I know the genital jousting developers, they’re fun at parties.
Survival games create a powerful fantasy that combines two elements:
- a world that works on its own, and “doesn’t care about you.” Day and night will pass, predators roam and kill things, lava will burn and water will flow, regardless of whether you’re there or not. It has its own existence and rules, often physics or other simulation of nature, etc.
- the player can struggle against this world to overcome and reshape it, not just surviving but making it their own, either one corner of it or a huge empire, complex, factory, etc — the fantasy of “work + ingenuity = remake the world in your image”
You can see why #1 is important for #2 if you look at a related genre, the God Game (Populous, Black & White, SimEarth etc.) In those games you reshape the world but you’re a god to start with, no progression that makes you feel like “you did it yourself!”
The whole fantasy has deep roots in human culture, in the idea of “conquering the wilderness” or “bringing civilization.” For some this has vibes associated with being a pioneer, settler or explorer conquering “uncivilized” areas (which in real world history often didn’t mean completely empty worlds, just places where people with less advanced technology lived… leading to all sorts of problems)
Of course, as in all designed games, #1 and #2 are both illusions created and carefully tuned by game designers and refined to make sure that an average player can figure out how to craft, find the right basic resources nearby, not encounter enemies that are too difficult too soon, gradually get more and more powerful at a steady pace that doesn’t jump high too fast, etc. The feeling of “I did it, I conquered the world” is all orchestrated. Especially for kids (Minecraft). Which is fine, of course, just also a little funny for a power fantasy.
That’s probably also why more difficult survival games emerged: Green Hell, Rust, Long Dark, Don’t Starve, and my favorite: Kenshi, where the world that doesn’t care about you comes complete with civilizations of slavers that will throw you in chains and march you for days to a mine, and if you try to escape might just beat you to death and leave your corpse at the side of the road while caravans and wild beasts keep doing their thing.
Did you know some of the earliest survival games were early MMOs? I remember playing one called Armageddon MUD, a decade before Minecraft, that was based on D&D’s Dark Sun setting. You started naked, with nothing and had to forage mushrooms and leaves to survive, make crude weapons out of sticks, or else go in a city to beg from other players on the streets. I got conscripted into an army and the drill sergeants “weeded out the weaklings” among new players by making us run through a desert full of scorpions and giant sand lions. Most didn’t make it back alive, and death was permanent (no respawn, have to make a new character from level 1)
We are gatherers and hunters.
