It's sometimes weird to see what academics make of videogames, coming to the medium as they do with a very different set of principles and goals than most gamers and critics. One recent paper in the Journal of Rural Studies is about a game that's a phenomenon in its own right: Farming Simulator. Specifically, Farming Simulator 22.
In the paper "Agricultural videogames and 'good farming,'" authors Simon Foureaux and Thomas Daum of the University of Gothenburg outline how they think Farming Simulator 22 encourages an overall harmful view of the farmer's job: To produce as many crops on as much land as possible using as much big machinery and fancy fertilizers as they can to keep as many people as possible fed, clothed, and cared for as cheaply as possible.
