Building SimCity: How to put the world in a machine(mitpress.mit.edu)
mitpress.mit.edu
Building SimCity: How to put the world in a machine
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262547482/building-simcity/
170 comments
Hi! I wrote this book. Ask me anything. I also was a designer on Spore. I'm also trying to feed my 8 month old lunch and he is very excited to asn``wer anything too.
I want to bump a few things that folks linked to below:
[1] Will Wright (designer of SimCity) will be interviewing me about the book on July 19th at 2PM ET. We thought it would be fun to turn the tables and have him interview someone else for a change. On Twitch, free, online, and live. Hosted by ROMchip. RSVP here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehis...
[2] Stewart Brand wrote a brief review on X I'm still in disbelief over ("It is one of the best origin stories ever told and the best account I've seen of how innovation actually occurs in computerdom."). Read more here: https://twitter.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003
[1] Will Wright (designer of SimCity) will be interviewing me about the book on July 19th at 2PM ET. We thought it would be fun to turn the tables and have him interview someone else for a change. On Twitch, free, online, and live. Hosted by ROMchip. RSVP here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehis...
[2] Stewart Brand wrote a brief review on X I'm still in disbelief over ("It is one of the best origin stories ever told and the best account I've seen of how innovation actually occurs in computerdom."). Read more here: https://twitter.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003
Have you ever read 'Sim Cities and Sim Crises'?
https://molleindustria.org/GamesForCities/
https://molleindustria.org/GamesForCities/
Very interesting, but please try to read it on a mobile device to understand how hard this is, would strongly recommend to let someone look over it and apply a more mobile friendly design.
For what it's worth, this page works great in the mobile Chrome reader view.
Yes, it's great!
Will the interview be available on any other platforms, after the fact? I'd love to watch the interview, but I am not sure I'll be able to catch it live, and Twitch is not my favourite platform for watching livestream recordings.
Should be! ROMchip posts recordings on their YouTube channel afterwards:
https://www.youtube.com/@ROMchipJournal
Congrats about Stewart Brand, that’s a ringing endorsement. Can’t wait to read the book.
Stewart Brand's twitter review was reason I went out and bought the book right away. So far it's an excellent read!
Hi Chaim! I really enjoyed working with you on Spore. What have you been up to in the intervening years besides writing this book?
Hi Ryan!! I got a PhD, did some indie game stuff, made some babies (with some help, mainly from my wife), design consulting. You can see more of my projects here: https://chaim.io, like some tangible/mixed reality computing (done while I was working at a research lab with Bret Victor), and Earth: A Primer, a science book made of simulation toys.
> ... working at a research lab with Bret Victor), and Earth: A Primer, a science book made of simulation toys.
For the folks reading this, I just wanted to point out that Earth: A Primer is one of the coolest sets of explorable explanations ever made:
https://www.earthprimer.com/
Thanks for making all this cool stuff! :-)
For the folks reading this, I just wanted to point out that Earth: A Primer is one of the coolest sets of explorable explanations ever made:
https://www.earthprimer.com/
Thanks for making all this cool stuff! :-)
I do love the Earth Primer.
The Earth is our Mother, so we shouldn't treat her like Dirt! ;)
The Earth is our Mother, so we shouldn't treat her like Dirt! ;)
Ryan!! Now you’re getting tagged. Long time. I saw Ted and Rebecca a couple weeks ago. If you’re that Ryan I.
Cool!
Possibly off topic, but: what did you work on for Spore? Was it around the time of the now (in?)famous E3 demo in ~2006, or closer to the final release? The final game seemed to differ significantly from what many of us were hoping for, and I never really heard much of a story of what happened in between.
Possibly off topic, but: what did you work on for Spore? Was it around the time of the now (in?)famous E3 demo in ~2006, or closer to the final release? The final game seemed to differ significantly from what many of us were hoping for, and I never really heard much of a story of what happened in between.
The main thing I did was design the Editors (like the Creature Creator), but I initially joined as an intern in 2001 and did some really fun divergent prototypes for Will Wright while the project was in a nascent state, and a bunch of other stuff during development.
There's a whole book to be written about Spore (but I'm done writing books for now), but the simple answer is that the difference between "hoping for" and "final" product encompasses a lot of what makes software and game development (or really any creative project for that matter) interesting. Especially when multiple people are involved. And that is part of what sparked this project, which took over a decade to research and write.
(Also, many years ago I wrote a chapter for another MIT Press book about some early Spore history. It's reproduced on this deprecated blog: http://www.levitylab.com/blog/2011/02/brief-history-of-spore...)
There's a whole book to be written about Spore (but I'm done writing books for now), but the simple answer is that the difference between "hoping for" and "final" product encompasses a lot of what makes software and game development (or really any creative project for that matter) interesting. Especially when multiple people are involved. And that is part of what sparked this project, which took over a decade to research and write.
(Also, many years ago I wrote a chapter for another MIT Press book about some early Spore history. It's reproduced on this deprecated blog: http://www.levitylab.com/blog/2011/02/brief-history-of-spore...)
Thanks. I should add that I did enjoy the final game very much; it was just quite different to what was demoed.
I’ll probably be buying your book!
I’ll probably be buying your book!
Thank you!
Not to be defensive, but I want to say more about this because I think it's a fascinating subject with Spore in particular and games, software, and technology generally. My take is that Will Wright had a very exciting vision but visions are just that: not real. They are inherently nebulous and everyone on the team (and many many people beyond it) had their own idea on what Spore would be or turn into. We converged on something and negotiated with one another and many constraints, social and technical, and arrived at something. It didn't help that part of the game's marketing appeal was a bit Rorschach-y in the first place and capitalized on the exciting but vague promise of Will Wright (Sim-) + Universe (-Everything).
Not to be defensive, but I want to say more about this because I think it's a fascinating subject with Spore in particular and games, software, and technology generally. My take is that Will Wright had a very exciting vision but visions are just that: not real. They are inherently nebulous and everyone on the team (and many many people beyond it) had their own idea on what Spore would be or turn into. We converged on something and negotiated with one another and many constraints, social and technical, and arrived at something. It didn't help that part of the game's marketing appeal was a bit Rorschach-y in the first place and capitalized on the exciting but vague promise of Will Wright (Sim-) + Universe (-Everything).
Thank you for the mental picture you trying to tap out a message offending off a very interested child :-)
Man I loved Spore! There's so much potential in those mechanics. A modern remake with mod ability would be amazing! Perhaps that ship is sailed but one can imagine.
