Announcing Simulation Daily

Greetings, potential reader,

I’m Giuseppe Nelva, and I am the Editor-in-Chief of Simulation Daily.

Today we announce the launch (effective immediately) of this brand-new gaming and simulation website, and starting right now you’ll be able to visit us to find news, in-depth insight, interviews, previews, and editorials about your favorite hobby.

Why “Simulation Daily?”

Simulation and gaming have always represented two faces of the same coin. When video games were younger, simulators were seen as the cutting edge of the gaming industry, with historical series like Microsoft Flight Simulator acting as showpieces of what computers could achieve in the field of entertainment, while studios like Lucasfilm transported us to World War II with legendary titles like Their Finest Hour or Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.

While the popular perception has somewhat shifted since these glorious times, games remain essentially a simulation of something. Whether it’s real or fictional, on a big or small scale, the aim is to simulate some kind of situation, event, or activity.

We have games that simulate the operation of a vehicle or a machine like Gran Turismo or Euro Truck Simulator. Some simulate combat or conflict like Street Fighter or Total War. Some simulate the functioning of a business like Stardew Valley or even a nation like Civilization.

Some games simulate a world like many MMORPGs or a wider universe like Starfield or Star Citizen, while others simulate events within these settings like your story-driven RPGs including Baldur’s Gate and Final Fantasy. Some simulate interpersonal relations like The Sims and even love like Tokimeki Memorial. Many games simulate a combination of these elements and more.

Yet, many gaming websites place at least some of the genres usually defined as simulation firmly on the backseat.

The 2020 release of Microsoft Flight Simulator and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (which we recently learned will be released in November this year) are good examples. They’re full-fledged AAA games targeting millions of users, but they usually get a fraction of the attention and coverage compared to other games in the triple-A range.

The same can be said about other high-level vehicular simulation games like iRacing, Assetto Corsa, DCS World, and many more.

Many gaming press outlets see the genre as too “serious” to be considered “real games,” or simply not accessible enough to generate the traffic they want. Of course, this also extends to many users and has created a split that we intend to mend.

Simulation Daily will do away with these misconceptions and give simulation engines and environments (for games or otherwise) the space they deserve making sure that they don’t fall under your radar, causing you to miss entertainment experiences that certainly deserve to be enjoyed.

On Simulation Daily you’ll find daily (that’s the second half of the name, after all) articles about the whole spectrum of simulation and gaming, from triple-A (no, Ubisoft. There isn’t a quadruple-A. Let’s keep things simple, shall we?) to indie and obscure, from the West to the East, from Fortnite to Microsoft Flight Simulator and DCS World passing by the latest JRPGs and visual novels.

Who is Orbx?

Orbx is a leading Australian creator of flight simulator add-ons, specializing in transforming geospatial data into immersive environments and scenery for simulators,
available on Orbx Direct. They also create content and solutions for professional simulations and digital twins.

I accepted their offer of leading Simulation Daily due to our matching interest in creating a new gaming and simulation media outlet that would correct the underrepresentation of the simulation genres in gaming journalism and be both respectable and respectful of its readers and the industry.

What is our mission?

As gaming journalists go, you could say I’m on the old side. I started in the heyday of Gaming Magazines and worked through the birth and rise of the web.

You could call me nostalgic, but I miss the simpler times in which enthusiast press could really be considered “enthusiastic.” We were perhaps less sophisticated, but most of us really loved games and the people who made them and celebrated the awesome hobby called gaming with our writing.

This is part of Simulation Daily’s mission: to be a positive force in this industry that too often dwells on commercially advantageous negativity and manufactured outrage while underrepresenting what makes gaming good and uplifting.

This doesn’t mean that we’re going to give up criticism or ignore distasteful events (which unfortunately aren’t rare), but we’re not going to focus on them disproportionately just because they usually generate the most clicks and engagement.

We hope to not only celebrate gaming and simulation and the people who make games, but also to expand your horizons of the hobby by exploring why certain choices within the industry are made, and a critical step on that path will be giving developers a voice with frequent interviews.

We’re also not going to bend our coverage to the whims of search engines. For years the trend among the gaming press has been to adapt not only the style but also the content and topics of articles to fit what provides the most visibility on Google.

In over two decades, I’ve seen all of these tricks, and I’ve witnessed how they have gotten worse and more insidious over time, so my team and I are going to do our very best to completely disregard them.

Here you won’t see headlines that purposely conceal the real topic of an article to achieve that coveted curiosity click, and you won’t find games named “something-like” because the “something” is more popular. We’re going to throw these and many more common clickbait stratagems out of the proverbial window because they inevitably lower the quality of an article, and quality is what we aim to achieve.

You won’t find manufactured controversy, attempts to capitalize on your outrage, rumors from random social media users, or guides on elementary things like saving your game or finding the multiplayer option. They may be very attractive to a search engine, but we don’t believe that’s the kind of content that will make you leave our site enriched and fulfilled.

You also won’t find reviews, because we’d rather help you build up the tools to decide for yourself whether a game or product is worth your hard-earned money or not, as opposed to telling you ourselves, based on our personal taste and personality which may not match yours.

We hope that on Simulation Daily you will find articles that will make you want to come back every day because they genuinely spark your interest, expose you to games and simulators you did not know about, and enrich your knowledge and experience of the industry.

Ultimately, we hope that you’ll come back to read the content we write because you truly enjoy it and want more, and not because a search engine or an algorithm occasionally tells you that you might enjoy it.

Welcome to Simulation Daily. We hope you’ll enjoy your time here.