I recall back in the early 90s my buddy (who is now an EVP of games dev at blizzard) - was asking me why I didn't like playing masters of Orion- I told him "it's no fun to play a spreadsheet"

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Then I read this interesting article about a guy in SF several years ago and he was the key accountant, strategist for (whatever that massive space battle game is that was hyper popular with the russians) - and he didn't even play the actual game! All he did was manage the massive assets of their guild faction with excel and other tools and they were making hundreds of thousands in real dollars per year and that was his actual IRL full time job.

The one where they had that massive battle and thousand and thousand of real money was lost on the eradication of huge digital fleets...

Eve Online, probably.

That's it

Kerbal Space Program is one of the most popular paid games on Steam, far ahead of every arcadey Galaga-like game on Steam.

I agree with your point though. Kerbal Space Program, like all games, also sacrifices realism for fun in places. Like how you can send astronauts on multi-year voyages without any concerns about food, water, life support, radiation shielding, etc.

There are mods that add support for those things, but most people don't use them.

Similarly, you can play on difficulty settings that forbid reverts, but most people just want to build rockets and try again if they fail rather than meticulously engineer every aspect of the mission.

I joke that the Revert button is the "never mind, that was a simulation. The next one is the actual mission" button.

I find that there are games that transition from low to high complexity over time, and I often dislike it, for example in Crusader Kings. I always love the early part of the game where I'm looking out for my family, building nice stuff in my domain, earning money, murdering siblings etc. Life is simple. I absolutely hate when you (either deliberately or by accident) end up in charge of a large kingdom or empire and suddenly you're having to manage hundreds of counties and deal with dozens of people who hate you. Feels far too much like work.

Many strategy games do scaling badly. You micromanage at first, but then your kingdom grows and you're supposed to use the same tools to manage much more. Real life doesn't work like that. If you go up in hierarchy, you generally delegate tasks. Time is not made out of rubber. Real life is not turn-based. You can't take as much time as you want planning your next move.

I agree with your assessment, but I'm also glad that games like Kerbal Space Program exist.

There should be room for experimental, simulationist and niche games too, not just for the tried and true crowd pleasers, because how dreadfully boring would it be otherwise?