AI is coming to take my job, so I’d better start looking for a new one. Luckily, there are a ton of job simulators on Steam, and I’m going to play as many as I can until I find my next career. This week’s job: Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator, an early access open world game about being a park ranger.The moment I step inside Faremont National Park to begin my first day as a park ranger, I realize I may have made a mistake. I pick up a radio, I put on a uniform, but then I notice the items in my inventory and stare at them, perplexed, for a few long moments. A saw. A hammer. A screwdriver. A wrench. Um. Am I a park ranger, or a handyman?The answer is yes. My first day on the job is spent fixing broken benches, rebuilding fallen signs, and picking up trash along numerous park trails. The immediate impression I get is that visitors walk through this park punching signs and kicking park benches into splinters, then celebrate at the end of the trail by emptying bags full of trash everywhere. Within an hour of cleaning up messes I am not so much celebrating nature but despising mankind.Not everything is the fault of humans, though: Trees fall across trails and need to be chopped up, racoons knock trash cans over that need to be righted, storms damage bridges that then need to be inspected for structural damage. Most of my…