Man I loved Spore! There's so much potential in those mechanics. A modern remake with mod ability would be amazing! Perhaps that ship is sailed but one can imagine.
You're welcome, and thank you!
I agree! There's a lot of talented people out there. Hopefully someone will make something like that one day.
I agree! There's a lot of talented people out there. Hopefully someone will make something like that one day.
The Spore team invented the term "TTP" (and Chaim made the tools to optimize Spore's TTP so much it was negative), which was referenced several times in the hilarious series that parodies a game development company, "Mythic Quest":
Mythic Quest - TTP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_xqyIMwbew
NSFW YouTube Search:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=spore+penis+mon...
Overheard@GDC09: TTP = Time To Penis:
https://www.engadget.com/2009-03-24-overheard-gdc09-ttp-time...
(305) Margaret Robertson: SPORE's Wake: What Seriously Happened? TTP @ 38:00:
https://gdcvault.com/play/1317/(305)-SPORE-s-Wake-What
Know Your Meme: TTP:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/time-to-penis-ttp
About
Time to Penis, abbreviated to TTP, is a video game development metric and slang term for the time it takes players to generate a penis-shaped object via any available means. Coined by the Spore development team and popularized by a GDC 2009 panel, the term has been an inspiration for humorous posts online since.
Origin
During the development of the 2008 simulation real-time strategy video game Spore, developers working at Maxis came up with a metric to measure the amount of time in which a player was able to create a penis using in-game tools (excerpt seen below).[1]
>Mitch Zamara, 28 January 2011 at 00:01 | Permalink
>Fun little anecdote that came to mind when seeing the title image for this blog post:
>A friend of mine who worked at EA/Maxis told me of a coined term over there when working on spore:
>Time to Penis, or TTP for short. This basically is the amount of time it takes from release of your product before a player is able to create and distribute a representation of a penis inside your game/ editor:
>Clearly in games like Spore/LBP this time is nearly instant. I guess the rule is.. if you can give them something to build with, its only a matter of time until they li make a dick with it.
The first public mention of the metric occurred during the "Spore's Wake: What Seriously Happened?" at Game Developers Conference 2009. Participants of the panel defined the metric as the amount of time it will take children to make something rude out of a set of tools they've been given. On March 24th, 2009, the day when the panel took place, video game developer Evan Berman[2] and Engadget[3] contributor Kevin Kelly made the earliest public posts about the metric (shown below, left and right).
>Evan Berman @Scapes
>New acronym: TTP, "time to penis", a metric of the time it takes for a penis to be made as user-created content (from #GDC Spore talk).
>2:05 PM - Mar 24, 2009 • Twitter Web Client
>During the "Spore's Wake: What Seriously Happened?" panel at GDC, we learned a fantastic new meme that we have to share with you. "Time To Penis" (or just "TTP" in the streetz) is defined as the amount of time it will take children to make something rude out of a set of tools they've been given --typically, that object is a penis. Apparently, TTP can be measured down to the near-second. In Spore's case, TTP was actually a negative factor since "children" were making penis monsters before the Creature Creator was even officially released!
Mythic Quest - TTP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_xqyIMwbew
NSFW YouTube Search:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=spore+penis+mon...
Overheard@GDC09: TTP = Time To Penis:
https://www.engadget.com/2009-03-24-overheard-gdc09-ttp-time...
(305) Margaret Robertson: SPORE's Wake: What Seriously Happened? TTP @ 38:00:
https://gdcvault.com/play/1317/(305)-SPORE-s-Wake-What
Know Your Meme: TTP:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/time-to-penis-ttp
About
Time to Penis, abbreviated to TTP, is a video game development metric and slang term for the time it takes players to generate a penis-shaped object via any available means. Coined by the Spore development team and popularized by a GDC 2009 panel, the term has been an inspiration for humorous posts online since.
Origin
During the development of the 2008 simulation real-time strategy video game Spore, developers working at Maxis came up with a metric to measure the amount of time in which a player was able to create a penis using in-game tools (excerpt seen below).[1]
>Mitch Zamara, 28 January 2011 at 00:01 | Permalink
>Fun little anecdote that came to mind when seeing the title image for this blog post:
>A friend of mine who worked at EA/Maxis told me of a coined term over there when working on spore:
>Time to Penis, or TTP for short. This basically is the amount of time it takes from release of your product before a player is able to create and distribute a representation of a penis inside your game/ editor:
>Clearly in games like Spore/LBP this time is nearly instant. I guess the rule is.. if you can give them something to build with, its only a matter of time until they li make a dick with it.
The first public mention of the metric occurred during the "Spore's Wake: What Seriously Happened?" at Game Developers Conference 2009. Participants of the panel defined the metric as the amount of time it will take children to make something rude out of a set of tools they've been given. On March 24th, 2009, the day when the panel took place, video game developer Evan Berman[2] and Engadget[3] contributor Kevin Kelly made the earliest public posts about the metric (shown below, left and right).
>Evan Berman @Scapes
>New acronym: TTP, "time to penis", a metric of the time it takes for a penis to be made as user-created content (from #GDC Spore talk).
>2:05 PM - Mar 24, 2009 • Twitter Web Client
>During the "Spore's Wake: What Seriously Happened?" panel at GDC, we learned a fantastic new meme that we have to share with you. "Time To Penis" (or just "TTP" in the streetz) is defined as the amount of time it will take children to make something rude out of a set of tools they've been given --typically, that object is a penis. Apparently, TTP can be measured down to the near-second. In Spore's case, TTP was actually a negative factor since "children" were making penis monsters before the Creature Creator was even officially released!
Don't you think the granularity of factorio is what brought its success? Don't you think it would be interesting the mix the sims and sim city for more granularity in the game?
That’s a fascinating idea! One of the surprising things I learned while researching this book was that Maxis was actually trying to do that at one point, and in fact more. They had an initiative called SimWorld that would allow all their sim games to link together and even be open to third party development. This very ambitious OS-like architecture meant that The Sims really was seen as zooming into SimCity, and in fact early prototypes of what became The Sims let you do just that. And SimCopter did let you open SC2k save files and fly through them. While SimWorld didn’t take off it seems that without it we wouldn’t have The Sims, which introduced an innovative object-oriented architecture that underwrote its cutting-edge AI, UI, and business model (modular expansion packs).
