I always thought that the Airplane Mode video game was a bit odd. You sit in your airplane seat for six hours. Your flight takes off. You’ll be served a meal. Other passengers and crew will move about the cabin. Babies might cry. Will your wifi work, and if so when will it cut out? Your flight may even delay.
But then came Plane Food Simulator where you try to eat food on a plane. You choose your meal type (you can even pick a Japanese meal!) but you have to deal with turbulence and other challenges along the way.
Now something has this totally beat. It’s the right stupid game for this stupid timeline we live in. Rawdog Simulator.
This summer ‘raw dogging’ has been the rage, because someone decided that it means sitting on a plane staring into space with nothing to do – nothing to read, no inflight entertainment – and the phrase itself sounds vaguely transgressive.
Some say this is great for you (meditation!) while others say it’s a danger to your mental health. But no matter how much people want to make this an actual trend, there haven’t been more people doing it. Sure, perhaps it happened more often starting seven years ago as American Airlines – which used to have seat back screens on most domestic planes – started taking them out. But there’s not really a new trend here.
If you don’t want to do it for real on a plane, and just want to try out the concept, here is how the game works: you board the flight, pick a seat, and then sit. And stare. For as long as you can.
The game claims to use “eye tracking” technology to ensure that you stay focused on your computer screen and aren’t cheating by diverting your gaze. When you’re done rawdogging, the game records how long you played and, if you’re one of the top rawdoggers, your results are published to a public list on the game’s website. ..[I]t would appear that the player known as “mew no last name” is the reigning champ, with a recorded 18 hours and 40 minutes of gameplay.
Maybe just play the newest Flight Simulator instead?
(HT: Paul H)