 Ever since the Matrix popularized the idea that we are living in a simulation, I can't help but feel our perception of the simulation argument stand somewhere between serious and a meme. Of course, theorists have put forth sincere arguments, like Nick Bostrom, who argues that it is far more likely that we live in a simulation than not, given a non-zero chance that an advanced civilization can create one. Others have written entire books on the subject, putting forth piece by piece an argument of how rendering fidelity, AI, and physics simulations can become sufficiently robust to host our cosmos. The thing is, this argument isn't new. Aztec texts have referred to our world as a painting, and there are many number of theories of our world as an illusion, variants of which have existed in ancient Greece, India, and China. But surely this is speculative science fiction, and not relevant to how we understand, design, and interpret video games today. Colloquially, simulation in games refers to replication of reality, in graphics or in process. Gran Turismo fancies itself the real driving simulator, because it models cars and tracks accurately, has a robust physics model, and generates as close effect simulator reality as digital media can. Similarly, Microsoft Flight Simulator extends that notion to not just flying planes, but the entirety of our planet, using satellite imagery to simulate a real-time rendering of the world with often astonishing detail. The thing is, games are comically lacking in sufficient fidelity when put even under the slightest of scrutiny. Look outside the track in Gran Turismo, and you are greeted with horrifying marionettes. And peering too closely at the city streets in Flight Simulator can be jarringly immersion-breaking. And this is what is often referred to as the simulation gap. In any simulation, there is an inevitable gap between reality and what is represented, that can't just be dismissed as trivial. For most simulator-type games, this isn't particularly relevant, because they don't purport to simulate everything, just some subset of reality. However, in the case of games trying to simulate an argument, this can have perverse consequences. Wargames have been used for military simulations for centuries, and simulators are even used by the present military for training purposes. Functionally, the fidelity of the simulation need not have as much fidelity when it's converted for commercial purposes, and this is the genesis of the simplification in games. However, in this reduction of representational integrity, argumentation or entertainment comes in. Balance of the planet aims to show how difficult it is to manage the planet as an ecosystem, making a procedural argument through simulation, and SimCity uses the dynamics of urban planning to create a sandbox for players. In each of these cases, there are compromises made to the simulation for a design purpose, but again, meanings do manifest regardless. SimCity does tacitly advocate progressive taxation and public transit, as much as Balance of the Planet explicitly advocates for ecological stewardship. One clear example of how complex the meanings of simulation can be caused quite a dispute, September 12th. A game I've mentioned countless times before, precisely because it's SimCity facilitates analysis. You play a drone operator in a war-torn Middle Eastern country, where precision strikes are impossible and killing civilians inevitable. Naturally, this is a critique of US interventionism and foreign policy, but the argument against it comes from the simulation gap. The simulation omits a lot, and these errors of omissions say things. It is simplifying a very complex model, just like Flight Simulator is with the world, but this has ideological implications. There is no reference to how there might be other geopolitical, economic, and historical reasons for there being terrorists in the first place, or even why they are referred to as such. It reduces individuals in these regions into agents without agency, being turned into radicals by the machinery of cause and effect due to global political machinations. It tries to empathize with the marginalized and dispossessed and critique the West, but it is a glaringly simplistic model where abstraction turns into simplification and then perhaps distortion. It is in this gap then where it becomes clear that all simulation is abstraction. There is no transparent medium. The very act of replication confers a set of values, assumptions, ideologies. What is chosen to be simulated? What is omitted? What are the limits of our technology? How do rules and procedures combine with representation to make arguments? These are all questions that are relevant to the design and study of games. Games will sometimes draw attention to the fact that they are simulated, which helps draw out some of the latent aspects of the medium. Metal Gear Solid 2 is one of the more popular cases, which breaks the fourth wall at certain points to draw attention to the disruption. The premise of the game is you playing as Raiden, infiltrating the big shell to rescue the president, except the big shell turns out to be a facade for a new Metal Gear. Where this breaks from standard military game to metafictional postmodernism is when it's revealed that the real purpose is something called the S3 plan, initially thought to be solid snake simulation. Raiden was being trained by a scenario similar to the one Snake was faced with in Metal Gear Solid 1, just as we the players are replicating a facsimile of that game, the simulation. Of course, the real S3 plan is something even deeper, selection for societal sanity, which has to do with controlling the population with information. The beauty of this is that it reconciles the simulation argument with video games. Information and rule control is what is being done to us in game, just as it is being done to us in society, just as it would be if the universe itself was a simulation. Games and reality cascade into one another, us and Raiden the scapegoats at the center of this charade. Games don't just simulate objects, mechanics and ideas, they simulate a fantasy. The carefully contrived construction of digital universes frames an alternate reality. This becomes more fascinating when the thing being simulated is not a conventional power fantasy or hero's journey, but when it is as banal as hero truck simulator. Simulator games of this ilk have only become more popular of late, but the question is why? What could one possibly gain from these endeavors? People will cite zen or playful subversion, or any number of theories of how we contain work within play as a form of catharsis. The strange truth might be that there is very little different in what we are doing in Lawn Mower Simulator than what we are doing in Metal Gear Solid 2. They are both simulated fantasies with a simulation gap. The point being is that when we think of the word simulator, we should view it the same way we do the word arcade. It is a type of