Some fun primary sources:
[1] Will Wright interview for SimCity 2000 CDROM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcgV4YolDkg
[2] Game Developer magazine piece on SimWorld and early The Sims: https://ubm-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archi... (An old Game Developer magazine piece)
[3] Will Wright shows a very early The Sims demo at Terry Winograd’s Stanford seminar: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
Some fun primary sources:
[1] Will Wright interview for SimCity 2000 CDROM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcgV4YolDkg
[2] Game Developer magazine piece on SimWorld and early The Sims: https://ubm-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archi... (An old Game Developer magazine piece)
[3] Will Wright shows a very early The Sims demo at Terry Winograd’s Stanford seminar: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
I would require faster computer, and also a simplified game design.
It's doable more than before.
I got many ideas how to do it, don't hesitate to hire me as a game designer :D
It's doable more than before.
I got many ideas how to do it, don't hesitate to hire me as a game designer :D
You do so much cool stuff in life. Much Kudos to you. And you have taken an unusual career path in your life for a smart person.
Are you content with the uncertainty, and not having a conventional, safe job?
Are you content with the uncertainty, and not having a conventional, safe job?
Thank you. Hmm, a big existential question and I haven't had any coffee yet. There is certainly anxiety in the uncertainty. (Was spending over ten years researching and writing this book––intermixed with other things--a good use of time?) But I think I'd be unhappy with something safe. It's an ongoing surprise to me that my career continues to work, but I do occasionally wonder if this is a wise course. My parallel counterfactual selves are doing really different things, but I think I like the real one more. (Though they probably feel the same way.)
Thank you for answering honestly and directly.
I ask this question because I also found myself to be unfit for 40 hours a week regular tech job. And, in India, practically they are 60 to 70 hours a week.
And yet, I cannot seem to find any creative energy if I am not engaged in something safe. So, currently I am thinking about jobs outside tech, with better work-life balance, and continue programming as a hobby.
And the pastures are much greener in the US than in India. Qualitatively and quantitatively, more opportunities exist. And the culture is much better. So, someone in your position can find something safe if this life doesn't suit you anymore.
I can't take any more of 10-hour days, office politics, abuse, MBA bosses, etc. But I love programming.
I have a Master's in CS, I am also considering academia.
Anyway, thanks for your input.
I ask this question because I also found myself to be unfit for 40 hours a week regular tech job. And, in India, practically they are 60 to 70 hours a week.
And yet, I cannot seem to find any creative energy if I am not engaged in something safe. So, currently I am thinking about jobs outside tech, with better work-life balance, and continue programming as a hobby.
And the pastures are much greener in the US than in India. Qualitatively and quantitatively, more opportunities exist. And the culture is much better. So, someone in your position can find something safe if this life doesn't suit you anymore.
I can't take any more of 10-hour days, office politics, abuse, MBA bosses, etc. But I love programming.
I have a Master's in CS, I am also considering academia.
Anyway, thanks for your input.
Your lunch is 8 months old?
LOL. This must be the reason the Chicago Manual of Style indicates hyphens here. And it must also be the reason an MIT Press copyeditor reviewed the whole manuscript very carefully. (Which then triggered some legalistic arguments from me citing chapter and verse of said stye manual.)
For about five minutes I was trying to figure out why you were feeding your lunch. Some sort of creature perhaps? Then I realized you probably meant 8-month-old, as in baby...
> feed my 8 month old lunch and he is very excited to asn``wer anything too.
Looks like you're having a hard time keeping him away from the keyboard, too, I can relate :)
Looks like you're having a hard time keeping him away from the keyboard, too, I can relate :)
If you had access to the compute power that open ai has, what would you make?
Definitely not a videogame. I wouldn't want the responsibility of allocating that quantity of energy and resources. I think ChatGPT and its brethren are fascinating, amazing, and useful, but your question makes me think probably nobody should have that compute power. Maybe it's hubris to think one could responsibly use it. (Now I feel uncool for failing to have fun with your question.)
From "Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update)":
https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
>There are several tightly coupled parts of a simulation game that must be designed closely together: the simulation model, the game play, the user interface, and the user’s model.
>In order for a game to be realizable, all of those different parts must be tractable. There are games that might have a great user interface, be fun to play, easy to understand, but involve processes that are currently impossible to simulate on a computer.
>There are also games that are possible to simulate, fun to play, easy to understand, but that don’t afford a useable interface: Will has designed a great game called “Sim Thunder Storm”, but he hasn’t been able to think of a user interface that would make any sense.
He also wanted to do SimTapeWorm, but just could not talk the marketing department into that. And I imagine the user interface would be quite slippery.
https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
>There are several tightly coupled parts of a simulation game that must be designed closely together: the simulation model, the game play, the user interface, and the user’s model.
>In order for a game to be realizable, all of those different parts must be tractable. There are games that might have a great user interface, be fun to play, easy to understand, but involve processes that are currently impossible to simulate on a computer.
>There are also games that are possible to simulate, fun to play, easy to understand, but that don’t afford a useable interface: Will has designed a great game called “Sim Thunder Storm”, but he hasn’t been able to think of a user interface that would make any sense.
He also wanted to do SimTapeWorm, but just could not talk the marketing department into that. And I imagine the user interface would be quite slippery.
What about climate/weather models?
Aren't those simulations run on clusters of similar size (or atleast within an order of magnitude) and an agreeably responsible use of computational resources?
Aren't those simulations run on clusters of similar size (or atleast within an order of magnitude) and an agreeably responsible use of computational resources?
Feels like there should be an xkcd about this. I asked Claude to write one, but it wasn't very funny. Actually, Claude agrees with you that the energy used for training AIs is mere pocket change compared to climate simulations. (Can I trust Claude? Seems far from disinterested.)
What’s better, the puréed peas or carrots? That’s either to the infant eating it, or the parent who ultimately deals with it later on.
Is the ebook (on Penguin Random House) DRM-free? Are you planning an audiobook version?
I haven’t read the book, but in TFA it’s described as a “lavishly visual book” so I’m not sure it would translate well to audio.
Good luck with the baby and congrats for the book. <3
Thank you!!! (He really did make that typo and REALLY wanted to be inside my laptop screen and tap the keys just like me and was being super aggressive.)
[deleted]
I linked elsewhere Will talking about the procedural generation. But now we have The Power of Generative AI. Those editors you've built could sure be way different, just doodle your monster and watch it come alive. 'etc.
I would like to make Spore meets Second Life Powered by AI. Also Space Exploration games really took off in the years since Spore..
This is fertile ground there are so many directions to take it with modern hardware and the recent advancments. Time for another kick at the cat I say. Wanna apply to YC together? :)
I'm not even kidding, I gots ideas. Also randoms reading this if you're picking up what I'm laying down. But to get on the team first you have to buy and read his book.
