resolved into bigger historical debates about what does and does not belong within any given culture. The discussion reached an apex with a 2016 Kill Screen piece that interviewed critics and developers of these games about how they understood walking simulators and the discourse around them. For some, "walking simulator" was a useful descriptor that allowed them to connect with a player base.