If you have ventured onto Steam lately, you may have noticed there are a whole line of games that are designed to feel more like real-life work than… well… games. The series of simulator games keep getting trotted out, with overly intense titles like Farming Simulator 17, Euro Truck Simulator 2, and Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 climbing the charts, But now a new contender in the ring might have you questioning whether things are going too far and getting too close to being actual, tedious work. PC Building Simulator is now on PCs and… well… it is about building PCs over and over again.
By which I mean, all the monotony that comes with building a PC is present in PC Building Simulator . You build a PC. You place parts. You run diagnostics to make sure things are working. You perform virus scans. You can determine what the benchmarks are. You repair and upgrade systems. It is the sort of thing that could get very monotonous, even as it helps teach you about parts and building a system. In short, it is work. PC Building Simulator is work.
Especially since a part of PC Building Simulator is a career mode where you run a shop that builds, fixes, and upgrades PCs. This means not only endlessly building for your own purposes, but doing so under stricter time limits, attempting to meet conditions, while also keeping the shop afloat. It is not like a typical management simulation, where some fun can be derived from hiring people and organizing things, watching as money grows. Here, it is a more tedious and real affair. Think of it as being like a Best Buy Geek Squad simulator. While there is a place and audience for this kind of thing, could it perhaps get too old too quickly?
Of course, there is some good in being so grave. By making PC Building Simulator as cut and dry as it is, people do have an opportunity to learn from it. It does do an admirable job of recreating the experience. All of the parts and steps are accurate, right down to each of the items you can use to build the PCs being recreations of real-world products. (Right down to the brands and models, even!) While this being too much work could be a turn-off to some, it could be exactly what people looking to learn or hoping to give a gag Steam gift would need.
There are also times when people might start wondering if PC Building Simulator is so “real,” it is actually an advertisement for building a PC using all the real world brands and parts that just so happen to be featured in it. I mean, one of the biggest images on the product page points out how it is made in partnership with AMD, Arctic, Cooler Master, Corsair, Cryorig, EVGA, Futuremark, Gigabyte, In Win, NZXT, MSI, SilverStone, Raijintek, and TeamGroup. Yes, the accuracy is nice, but when one of the points of the game is to see what happens when money is no object in free-build, it makes you wonder if you are buying a game that is trying to convince you to go ahead and spend even more money to make your own computer? It seems a little subversive.
I suppose it all comes down to finding the right balance. We are always going to see simulation games like PC Building Simulator out there. They will always be an odd title that some people will love for their accuracy and methodical presentation and others will reject for their tedious and demanding nature. The key is to find a balance. PC Building Simulator definitely has a place, perhaps as an educational tool or means of testing out possibilities before a real build. But people looking for just a good time will want to pay close attention to feedback and reviews.