P.S. - Somebody recently called me about how a Burger King Advertisement doxxed them. In the middle of the commercial it knew their name and IP address and zoomed unto their house with custom comical narration about which burger they like.
One day a Simulation of Everything Game with a little trickery could plausibly stun the player by suddenly showing them a little cartoonish version of themselves playing it in their own room.
I'm just sayin'.
I would like to make Spore meets Second Life Powered by AI. Also Space Exploration games really took off in the years since Spore..
This is fertile ground there are so many directions to take it with modern hardware and the recent advancments. Time for another kick at the cat I say. Wanna apply to YC together? :)
I'm not even kidding, I gots ideas. Also randoms reading this if you're picking up what I'm laying down. But to get on the team first you have to buy and read his book.
P.S. - Somebody recently called me about how a Burger King Advertisement doxxed them. In the middle of the commercial it knew their name and IP address and zoomed unto their house with custom comical narration about which burger they like.
One day a Simulation of Everything Game with a little trickery could plausibly stun the player by suddenly showing them a little cartoonish version of themselves playing it in their own room.
I'm just sayin'.
LOL. Thanks!
I think a lot of videogaming ideas took off after Spore that were very likely influenced by it. Shades of Jodorowsky's Dune? (But I think Spore was actually more successful than many give it credit for, which has been pointed out to me many times. 191m+ creations and counting on Sporepedia.)
Generative AI certainly opens up new possibilities! It's analogous to GPUs (enabled real-time 3D) which opened new possibilities and audiences for videogames. I also think that the fundamental magic of creative tools doesn't actually need fancy tech at all.
I think a lot of videogaming ideas took off after Spore that were very likely influenced by it. Shades of Jodorowsky's Dune? (But I think Spore was actually more successful than many give it credit for, which has been pointed out to me many times. 191m+ creations and counting on Sporepedia.)
Generative AI certainly opens up new possibilities! It's analogous to GPUs (enabled real-time 3D) which opened new possibilities and audiences for videogames. I also think that the fundamental magic of creative tools doesn't actually need fancy tech at all.
Jodorowsky's Dune is perfectly apt actually.
I think you were the right people with the right vision but very early and we all simply fell into the darkest timeline because what should have been hasn't happened.
If you think about it this sort of your responsibility to save the universe by embarking on this quest with me and righting a cosmic wrong. Otherwise another Covid might happen.
Also VCs have moneybags for you we got all the buzzwords neatly lined up. Come Mr. Gingold, you cannot resist this potent of a reality distortion field from an internet stranger. Or dare I say... internet friend? ;)
I think you were the right people with the right vision but very early and we all simply fell into the darkest timeline because what should have been hasn't happened.
If you think about it this sort of your responsibility to save the universe by embarking on this quest with me and righting a cosmic wrong. Otherwise another Covid might happen.
Also VCs have moneybags for you we got all the buzzwords neatly lined up. Come Mr. Gingold, you cannot resist this potent of a reality distortion field from an internet stranger. Or dare I say... internet friend? ;)
I definitely feel like I've made a new internet friend. :D
Besties with testiees.
I'll drop you a line sometimes later this year. Enjoy the baby good buddy!
I'll drop you a line sometimes later this year. Enjoy the baby good buddy!
hellodang_(1)
There’s something of a contradiction here, and maybe it’s worth exploring. Or maybe not; I leave the decision to you.
Sim City isn’t a simulation. It’s a game. The reason it was commercially successful is because it was fun.
This is explicitly a different goal from creating a simulator. A simulator can be fun to certain groups of people, but it’s not designed to be fun to large groups of people. Games are.
So here’s the rub. When people draw a correlation between sim city and reality, are they saying that the way to make a simulation of reality is to make a fun game? Because sim city was designed to be a fun game first and foremost, not a simulator.
Can’t it be both? Well, sure. Lots of things are. But when you’re saying that you’re putting the world in a machine, it becomes a different discussion. Is the best way to put the world in a machine to make it fun? That doesn’t seem too plausible, even if the result is fun for some people. So both the title and the descriptions of world building (as in, the world we live in, not a fantasy world) seem off the mark.
I genuinely don’t know if it’s worth pointing this out. But then I read the description, and again, they’re saying very clearly that this book is comparing simulation of reality to a commercially successful game that was designed with a different goal in mind. Is this just coincidence?
Sim City isn’t a simulation. It’s a game. The reason it was commercially successful is because it was fun.
This is explicitly a different goal from creating a simulator. A simulator can be fun to certain groups of people, but it’s not designed to be fun to large groups of people. Games are.
So here’s the rub. When people draw a correlation between sim city and reality, are they saying that the way to make a simulation of reality is to make a fun game? Because sim city was designed to be a fun game first and foremost, not a simulator.
Can’t it be both? Well, sure. Lots of things are. But when you’re saying that you’re putting the world in a machine, it becomes a different discussion. Is the best way to put the world in a machine to make it fun? That doesn’t seem too plausible, even if the result is fun for some people. So both the title and the descriptions of world building (as in, the world we live in, not a fantasy world) seem off the mark.
I genuinely don’t know if it’s worth pointing this out. But then I read the description, and again, they’re saying very clearly that this book is comparing simulation of reality to a commercially successful game that was designed with a different goal in mind. Is this just coincidence?
Simulations and models, regardless of whether they're designed for fun or for realism, can still teach you plenty of things about the real world; sometimes not from the simulation itself but explicitly by its omissions. The fact that SimCity famously removed all the parking lots tells you something interesting right away. The fact that City Skylines bites the bullet of traffic and renders it in fairly sophisticated detail -- to the degree that the game often devolves into "Traffic Management Simulator" instead of "City Builder Simulator" -- is another such interesting lesson.
But in terms of "how directly transferable are lessons learned directly from the model" is always going to depend on the model's assumptions.
Fun fact -- have you ever heard of the "Monocentric city model?" It comes up in a lot of econ papers, and a lot of urban economics, and therefore a lot of real world policy is based on it.
The "Monocentric city model" is about as simplistic as it gets -- it models the city as a LINE. IE, you have a bunch of agents, and they live some distance from the city, and they have different travel/commuting costs proportional to their distance from the city center; let's run that and see what kinds of consequences fall out of it.
