It's a simulation game.
A game genre that takes most of its important elements from real world experiences and recreating it upon a personal computer within boundaries of 'game play'. The fun factor for this particular genre is in providing people with second-hand experience of a intense real-life event, occupation, or machinery which is usually too dangerous for people to enjoy first-hand. In effect, take the real life intensity and competiton, and excitement and leave behind the dangers of it.
Thus, the main criteria/agenda for a "simulation game" genre is "reality", or rather, "recreation and rearrangement of realities". Therefore, how the producers wish to recreate and rearrange the realities into a certain form greatly effects this genre, but usually they do it in the form of 'as realistic as possible'.
The main reason to why a producer would not choose to EXACTLY recreate reality is usually from technical/mechanical limits. Another reason is gameplay. But usually when realism and gameplay happen to oppose each other, the priority goes to realism. This is because the characteristics of this genre derives directly from the concept of simulated realism. It is a hard and delicate balance to maintain for most producers.
