Many videogames furnish the player with godlike powers, but surprisingly few have tried to simulate the complete experience of being a god. A specific sub-genre of management sim that emerged in the late 1980s, god games lend players control not merely over a specific institution or social structure (like a theme park or a city). They give you power over reality itself, letting you shape worlds, create life and destroy both on a whim.
God games are dizzyingly ambitious, and perhaps because of this, only a sparse pantheon has ever been made. Even then, the status of many of these as god games is debatable. Many canonical god games either neglect to acknowledge your role as a god, or outright reject it, expressing the emergence of life through natural processes, rather than divine intervention.
The history of god games doesn’t start with a bang or a command. It’s more primordial, a confluence of ideas that merged and—dare I say it—evolved over decades. Bits of god games can be seen as far back as 1964’s The Sumerian Game, and 1968’s Hamurabi. Both these games cast players as Sumerian kings, tasking them with managing grain harvests in the face of random disasters. Then there’s 1983’s Utopia, a two-player game in which each player runs their own island, Utopia is credited as being one of the first games to include city-building and real-time strategy elements.
The holy spirit of god games looms large in the history of PC gaming. So take my disembodied hand, and let us wander through the (intelligently designed) history of this most divine of videogame genres.
Populous 1989
DEVELOPER Bullfrog Productions | PUBLISHER Electronic Arts
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 2023 من PC Gamer US Edition.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 2023 من PC Gamer US Edition.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
PHANTOM PAIN
The unseen side of the occult in PHASMOPHOBIA
ALMA MATER
Horror is a family affair in FEAR
OFF PUTTING
Lee Carvallo's PUTTING CHALLENGE 2: another great Simpsons fan game
BEST BEHAVIOR
Donkey Crew's lead gameplay developer, SERGII GREBEN, on programming AI for NPCs
THE GOD FACTORY
A group of players built a record-breaking plant
GRIM FANDANGO
Death is a slave to the city in LucasArts' last great adventure.
GET STARTED IN HELLDIVERS 2
Take to the stars and fight for managed democracy.
OLD WORLD BLUES
The beautiful HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST COMPLETE EDITION struggles to move on
LEVEL ZERO: EXTRACTION
Tarkov meets Alien in this terrifying extraction shooter
EIYUDEN CHRONICLE: HUNDRED HEROES
Spiritual successor to Suikoden promises an grand adventure