Turns out it's actually a pretty good model and generates outcomes that are pretty analogous to what we see in the real world! Is it perfectly representative of the real world? Of course, not, it models the city as a friggin line. But if we're talking about sheer complexity alone, SimCity is already orders of magnitude more complex than this famous economic model. But that in and of itself doesn't mean that a successful SimCity city would make for a successful real world city, because it's not just about sheer complexity, it's about the appropriateness of the assumptions.
But in terms of "how directly transferable are lessons learned directly from the model" is always going to depend on the model's assumptions.
Fun fact -- have you ever heard of the "Monocentric city model?" It comes up in a lot of econ papers, and a lot of urban economics, and therefore a lot of real world policy is based on it.
The "Monocentric city model" is about as simplistic as it gets -- it models the city as a LINE. IE, you have a bunch of agents, and they live some distance from the city, and they have different travel/commuting costs proportional to their distance from the city center; let's run that and see what kinds of consequences fall out of it.
Turns out it's actually a pretty good model and generates outcomes that are pretty analogous to what we see in the real world! Is it perfectly representative of the real world? Of course, not, it models the city as a friggin line. But if we're talking about sheer complexity alone, SimCity is already orders of magnitude more complex than this famous economic model. But that in and of itself doesn't mean that a successful SimCity city would make for a successful real world city, because it's not just about sheer complexity, it's about the appropriateness of the assumptions.
Based on your capitalization of “LINE”, you might also know this, but “THE LINE” is a real world example of a (proposed) linear city project in Saudi Arabia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia
I am aware! Though I have reason to believe this very literal approach will work out less well in real life than in simulation :)
With some serendipity, I learned about Neom yesterday while surfing YouTube. It doesn't seem to be going well. (Warning: video 25mins long) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e40Ju-zNyXk
And back into fiction, Snowpiercer is a movie about a linear city on a train.
This is fascinating! (All simulation requires abstraction.)
You’re the author of the book, right? I’d love to chat with you sometime about your work on this and more — care to email me at [email protected]?
Didn't Cities Skylines come out of a previous project by the same developer, a transport simulator called Cities in Motion? It's no wonder it has a heavy focus on transport management.
The original SimCity franchise did an amazing job of combining both simulation and game, but later iterations (past SimCity 4) ditched any pretense of being a simulation and went full on-game. That shift quickly tanked a previously sterling franchise, which I think shows the significance of the simulation angle.
Cities Skylines eventually filled in that gap and if you look at the dedicated community around those games you'll see a heavy emphasis on simulation and very little focus on making it a more fun game. Interest is somewhat split between modeling aesthetics and modeling transit. I think the greatest interest is in modeling societies and economies, but few games seem to make that work except on small scales. There's an old game called City Life that did an commendable job modelling social classes. The early Tropico games had a very engaging economic system. I can't think of any modern games that have impressed me like those, but I would love suggestions.
Cities Skylines eventually filled in that gap and if you look at the dedicated community around those games you'll see a heavy emphasis on simulation and very little focus on making it a more fun game. Interest is somewhat split between modeling aesthetics and modeling transit. I think the greatest interest is in modeling societies and economies, but few games seem to make that work except on small scales. There's an old game called City Life that did an commendable job modelling social classes. The early Tropico games had a very engaging economic system. I can't think of any modern games that have impressed me like those, but I would love suggestions.
> Cities Skylines eventually filled in that gap and if you look at the dedicated community around those games you'll see a heavy emphasis on simulation and very little focus on making it a more fun game.
Nowhere near. If Cities Skylines was a truly accurate simulation:
1. It would be nigh-impossible to bulldoze private property. Every road, once built, would become essentially permanent.
2. Every city would be perpetually cash-strapped, with tax income insufficient to cover the maintenance costs on the infrastructure.
3. If you either raise taxes or reduce spending you would get thrown out of office at the next election.
Thankfully, the creators realised that making it fun was more important than making it accurate.
Nowhere near. If Cities Skylines was a truly accurate simulation:
1. It would be nigh-impossible to bulldoze private property. Every road, once built, would become essentially permanent.
2. Every city would be perpetually cash-strapped, with tax income insufficient to cover the maintenance costs on the infrastructure.
3. If you either raise taxes or reduce spending you would get thrown out of office at the next election.
Thankfully, the creators realised that making it fun was more important than making it accurate.
Those objections are differences to the cities we live in, but not impossible.
China builds cities without regard for 1 and 3, and partially 2.
Also, you don't have to consider changing the city part of the simulation. It may just be switching from one test model to another.
China builds cities without regard for 1 and 3, and partially 2.
Also, you don't have to consider changing the city part of the simulation. It may just be switching from one test model to another.
I would also like to know any economic type simulator recommendations.
My list would probably include: Capitalism and Capitalism 2. I also put a lot of time into Civ1, the original X-Com and Theme Hospital. Not really simulators, but they all had interesting economic models.
My list would probably include: Capitalism and Capitalism 2. I also put a lot of time into Civ1, the original X-Com and Theme Hospital. Not really simulators, but they all had interesting economic models.
Famously they had to make cars pocketable so that parking wouldn't make car dependent cities as ugly as they are
I’m not sure I’m following the distinction you’re trying to draw. SimCity is a simulation — just a simplistic one with many simplifications and short cuts.
It’s a toy model.
There’s always simplifications made in any model — SimCity’s happened to be made with “fun” in mind.
It’s a toy model.
There’s always simplifications made in any model — SimCity’s happened to be made with “fun” in mind.
The point is SimCity is no more a simulation than Monopoly is.
The rules of both are explicitly set up to be fun not a simplification of some model.
The rules of both are explicitly set up to be fun not a simplification of some model.
I’m not convinced anyone described monopoly as fun
It's mostly that the rules are propagated by hearsay from 10 yo:s.
If you don't add all the house rules all kids use to prolong the game, it is quite playable.
For some reason alot of kids love it. I think handling money is the main lure.
If you don't add all the house rules all kids use to prolong the game, it is quite playable.
For some reason alot of kids love it. I think handling money is the main lure.
It can be a straight up ruthless experience if you play it by the rules as written rather than adding shitty house rules. I love playing with other adults that know how to play.
What's fascinating is that some of those house rules seemed to have come up independently in places all around the world. For example, the stupid free parking jackpot. (I assume that Hasbro added it to the manual as a house rule at some point?)
And yeah, getting money and property is fun! But the game is supposed to be a 30-45 minute experience.
And yeah, getting money and property is fun! But the game is supposed to be a 30-45 minute experience.
The reason is probably because Monopoly as written is short and brutal. Which isn't fun for families. So people add rules to make more fair. Which has result of making it last longer and turn into slog.
