Would you say your dog is... hyperrealistic?

Just the concept of "walking simulators" made me think of when all these pedometer based toys became popular (Pokemon Pikachu, various Digivices, that other pokeball thing...) and they were supposed to be products that stood for healthy habbits... but then people "simulated walking" the same way they "simulated sex", jerking those things off to make the counters go up.

As is the case with all genre labels, I think there are various interpretations of what a 'walking simulator' is. It seems obvious that the origins of the term were derogatory in nature, but since it is now being used pretty commonly in the gaming world lexicon to describe certain characteristics of games it is starting to lose the outright negative connotation. In my own mind, currently when I see the term 'walking simulator', I take it to mean:

* First-person perspective
* Less emphasis on fighting, killing
* More emphasis on exploration, discovery, adventure, story/narrative

As you can see, this leaves the label open to encompass quite a number of games. For me, I actually prefer the term 'first-person adventure' (FPA), and I feel it captures the same essence of how people are currently using 'walking simulator' but in a more descriptive way and with less obfuscated derision. The great Sierra text adventures and the LucasArts Point & Clicks, if told from a first-person perspective, would all be FPA or 'walking simulators' in my view.

I have not explored this genre very thoroughly as I am pretty new to the modern-day PC gaming scene, but there are many games in my growing collection which I'm looking forward to trying which I think fit this FPA mold. Currently I am playing Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and I feel this game could be classified as an FPA or 'walking simulator' depending on how one chooses to play the game.

They still have this derogatory tone, the same as the term "dating simulators", which is used by elitist RPG players to describe Bioware's newer games.

Yeah she's the playable character in The Path: Prologue as well (assuming the tech demo is a different demo).

If it's just the demo where the only thing you can do is wander around and collect stars, we're talking about the same thing. I call it the "tech demo" because as beutiful as it is, it's still quite boring when compared to the game, and the devs created it mostly so that people could see if their computer could run the game.
Err, "dating sims" mostly refers to the japanese "seduce a girl/boy" games, often with rpg elements. Don't know if it's a derogatory name or an actual genre when used in that context, since some devs use that term to describe their game (When it's used about bioware games, or about visual novels, it's certainly intended as an insult, on that I agree)

Nicely said. Not sure if I agree 100% to that definition (it includes puzzle games like myst, that have been in existence for quite some time), but it still starts to define a "game family"

And it includes many games I feel interested in. Recently, I've taken a liking to games that resolve around other things than combat and problem solving, that would probably fall into the "genre" you describe. Although all of them are not first person.