How logistics games helped me understand the supply chain crisis

I like games about conveyor belts. And trains.

In reality, I actually like prepare.

It’s frankly the easiest rationalization for why I’ve develop into so drawn to “logistics” games. This considerably area of interest style is all about harvesting assets, placing them on conveyor belts (or trains), and making one thing with it in a manufacturing facility or forge.

As you develop your manufacturing facility, you enhance its output by automating extra of its processes. There’s a form of unstated understanding that harvesting assets in these games is boring and so it is best to discover a technique to make the recreation do it for you. And it’s enjoyable! Relaxing even, in a I-can-simultanesouly-watch-5-seasons-of-Deep-Space-9-in-the-background form of means.

Did I point out I bought into these games in 2019? Right earlier than our international supply chain got here to a grinding halt because of a worldwide pandemic? So simply as I used to be getting extra invested in my little logistical worlds, I, together with the remainder of the world, was getting a crash course in how our precise actual world logistics system labored. And didn’t.

Playing so many logistics based mostly games was useful for understanding what was happening. In some ways, the participant development on this style is simply the historical past of human logistics. You usually begin out harvesting pure assets by hand, earlier than regularly industrializing, after which automating your manufacturing, till you could have an enormous, energy-hungry supply chain that’s on an exponential development trajectory with no indicators of slowing down.

But these games aren’t making an attempt to be a historical past lesson: They’re designed to be enjoyable — bordering on addicting. It’s frankly terribly simple to unfastened tons of of hours to one thing like Dyson Sphere Program. They’re detailed, and a kinda puzzly, however they’re not usually making an attempt to be hyper-realistic simulations.

So it was odd that the extra our actual world system of logistics faltered, the extra correct these games appeared. Not as a result of they’d all of the sudden develop into extra real looking, however slightly, as a result of our wacky world of logistics was changing into an increasing number of like a online game.

You can see what I imply in the video I made above. It’s a a fast have a look at the historical past of human logistics, a deep dive into what makes these games a pleasure to wrap your mind round, and a considerate exploration of the methods these games mirror the tragic actuality of our international logistics system. If you get pleasure from the video, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel the place you possibly can see extra of our video essays!