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tThere is a school of thought here that insists that video games are purely about escapism. Where else can you pretend you’re a US Marine Force Recon (Call of Duty), a heroic eco-warrior stopping a shady company from draining a planet’s spiritual energy (Final Fantasy), or a football coach (Football Manager)? comfort of your sofa?
But the antithesis of these thrilling and exciting experiences are the so-called anti-escapist games. Farming Simulator, PowerWash Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator – these blockbuster titles challenge the whole concept of interactive entertainment as something, well, exciting. Now we have what at first glance seems the most boring of all, Grass cutting simulator.
Recreating the act of mowing the lawn is nothing new. Advanced lawnmower simulator for the ZX Spectrum came out free in a Your Sinclair magazine cover strip in 1988. Written as an April Fool’s joke by writer Duncan MacDonald, it poked fun at all of the game house’s Jet Bike, BMX and Grand Prix simulators. economical Codemasters. Despite this, Advanced Lawnmower Simulator spawned legions of clones and fans and even its own trash game competition where people still, to this day, try to write the worst possible game on the ZX Spectrum.
Lawn Mowing Simulator, created by Liverpool-based studio Skyhook Games, is no April Fool’s joke. It strives for realism and has its own unique group of fans. But why would you want to play a game about something you could easily do in real life? As a journalist, I had know, so I decided to consult some experts.
Lesson One: The Pleasure of Repetition
“It’s strange that this genre not only exists, but is so popular,” explains Krist Duro, editor-in-chief of Duuro Plays, a video game review website based in Albania, and the first person I could find who has actually played the game. and I enjoyed Lawn Mowing Simulator a bit. “But you need to be connected in a particular way. I like repetitive tasks because they allow me to enter a zen state. But the actual simulation part has to be good.”
Duro mentions a few other simulators that I’ve fortunately never heard of: Motorcycle Mechanic 2021, Car Mechanic Simulator, Construction Simulator, Ships Simulator. “These games are huge,” says Duro. “Farming Simulator has sold 25 million physical copies and has 90 million downloads. PowerWash Simulator sold more than 12 million on consoles. As long as the simulators remain attractive, people will show up.”
Duro reviewed the latest VR version of Lawn Mowing Simulator, but he wasn’t a fan. “Your brain can’t accept that you are moving in the game while in real life you stay still. It made it impossible for me to play more than 30 minutes without feeling like I was about to die,” he says. But otherwise she liked him.
Lesson two – psychology
“I am a 30-year-old man and I like nothing more than spending Friday and Saturday afternoons in Euro Truck Simulator driving around Europe. I even park at the restroom (in the game) and get out to make myself some (real) bacon sandwiches and a coffee. No wonder he’s single.”
This was a recent confession on Fesshole, where people anonymously share their sins on X. What draws people to such boring simulators? Is it because humans like familiarity and repetition?
“There is no single theory,” explains cognitive psychologist Dr. Celia Hodent, author of The Gamer’s Brain, speaking from Los Angeles. “Video games focus on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation drives us to do something we don’t care about, like doing boring work in exchange for getting paid. Video games are an autotelic activity” – that is, they are played for the pleasure of playing, I should clarify for my own benefit – “where we are motivated to do uninteresting tasks because we care about the reward once the mission is accomplished.”
“Humans are intrinsically motivated when activities satisfy our need for competence (sense of progression), autonomy (self-expression and meaningful choices), and relatedness (cooperating/competing with others). While there is no definitive answer as to why people are drawn to simulators, we have multiple theories (sense of control, progression, satisfaction from earning rewards) that can give us a framework for understanding.”
I feel like I need to sit back, but I remain optimistic that I’ll have at least a sporting chance of understanding some of what my next expert is talking about.
Lesson three – history
Shahid Kamal Ahmad has been creating video games since 1982. He was director of strategic content at Sony after working for 10 years at PlayStation. Decades earlier, as a young programmer, he had ported Jet Set Willy from the ZX Spectrum to the Commodore 64. He points out that these strangely engaging simulations of real-life activities have been a part of gaming since the beginning: they offer the same things as games. space shooters and racing simulators – a feeling of fulfillment, only with different graphics.
