god game

plural god games

1. video gamesA style of game in which the player observes and controls a large-scale environment, such as a city.

   Mana often grows in exponential proportion to population size, so as the population increases the player acquires vastly greater powers—a progression that god games share with spellcaster characters in role-playing games.

   2010, Ernest Adams, Fundamentals of Game Design, page 580

   1 more example

   Hassabis knew Bullfrog as one of the top game studios in Europe. Its founder, Peter Molyneux, was a big-eared, big-talking, lanky creative who did not just design games; he invented entire new genres of games, notably the “god games” in which players controlled the fates of hordes of digital characters.

   2026, Sebastian Mallaby, chapter 1, in The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence, Penguin, →ISBN