Imagine that you spend most of your day ploughing fields, sowing seeds, spraying fertilisers or pesticides, harvesting crops, feeding livestock (if you have any), repairing fences, and maintaining a half-dozen different kinds of farm machinery. You do this every day, all year, in all weather. And then, in the evening, you sit down at a computer to do it all again – virtually. Farming Simulator is a long-running video game series played by about a million people. The game's creator, Giants Software, estimates that as many as a quarter of its players are connected to farming in some way, and around 8-10% are full-time, professional farmers.

In a rare move for the venerable video game company, Nintendo has just put together a sale in honor of E3 on "select digital games" for both its Switch and 3DS consoles. While the company promises up to a 50% discount, you won't find deep discounts on games you probably want, like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for $45 and Splatoon 2 for $40, both of which typically retail for $60. The sale ends June 21st at 8:59 AM PT or 11:59 AM ET. Still, if you were already planning to buy any of these games soon, this would be a good time to do so. The Switch games on sale include the two above, along with Mario Rabbids: Kingdom Battle Gold Edition for $44, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus for $10, Fire Emblem Warriors for $45 and Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers for $20 (normally $40).

Harvesting takes me an hour. That's an hour in which I drive at little more than walking pace from one end of a field to the other and back again 20 or 30 times. It's not the most fun I've had in a video game, but then I do need the money. Farming Simulator 17, released on 25 October, is the latest game in a series made by Giants Software in Schlieren, Switzerland. Players start out with little land and few machines and must plant, tend and harvest crops – or raise livestock – to earn money to buy more land and more machines.