Is The Walking Dead Season 1 a walking simulator? If so, I enjoyed that.

And Journey was beautiful, if that counts. Other than that, no. I rather play something else.

My million IQ rationale:

What the heck is this thread? Not addressing the elephant in the room at all... I'm curious of the intentions here.

"Oh yeah, let's all pretend that we can have a civil conversation about `walking simulators` and see how many pages we can go until Death Stranding is mentioned, because god forbid anyone mentions Death Stranding in the context of a walking simulator. Oh, but it's listed on the Steam Store as a walking simulator?"

https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Walking+Simulator#p=0&tab=TopSellers

In case you don't know what I mean, many have referred to Death Stranding as a "walking simulator", and from what I've seen, it's been used in a negative way. Thus, "walking simulator" has negative connotations when I hear it.

But yeah, so far my favorite is Death Stranding. *gasp*

Yes I enjoyed RDR2.

They do not exist yet in gaming,if they did i would not enjoy them.

I haven't played Death Stranding yet.

Nope, I don't see the appeal to them at all.

Would be more fair to call death stranding a soft stealth/traversal management game with heavy emphasis on story,calling it a "walking simulator" ignores too many of it other aspects.

Gran Turismo calls itself a "racing simulator" but that could be considered marketing cause in reality the "simulator" part of it is taken very loosely.

Edit: Just bought it on ps store,it is downloading right now and will play it when i return home from cinema this evening/night(gonna watch Joker)

DS is certainly not the first 'walking simulator', as there have been flash games and Octodad, which make walking a game mechanic.

Btw I propose the term 'walkade game' for the others - that said the 'simulator' part of the term was initially used to say "these are not proper games, they don't deserve the label game".

While I think I get what people are referring to with the term "walking simulator", I just don't like that term. It sounds like a pejorative, akin to calling first-person shooting games "murder simulators", as some detractors have in the past. Nobody calls platforming games "jumping simulators" either, as has been pointed out. I mean "walking simulator" isn't an official genre description that's used on Wikipedia for any game, or example. The act of walking certainly doesn't capture what appeals to me about these types of games.

Anyway, I consider myself open-minded when it comes to game genres. I like lots of games falling into the exploration-based or story-driven adventure categories, definitely, especially as I get a little older and my reflexes stop being as sharp as they once were. Gone Home and a lot of the games people have mentioned here, including What Remains of Edith Finch, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Dear Esther, and Firewatch come to mind. The Stanley Parable, Oxenfree, and Virginia are other examples that I enjoy. (Well some people consider Oxenfree to fall into this genre anyway.) Oh yeah, and some people consider Death Stranding to fall into this genre too obviously (which is prolly the whole real reason this thread got posted today and not some other time) and I'm definitely enjoying that game so far. They're relaxing (except Death Stranding!), emotionally evocative (at least to me anyway), and I find that they're often quite meaningful games.

Entirely depends on whether or not the game does something clever with the core concept. For example, The Stanley Parable is a walking simulator, but did something clever with it through its narrator and the way the player interacts with him, whereas something like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is nothing but walking from one glowing light to another listening to other people react to events vastly more interesting than anything the player gets to do in the game. As a result the former is great, while the latter is a failure. It's simply a matter of coming up with something new or interesting within the confines of the genre.