T w e n t y S i d e d

One interesting controversy about this game was that apparently some people were upset over the name. They saw “Surgeon Simulator 2013″ and expected it to be, you know, a simulation. It’s like calling the 80’s classic Rampage, “Sim City”. The game began as a goof – a flash based web game where the name of the game was part of the joke. But when you’re looking at a game in the context of a store, your assumptions change and a lot of people don’t expect the titale of a game to be ironic, hyperbolic, or absurdist.

It wasn’t a big controversy or anything. It was more like a few unhappy comments. But I thought the confusion as a result of a change in context was interesting.

Back in the very early 90’s I did play a real surgeon simulation. I don’t remember the name, but I do remember it was HARD. Your first surgery is an appendectomy, and the game expected you to be able to locate and extract the appendix without carving up the patient like a Christmas ham. I failed on my first three tries because I was just a few inches off, and after cutting and fiddling around for a long time I’d finally get in there and find out I didn’t have the right angle to extract the appendix. (Cutting a second incision would immediately end the operation with a message that another doctor was taking over.)

So now we have two games that feature point-and-click surgery. That makes it a genre!

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.