The solution is for families other games which are better suited especially for younger kids. But Monopoly has established itself as universal family board game.
The solution is for families other games which are better suited especially for younger kids. But Monopoly has established itself as universal family board game.
I think Monopoly is very fun, and I think the vocal haters online are obnoxious as hell. It's snobbery, but for board game nerds.
I think Monopoly is awful, and I think the vocal minority of people who like it are obnoxious as hell.
> The point is SimCity is no more a simulation than Monopoly is.
Simulation or Game is a false dichotomy, there's plenty of opportunity for overlap.
Consider the original X-COM: obviously a game, yet also a simulation, not withstanding that the situation it was trying to simulate was not real. Units with individual statistics, status effects, individual gear with weights and placements that affected movement and actions, etc.
Another example to consider might be the Napoleonic warfare origins of Dungeons & Dragons.
Simulation or Game is a false dichotomy, there's plenty of opportunity for overlap.
Consider the original X-COM: obviously a game, yet also a simulation, not withstanding that the situation it was trying to simulate was not real. Units with individual statistics, status effects, individual gear with weights and placements that affected movement and actions, etc.
Another example to consider might be the Napoleonic warfare origins of Dungeons & Dragons.
Overlap is coincidental, yes people may be doing similar kinds of things in a game. But Microsoft flight ‘simulator’ doesn’t come with a bunch of built in systems for handling loss of hydraulic pressure the way actual training systems do. The general public doesn’t want to spend time memorizing checklists for minor systems issues etc.
The other kind of simulation where people are trying to understand how systems interact is even further removed in how they are used. Running the exact same hour plus simulation repeatedly while only changing initial conditions isn’t fun, but it can be informative.
The other kind of simulation where people are trying to understand how systems interact is even further removed in how they are used. Running the exact same hour plus simulation repeatedly while only changing initial conditions isn’t fun, but it can be informative.
MSFS is a flight simulator, not an aircraft operations simulator. Similar, but different.
MSFS can be used as a flight simulator but the default c172 is unrealistically easy to fly. That’s exactly the kind of thing you see in games which care more about fun than realism.
So people can argue around MSFS’s trim modeling, ground modeling etc, but the issue isn’t with the physics engine’s specific compromises it’s a more fundamental problem.
So people can argue around MSFS’s trim modeling, ground modeling etc, but the issue isn’t with the physics engine’s specific compromises it’s a more fundamental problem.
I think he is actually trying to say it IS a simulation and NOT emulating the real world.
At least in the hardware world, there are simulators (which are faux short cut versions that work reasonably like the real thing) and emulators (which are software versions that act exactly like the real thing, but usually are very slow)
At least in the hardware world, there are simulators (which are faux short cut versions that work reasonably like the real thing) and emulators (which are software versions that act exactly like the real thing, but usually are very slow)
That’s actually the point. SimCity was made to be fun, not to be a simulation.
To put the dissonance in clearer terms, imagine a book described as "Analyzing interpersonal relationships through the lens of The Sims". Would you take it seriously?
It doesn’t seem like a pedantic distinction to say that the goals of SimCity are different from the goals of simulating reality.
To put the dissonance in clearer terms, imagine a book described as "Analyzing interpersonal relationships through the lens of The Sims". Would you take it seriously?
It doesn’t seem like a pedantic distinction to say that the goals of SimCity are different from the goals of simulating reality.
I haven't played a lot of Sim City, but in my mind, factorio is more a simulator than sim city.
Simulating means there is granularity about how each element can be seen and touched by the player.
In sim city there are a lot of shortcuts and simplifications. It looks like you have a city, but the more you play, the more it's just a decor, because the game shows a representation, but doesn't let you see the details.
So you see a car, a house, money, a school, but there is no day planning for citizens, they don't have a lifespan, citizen A or B doesn't have a commute with job C or D, they don't have children that you see grow up, you don't see those citizen bring back groceries or corn going out of the farm.
The problem is simulating granular elements of a city or even a village would require a lot of memory and computing power, even today, so back in 1990 or 2000 it was just not possible to have a granular village or city.
I want to see a mixture of The Sims and Sim City, but you can imagine how difficult it is to design such a game.
Simulating means there is granularity about how each element can be seen and touched by the player.
In sim city there are a lot of shortcuts and simplifications. It looks like you have a city, but the more you play, the more it's just a decor, because the game shows a representation, but doesn't let you see the details.
So you see a car, a house, money, a school, but there is no day planning for citizens, they don't have a lifespan, citizen A or B doesn't have a commute with job C or D, they don't have children that you see grow up, you don't see those citizen bring back groceries or corn going out of the farm.
The problem is simulating granular elements of a city or even a village would require a lot of memory and computing power, even today, so back in 1990 or 2000 it was just not possible to have a granular village or city.
I want to see a mixture of The Sims and Sim City, but you can imagine how difficult it is to design such a game.
I think Cities Skylines 2 has simulation down to that level, where individual residents have houses, jobs, kids, go to school, can die eventually. etc. But it doesn't really seem to add anything to the gameplay and the game didn't get great reviews.
There’s a common rule of thumb in sim game design: “never simulate anything more than one layer of abstraction below what the player can actually observe”
[deleted]
IBM is way into this racket now of Smart Cities and digital twins.
Idea being if you make a Sim City type game but worse, because you are IBM, and then market it to bureaucrats around the world, because you are IBM, they will happily pay you a lot of money, because you are IBM, so that they can point to your simulation as justification for their in/actions. The ass covering is magnificent you just have to feed it a little bit of real data (traffic, power consumption, weather).
Of curse part of what you are simulating is your own understanding and aspirational ideals about how society should function. If you write an essay or a speech people will argue but if you embed values into a game... well, they will still argue but they have to notice it first.
Some will ascribe magical powers of clairvoyance and correctness unto the simulation for reasons that nobody quite understands.
I'm not sure what my point is exactly other than this is potentially a very interesting fulcrum point. Like who is playing whom really in this situation?
Idea being if you make a Sim City type game but worse, because you are IBM, and then market it to bureaucrats around the world, because you are IBM, they will happily pay you a lot of money, because you are IBM, so that they can point to your simulation as justification for their in/actions. The ass covering is magnificent you just have to feed it a little bit of real data (traffic, power consumption, weather).
Of curse part of what you are simulating is your own understanding and aspirational ideals about how society should function. If you write an essay or a speech people will argue but if you embed values into a game... well, they will still argue but they have to notice it first.