“Games allow us to do without boring things,” he says. “Uncoiling the long power cord takes time. You could do without the extension cord inside. Cutting the stripes is the closure. It’s the same reason people like word searches. Remember Hover Bovver on the C64 by Jeff Minter of Llamasoft? He turned mowing the lawn into a game, except it wasn’t boring. He used the satisfying mechanics of mowing the lawn with an English paradigm and that’s what made it charming.”
I had forgotten about Hover Bovver, which came out in 1983 and is an integral part of lawn mowing simulator history. Jeff better catch up to find out where it all started.
“We were going to a computer exhibition in Birmingham and I was staying with my mother, father and a friend in this elegant farmhouse,” he remembers. “This place has a well-kept garden and during breakfast (the scrambled eggs were delicious) we looked out the window and saw the gardener pushing a lawnmower. My dad and I started tossing around this idea: “You could make a game about that.” “You could have stolen your neighbor’s lawnmower.” “You could put your dog on them.” The name was a nod to Qualcast, whose ads were aimed at its rival, Flymo: “It’s less buoyant than a hover.” I had the entire game laid out in my head before I got home. “It was a change from my normal laser-spitting camels.”
Lesson Four: Lawn Mower Expert
Carl Williams of the British Lawnmower Racing Association has been racing lawnmowers for 20 years, following in his father’s footsteps as one of the most affordable ways to get into motorsport.
Williams certainly knows his lawn mowers, from the class three Westwood Lawn Bug to the 12½ horsepower Honda, and now so do I. 10-lap sprints are common, but the big event is the 12-hour endurance, the equivalent of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Williams is more of a fan of Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty and isn’t sure how a potential lawnmower racing game would work.
“Running a lawnmower relies on both direction and shifting your body weight to keep the machine upright,” he says. “You would have to add the physical aspect of bouncing on a machine that has no suspension on a grass track.” Maybe some kind of After Burner-style hydraulic arcade cabinet then?
I ask Williams if he appreciates the idea of Lawn Mowing Simulator. “I hate mowing my own lawn,” he admits. “But I can see that someone might find that kind of play quite therapeutic.”
Lesson five – real life
With my bad research into the history of the lawnmower game almost over, I decided it was time for my own “expert” take on what it’s really like to play Lawn Mowing Simulator.
The first thing is to choose your lawnmower, and this is where I wish I had listened to Williams a little more carefully. I’m not entirely sure what the difference is between Stiga 2084, Scag Turf Tiger II, or Toro Z Master 7500-D, other than they are different colors. The cut itself looks so realistic that you can almost smell the freshly cut grass. But it takes a long time to mow the grass and I gave up after about half an hour, which was pretty impressive for me. It could definitely use some Mario Kart-style power-ups and Hover Bovver-style interactions where you almost accidentally run over your next-door neighbor’s dog.
But is it like it’s real? She knew she had to investigate. To do this, I used a Hayter Harrier 56 Intek Edge 2800 RMP 100dB Autodrive gasoline lawnmower. My neighbors were certainly suspicious why I suddenly offered to mow the grass out of nowhere and for no apparent reason, and they also asked me if they would take my photo. Luckily, they don’t have any dogs he could run over.
I agree with Duro, a simulation game reviewer, that “repetitive tasks allow you to enter a Zen-like state,” although my arms hurt and I had to constantly stop to throw leftovers in the trash can. I agree with Ahmad, my gaming historian, that “mowing the grass in stripes is closing the cycle.” As Williams, my lawn mower expert, said, there is something therapeutic about mowing the lawn. Unfortunately, I lacked the “extrinsic motivation that makes us do something we don’t care about for the reward of getting paid,” suggested by Hodent, my psychologist, because I forget to ask my neighbors for money.
