I’ll admit it. I’m into what is probably an eclectic cozy-ish game not considered by too many action-seeking gamer geeks out there: Farming Simulator^[1].

If you have never heard of this title, it is exactly what it sounds like: you are dropped into a virtual working farm, given a tractor, access to a store to buy tools and selling points to sell things that you grow and harvest.  Time passes. Virtual work is completed. Hours are lost in a weird little simulator that seems like it should not be as emotionally consuming as it actually becomes.

And if I’m reading the room correctly the proper way to play the game is by selling lots, expanding your farm, buying the biggest darned tractor you can afford, and becoming the owner of every property on the map.

But I started watching a weird genre of video online that has taken me down a simulated farming rabbit hole: storytelling farming.

I’m getting to a point here.

The thing is the game throws every opportunity at you to automate your work.  The latest version, “2025” even has AI driven tractors guided by “GPS-assisted” technology. You can literally just press a few buttons and the game basically plays itself: it really just turns itself into a management simulator.

This video genre tho: people have been playing the game in full manual, as in starting with as few resources as possible, leaning into game mods for low-tech tools (like a hand-pushed plough or an axe for chopping lumber) which is fully possible in the game… just slow as molasses.  They play in this slowed down, virtual manual labour mode, telling a story about struggle and toil and adversity in this make-believe simulator world… and the videos are captivating to me. 

I can’t explain it in any way except that it kinda, sorta, actually just echoes the moment. Doing something the hard way, even in a game—maybe especially in a game which is meant to be entertainment and joyful—is a kind of soulful calling that has fully hooked me.

I opened my own copy of the game, added the mods for all the hand tools, found a map that was darn-near destitute, and I have since become a virtual labourer in my free time, sitting on the couch, all while doing it the hard way.

Food for thought.