How logistics games helped me understand the supply chain crisis

My favorite games are those that involve conveyor belts. I also like trains.

The truth is, I Like a good locomotive.

It’s frankly the simplest explanation for why I’ve become so drawn to “logistics” games. This niche genre involves harvesting materials, placing them on conveyors belts or trains and creating something using it in factories or forges.

You can increase the output of your factory by automating its processes as you expand. There’s a sort of unspoken understanding that harvesting resources in these games is boring and so you should find a way to make the game do it for you. And it’s fun! Relaxing even, in a I-can-simultanesouly-watch-5-seasons-of-Deep-Space-9-in-the-background sort of way.

Have I mentioned that I joined these games in the year 2019? Just before a pandemic brought our global supply chain to a halt? Just as I began to invest more in my own little world of logistics, the entire world was learning about how the actual supply chain works. real world logistics system worked. And didn’t.

Understanding what is going on was easier after playing so many logistic-based games. This genre’s player progression is in many ways the story of human logistic. You typically start out harvesting natural resources by hand, before gradually industrializing, and then automating your production, until you have a vast, energy-hungry supply chain that’s on an exponential growth trajectory with no signs of slowing down.

But these games aren’t trying to be a history lesson: They’re designed to be fun — bordering on addicting. It’s frankly extraordinarily easy to loose hundreds of hours to something like Dyson Sphere Program. They’re detailed, and a kinda puzzly, but they’re not typically trying to be hyper-realistic simulations.

The more the logistics in our world faltered, it seemed that video games became more realistic. They weren’t more real because of a sudden increase in realism, rather because our bizarre world was more like an online game.

The video above shows what I’m talking about. It’s a a quick look at the history of human logistics, a deep dive into what makes these games a pleasure to wrap your brain around, and a thoughtful exploration of the ways these games mirror the tragic reality of our global logistics system. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see even more video essays.