Some will ascribe magical powers of clairvoyance and correctness unto the simulation for reasons that nobody quite understands.
I'm not sure what my point is exactly other than this is potentially a very interesting fulcrum point. Like who is playing whom really in this situation?
Dwarf Fortress is perhaps a stronger exploration of your thesis, because it is unapologetically simulation-first.
A game can consist of a simulation. The fact that you add feature sets to it does not change the fact that.
The various control planes and randomness of the simulation can be tuned, sure, but if you were to capture all those control inputs you can reconstruct the world event timeline in a determistic timeline.
Starcraft 2 Is a simulation. Replays are just games with all commands timestamped and the simulated world throttling forward and backward through time.
Science
The various control planes and randomness of the simulation can be tuned, sure, but if you were to capture all those control inputs you can reconstruct the world event timeline in a determistic timeline.
Starcraft 2 Is a simulation. Replays are just games with all commands timestamped and the simulated world throttling forward and backward through time.
Science
It's a game that simulates planning and building a city for enjoyment.
It is a simulation, just a simulation game as opposed to simulation software.
You may have a reasonable point, but that doesn't mean that SimCity cannot feature in a book about computer simulation history.
It is a simulation, just a simulation game as opposed to simulation software.
You may have a reasonable point, but that doesn't mean that SimCity cannot feature in a book about computer simulation history.
My hot take is that all games are simulations to some extent. Many sports are a kind of war game, simulating a specific aspect of real war, obviously abstracting quite a bit. A big part of the fun in catan is in the tension of having to cooperate with rivals to mutually beneficial ends, much like what happens in economics all the time. The point being, that yes, there are varying levels of realism, but in the end I don’t really think there is a simple line denoting “game” or “simulation.”
I'm a bit hesitant about posting this link. I wrote the article mainly for myself (memory capture exercise); it happened a long time ago - and I'm sure my former employers (and hopefully all similar organisations) don't encourage this sort of approach at all.
https://rikroots.substack.com/p/why-rik-left-the-neighbourho...
https://rikroots.substack.com/p/why-rik-left-the-neighbourho...
Isn't that the whole point? SimCity and all its sequels and imitators present a very simplified set of tools and mechanics. Those tools and mechanics are more than the sum of their parts: They entertain, they teach, they advance a political opinion (Jeff Braun has been explicit about this[0]) and yes, they simulate, albeit very simplistically. The intersection of those things and the tradeoffs that are required in all simulations (which all reside on a spectrum of toy to faithful representation) are interesting. IMO it's (ironically) too simplistic to say that SimCity is a mere game and thus unworthy of thinking more deeply about, and I suggest that you're taking that "world in a machine" marketing phrase a bit too literally.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-10-02-vw-391-st...
[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-10-02-vw-391-st...
This book is on my reading list! Guess it's worth mentioning I am working on a game to rival SimCity (and Cities Skylines), though aesthetically it looks like a game straight out of the 90s.
If Chris Sawyer made a city builder that dived deep into simulation.. that's what I'm aiming for.
Still in early development: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
If Chris Sawyer made a city builder that dived deep into simulation.. that's what I'm aiming for.
Still in early development: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
Hey, make me a game where you start out running a business like the old days where you own the company store and own the workers homes, so you manage all that plus the business operations. I don't know, it could be a logging business or coal mine, whatever.
And then at some point the workers revolt against the "company owns everything" system and the game becomes a city simulator.
You just basically start small scale and then zoom out to manage the big scale.
Hell, make it two games as long as I can import the first game map as my starter city.
Thanks.
And then at some point the workers revolt against the "company owns everything" system and the game becomes a city simulator.
You just basically start small scale and then zoom out to manage the big scale.
Hell, make it two games as long as I can import the first game map as my starter city.
Thanks.
I've been following your development for a while. Love the new take you have for the genre.
Is there a plan to have a creative mode?
On the roadmap I saw "Intelligent traffic lights". Can you elaborate further on this? Are going as far to let people set the timers of the lights?
I've got it on my wishlist. Looking forward to see what you come up with.
Is there a plan to have a creative mode?
On the roadmap I saw "Intelligent traffic lights". Can you elaborate further on this? Are going as far to let people set the timers of the lights?
I've got it on my wishlist. Looking forward to see what you come up with.
Creative mode: yeah of course!
I havent updated/worked on my road map in a loonng time. But Im gonna attempt the traffic light react to number of cars in each road it manages.
I havent updated/worked on my road map in a loonng time. But Im gonna attempt the traffic light react to number of cars in each road it manages.
Other than the retro art style what are the main ideas you have going in that you want to implement in the game?
Big picture things (some are already implemented):
- You can design your own buildings
- You can see inside of them
- Demand is based on specific businesses, not general zones
- Deeper simulation of citizens
- All the classic city builder features
- You can design your own buildings
- You can see inside of them
- Demand is based on specific businesses, not general zones
- Deeper simulation of citizens
- All the classic city builder features
Please allow mixed use buildings please allow mixed use buildings
We gotta get rid of all that Euclidean zoning nonsense from simcity
We gotta get rid of all that Euclidean zoning nonsense from simcity
Already in game! :)
Looks great, release it on GOG and I'll buy it!
And you are doing all this on under 100MB of disk space?
And you are doing all this on under 100MB of disk space?
I plan on adding it on GOG, prob for 1.0 only but we'll see!
The game is currently around 25 MB!
The game is currently around 25 MB!
hey! i met you in boston at the indie dev meetup during PAX!! your game is super awesome ! and im crazy looking forward to it
Hey, I don't recall meeting anyone by the name of ninja muffin :D
I had to search around to find your face ha. I remember chatting with you. Nice to bump into each other here :)
Thanks for the kind words!
I had to search around to find your face ha. I remember chatting with you. Nice to bump into each other here :)
Thanks for the kind words!
[Copy-pasting my review from Amazon]
Did you know that Maxis (creators of SimCity) sold investors on a vision a world where "simulation" was a common use-case for computers, and Maxis was the company at the center of simulation software?
This was the first of many fascinating revelations this book brought me. Reading it, I found myself getting caught up in their grand vision.
The first part of _Building SimCity_ is a deep dive into the game's historical antecedents: from tabletop city simulations and Vannevar Bush's analogue computers, to systems thinking and cellular automata. This part explores many ideas that I have briefly encountered before and wondered "why hasn't anyone taken these wonderful ideas and produced something great with them?" The book answers: "Will Wright did, you just didn't notice." More specifically, _Building SimCity_ argues that SimCity the game is a synthesis and application of many great ideas, which are mostly hidden to the player. This book gives us a look behind the curtain.