play contrivance, not about replication. Arcade races are not just in the arcade, they are about dynamic risk reward play and speed, and a specific lineage of fun design. Racing simulators are also that, just a game. They are not reality, they too have their own lineage. Gran Turismo's career mode is not representative of the career of motorsports. It's an abstraction with its own ideological assumptions about the culture of car ownership. Simulation has also been contrasted with narrative. In his essay Simulation vs. Narrative, Gonzalo Frasca argues that games are simulation, unlike stories which are representation. He says, To take the analogy further, simulation is the form of the future. It does not deal with what happened or is happening, but with what may happen. Unlike narrative and drama, its essence lays on a basic assumption, change is possible. However, perhaps in the video game these ideas converge, it is narrative simulation embodied fully. In his book The World is Born from Zero, Cameron Kanzelman argues that video games are a speculative media that allows us to envision futures. He says, The empirical function of video games, or the idea that players actions will produce moment to moment game experiences, operates similarly to how science fiction prompts us to imagine worlds other than the one we live in. He conceives of mechanics of speculation, which are affordances that facilitate this in games. If we reconcile these arguments, we can embrace the simulation gap, and combine this with the speculative aspect of games to render new possible worlds for us all. Video games function as a speculative simulation media form when we are given multiple paths in a game like Detroit Become Human, or actions prompting divergences in a timeline. When we are tasked with making a long-term decision, a series of interesting choices in a strategy game, but also in games foreground the fiction of simulation itself. Failstates, victory conditions, branching structures, these are all forms of speculation that facilitate the simulation of alternate realities. It is perhaps convenient that it is science fiction stories in games that highlight this convergence between the ludic and the literary. Interestingly, the best example for this is a game that still isn't available outside Japan in its original form. Ironically, this duality between the original and its copy, the authentic version and the localized, speak to the ideas we have been exploring thus far. Ace Combat 3 in Japan and Ace Combat 3 for the rest of the world are radically different games. The version the West got was a deluded facsimile, a simulation if you will, a for-game with more missions, branching paths, anime cutscenes, hours of voiced dialogue, and one of the most profound and meta-fictional stories in games. The Western version was very generic by comparison, stripping away its narrative elements and dozens of missions for reasons that are still quite baffling, but mostly budgetary. Fortunately, the fan translation project has been completed, allowing most of us outside Japan to experience the game we only once got a simulation off. In Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere, you play as a pilot in a near future setting, where corporations are vying for control in a dystopian world. You start off with the UPU, a UN-like organization that functions as an intermediary of sorts, trying to stop conflicts from escalating. It seems generic, sure, but what's interesting is that the story can branch based on your actions in-game, pivoting the narrative in wildly different directions. For example, you are given the choice to shoot down a plane with the leader of your org on board, announcing your defection. Except this is done organically in the game, your actions the mechanics of speculation forcing the text to conform. There are multiple organizations you can defect to, including General Resource and Newcom, each with their own characters, each with their own motivations and story resolutions. These characters are well developed as well, and often choosing one side asks you to kill someone you might have been acquainted with on the other side. The details of these stories I'll leave for you to explore. But regardless, it's quite the ambitious project for a flight simulation game in the 1990s. What I will spoil more explicitly is what happens at the end of the game, where it is revealed that none of what you did, none of the alternative paths that you traversed through, actually happened. It was all a simulation. As you chase the supposed big bad, Dishon, you enter the titular electrosphere, functionally the matrix, a simulation of events where the code of the cosmos you inhabit is stripped bare. A scientist named Cohen confronts you. You were an AI that was running through different simulations to actually get to the conclusion that was killing Dishon, not for some grand political peacekeeping purpose, but for some personal vendetta this conniving scientist had against him. To put it simply, we the player were playing the role of an AI running simulations. Our exploration of the branching text incorporated back into the fiction. None of what happens in the game is canonical, except the end. It is all a simulation. What seemed like freedom has collapsed into a simple function, where all possible outcomes are predictable. What does this say about us blindly following orders, romanticizing killing, about the difference between AI and gamers procedurally compelled to complete tasks and games? One could write a book about the implications, but fortunately this is a game that people are finally taking note of. Other than this being one of the most perverse localization faux pas in history, Ace Combat 3 highlights the nature of simulation in games. We can project multiple paths, alternate universes, speculate about conditionals, hypotheticals, but more than that, we can examine the nature of all those properties in relation to ourselves. Why? Because it is an interactive cybernetic medium, an excitably participatory, dynamic by design. The game ruptures the simulation to make a point about the nature of the medium. The hilarious part about the localization is some have speculated that you can perceive the events of that game as what actually happens in the game's real world, because there are no branching paths in the same way. All the romance, the narrative, the neon Genesis Evangelion ghost-in-the-shell vibes eradicated for just a mission-based military shooter. The real real world, poignantly, is also devoid of the same narrative contrivance, the artistry that accompanies design. It seems simulation involves not just abstraction, but aesthetics. And that is perhaps where the fallacy finally crystallizes in full, by embracing the simulation gap, leveraging the speculative technology that is games, and realizing simulation itself confers a set of values that isn't about replication, but aesthetic abstraction. We may finally start seeing the medium for what it actually is.