If you know anything at all about people, you know that games cut to the very heart of who we are, and car games, played online or played at arcades or on home players, are absolutely no different. Not just zoologists but anyone who spends any time at all watching “Animal Planet” knows that nearly all higher mammals play. Certainly all pet owners know that their dogs and cats play hunting games. Just as cats practice what they’d like to do without risk by pretending to hunt each other, we practice what we would like — but often cannot — do in the driving realm without potential harm when we play car games.
For example, we might not be able to afford to drive a Mercedes, we might not even be able to afford Mercedes parts, we might not even be able to afford the gas to drive over to the Mercedes dealership. In a great online car game, however, we can pretend we’re driving, and driving recklessly, the highest of high end vehicles, say a $500,000 SLR McClaren and then crash it. Are we horrified to see massively expensive Mercedes parts, some of which probably cost more by themselves than the car we’re currently driving, flying all over the road? Not at all. In fact, we’re probably laughing at our mistake.
The fun of most fantasy games is that they are a way of exposing ourselves to danger while actually being 100% safe, and car games are no different. Even a very minor fender bender could easily ruin our whole week, in real life. It would surely cost us a large amount of cash. which perhaps we can’t really afford, and there is always some guilt. A very bad accident on the highway could be extremely serious indeed, obviously, and cost us a great deal more than large sums of money. However, at worst, being in a gaming car accident so bad that Mercedes parts, even SLR McClaren parts, or even human actual parts, are splayed across the Autobahn is, at worst, a minor blow to our egos as our buddies laugh at our egregious automotive mishap. Car games, like so many other games, allow us to find fun from events which would, in real life, be the exact opposite of fun.