Classic Vs Automated Sim Games
Classic or traditional sim horse games emerged in the 1980s as an opportunity for racing enthusiasts to own race horses online and are a branch of life simulation games. These games initially were run via email and throughout the course of the 1990s a divergence occurred. Racing gave way to showing and email communication was revolutionized as chat forums began to overtake the sim community. Members were then able to track data in a public place, campaign and breed their horses with one another, and the games became less of a simulation and more of a community. Many sites encourage members to build their own stables to display horse information including show results, photographs, and etc. Most classic sims emphasize realism in gameplay. Today classic sim games still utilize forum style game-play. Many forums are ingenious in their integration of realistic information and statistics right down to BBcode ingenuity.
The middle ground of classic and fully automated sim began in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hybrid sims utilize classic stylings of forum gameplay but often integrate dynamic pages to simplify record keeping. For example a hybrid sim may have ebanking available for members so checks do not have to be manually collected or tallied. Other hybrid games choose to utilize a discipline specific randomizer for show results and utilize PHP technologies to immediately place results in a community database accessible to all. The most significant factor which defines a sim horse game as a hybrid is the integration of forum style game-play with some automated conveniences. Hybrid sims retain the emphasis of authenticity or realism in gameplay but integrate dynamic conveniences to simplify game-play and expedite in-game processes.
Fully automated sim games often provide a communication option between members but the community feeling is minimized in exchange for greater convenience. Fully automated games often have drawings or graphical representations of horses. Automated sites generally go to greater depth in calculating hunger or energy levels and often utilize some form of automated showing which tends to shift the focus from realism towards a more user-friendly middle ground. Automated sim games are browser-based games which utilize web programming languages such as PHP to automate many of the tasks of traditional sim games, most notably showing. Automated sims do not rely as heavily upon the interaction of their members and as such, though most offer forums, forum participation is not a required part of game play.
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Famous quotes containing the words games, classic and/or automated:
“In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)
“Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)