We’ve all heard the question a thousand times: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” For a lot of us, that question was more stressful than inspiring. How are you supposed to know if you want to be an engineer, a city planner, or a farmer when you’ve never been one? Sure, schools offer career days and job shadowing, but those experiences barely scratch the surface. What if there were a way to actually step into these roles without taking out student loans or signing a multi-year employment contract?
Allow me to introduce you to my personal favorite games category – simulation games. More than just entertaining diversions, simulation games offer an interactive way to test-drive careers. Whether you’re managing a city’s infrastructure, designing robots in the world of tomorrow, or running a fast food empire, these games provide a window into real-world professions, no unpaid internships required.
Farming is one of the oldest professions, and when you think about it, set the stage for professions to exist in general. Thanks, farming! That said, if you think it’s all dirt and overalls, Farming Simulator will change your perspective. Behind every successful harvest is a web of logistics, machinery management, and financial planning. Players juggle everything from crop selection and livestock care to fluctuating market prices and equipment maintenance. It’s the kind of hands-on experience that could inspire a future agronomist or supply chain manager without bankrupting you through a bad bet on inputs.
For those who love efficiency and problem-solving, Satisfactory turns factory management into a thrilling exercise in industrial automation. Players design and optimize production lines, manage supply chains, and experiment with automation to maximize efficiency. While the setting may be a distant alien world, the skills developed – namely, systems thinking, logistics, and resource management – are directly applicable to careers in mechanical engineering, operations management, and manufacturing.
If you’ve ever been caught by the same red traffic light every single day and found yourself wondering who in their right mind would inflict such a thing on the civilian population, Cities: Skylines is your chance to be the problem AND the solution. Acting as an urban planner, you’re responsible for designing infrastructure, managing public services, and keeping your citizens happy while dealing with unexpected disasters. This is a crash course in civic engineering, public policy, and the delicate balancing act of city governance. For aspiring architects, civil engineers, or policymakers, it’s a low-stakes way to see if city planning is their calling.
Back in the mid-2000s, McDonald’s quietly developed an employee training tool that was equal parts fascinating and bizarre: eSMART 2.0 (part of the eCrew Development Program), a Nintendo DS game designed to teach new hires how to make Big Macs with precision. Never intended for public release, eSMART 2.0 remained an elusive piece of corporate gamification—until the internet, in its infinite curiosity, rediscovered it. Kotaku has a great breakdown of the eCDP story here.
If you want to skip the whole emulation thing, those interested in a similar fast food training experience can check out Fast Food Simulator. Much like eSMART 2.0, it turns restaurant operations into a game, challenging players to juggle order fulfillment, customer service, and kitchen efficiency under pressure. Beyond the fun, it highlights the logistics and management challenges that keep fast food chains running smoothly, offering a surprisingly insightful look into the mechanics behind your favorite drive-thru.
Ever wonder what happens to your recyclables after they leave the bin? Recycling Center Simulator puts players in charge of sorting, processing, and managing waste streams, offering a practical look at how recycling actually works. This one hits especially close to home for us – Salvage Safari, our own recycling simulation in Robot World on Roblox, tackles similar challenges in a game-based environment. For players interested in environmental science, sustainability consulting, or municipal waste management, these games provide a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most important (and often overlooked) industries.
If you’ve ever dreamed of building the next Boston Dynamics-level robot, RoboCo (another digital robotics offering from Filament Games) offers a playful entry point into robot engineering. Players design and program robots to complete tasks, gaining an intuitive understanding of mechanics, automation, and problem-solving along the way. With careers in robotics, AI, and automation on the rise, games like RoboCo provide a surprisingly deep foundation for future engineers and designers.
Play Your Way to a Career
Exploring career options doesn’t have to mean sitting through dry aptitude tests or generic career fairs. Simulation games provide a dynamic, interactive way to step into different professions, develop industry-specific skills, and maybe even discover a passion you never knew you had. Whether you’re managing supply chains in Satisfactory, optimizing city infrastructure in Cities: Skylines, or building the robots of tomorrow in RoboCo, these games are career exploration tools in disguise.
Have an idea for a career simulator of your own? We can help with that – contact us about our game-based learning development services.