The second part of the book spends chapters on the design of SimCity, the history of Maxis, and the experience of playing SimCity. The implementation chapter has no code listings — as a programmer, reading it feels like reading an exceptionally clear design document, explaining the real-time (UI) clock and the simulation clock, the 16-bit representation of map tile state, the main simulation loop, and the map scan algorithm for information propogation across tiles. This chapter is accompanied by exceptionally well-designed diagrams, which I find quite valuable on their own.
To set expectations: this is an academic work. It contains war stories and technical details, but it also goes to great lengths to situate SimCity in its historical context, connecting it to previous ideas, and providing full citations. But though the prose has an academic bent, I find it very engaging and readable.
The only negative thing I can say about this book is that the printed edition has a chemical smell, which I assume is due to the full-color printing and will presumeably fade with time.
[Disclaimer: I haven't finished this book yet, I've read the first few chapters about the history of simulation and also skipped ahead to the chapter about SimCity's implementation details. I'm posting this here because it's what I've written out in emails to friends about the book; I'll update my review when I finish reading it.]
Did you know that Maxis (creators of SimCity) sold investors on a vision a world where "simulation" was a common use-case for computers, and Maxis was the company at the center of simulation software?
This was the first of many fascinating revelations this book brought me. Reading it, I found myself getting caught up in their grand vision.
The first part of _Building SimCity_ is a deep dive into the game's historical antecedents: from tabletop city simulations and Vannevar Bush's analogue computers, to systems thinking and cellular automata. This part explores many ideas that I have briefly encountered before and wondered "why hasn't anyone taken these wonderful ideas and produced something great with them?" The book answers: "Will Wright did, you just didn't notice." More specifically, _Building SimCity_ argues that SimCity the game is a synthesis and application of many great ideas, which are mostly hidden to the player. This book gives us a look behind the curtain.
The second part of the book spends chapters on the design of SimCity, the history of Maxis, and the experience of playing SimCity. The implementation chapter has no code listings — as a programmer, reading it feels like reading an exceptionally clear design document, explaining the real-time (UI) clock and the simulation clock, the 16-bit representation of map tile state, the main simulation loop, and the map scan algorithm for information propogation across tiles. This chapter is accompanied by exceptionally well-designed diagrams, which I find quite valuable on their own.
To set expectations: this is an academic work. It contains war stories and technical details, but it also goes to great lengths to situate SimCity in its historical context, connecting it to previous ideas, and providing full citations. But though the prose has an academic bent, I find it very engaging and readable.
The only negative thing I can say about this book is that the printed edition has a chemical smell, which I assume is due to the full-color printing and will presumeably fade with time.
[Disclaimer: I haven't finished this book yet, I've read the first few chapters about the history of simulation and also skipped ahead to the chapter about SimCity's implementation details. I'm posting this here because it's what I've written out in emails to friends about the book; I'll update my review when I finish reading it.]
They really were at the center of simulation. They had so many offerings that many people have never even heard of, like Sim Earth. I ran into it at a point in my life when I was playing with a lot of ideas about sustainability and waste, and it ended up being very influential in how I think about the world. It was almost a throw away game, there just wasn't much to do, but setting up initial conditions and watching them play out was fascinating to me. It taught me a lot about critical mass, and resource utilization rates.
As a side note, Oxygen Not Included feels like a master's class in sustainability, especially if you don't over abuse some of the game's broken mechanics.
As a side note, Oxygen Not Included feels like a master's class in sustainability, especially if you don't over abuse some of the game's broken mechanics.
It’s funny to look back as someone who was seven when SimEarth came out. It was anything but a throwaway game for me, as I played it for months on a mostly daily basis. Same with SimAnt and whatever other similar games I could get my hands on.
SimAnt and SimEarth were also staples of my childhood gaming, barely knew how to play SimEarth but it was a blast! A lot of game design takeaways from SimAnt for me too.
Thanks! If you don't mind some more detail
- how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game?
- it sounds like first part of the book is historical and talks about various games, second focuses strictly on simcity?
- does it only cover first simcity? What about latter generations and competitors, or maxis follow ups like simearth etc?
Thx muchly!:)
- how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game?
- it sounds like first part of the book is historical and talks about various games, second focuses strictly on simcity?
- does it only cover first simcity? What about latter generations and competitors, or maxis follow ups like simearth etc?
Thx muchly!:)
Hi! The focus is SimCity, but once the book gets into Maxis I get into SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, and The Sims. They aren't treated in as much detail, but they are here because they are crucial for understanding the overall arc of Maxis, SimCity's consequences, and Will Wright's career.
You can't understand Maxis without understanding the relationship they had with the world beyond videogames. Consider SimEarth. Stewart Brand (should need no intro; Kevin Kelly introduced them—he and Wright bonded over their love of social insects) introduced Wright to James Lovelock (co-inventor of Gaia hypothesis), who happily collaborated, and Maxis donated money to Lovelock's nonprofit. And Brand's GBN consultancy was interested in using SimEarth for their work. There's more context to all this I get into, but that's the super short version.
I'm still stunned by how much Brand thinks I got all this right (and how much he loves the book): "Of course I checked the few moments where I intersected with the events in the story. They are tone-perfect, detail-perfect, and context-perfect. More so than I've ever seen before." See his review on X:
https://x.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003
You can't understand Maxis without understanding the relationship they had with the world beyond videogames. Consider SimEarth. Stewart Brand (should need no intro; Kevin Kelly introduced them—he and Wright bonded over their love of social insects) introduced Wright to James Lovelock (co-inventor of Gaia hypothesis), who happily collaborated, and Maxis donated money to Lovelock's nonprofit. And Brand's GBN consultancy was interested in using SimEarth for their work. There's more context to all this I get into, but that's the super short version.
I'm still stunned by how much Brand thinks I got all this right (and how much he loves the book): "Of course I checked the few moments where I intersected with the events in the story. They are tone-perfect, detail-perfect, and context-perfect. More so than I've ever seen before." See his review on X:
https://x.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003
I forgot to answer your first two questions:
> - how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game?
A lot; it all goes together.
> - it sounds like first part of the book is historical and talks about various games, second focuses strictly on simcity?
Yes. And not just games, but computer history and simulation practices (like system dynamics, cellular automata, artificial life) that influenced SimCity and shaped its reception.
> - how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game?
A lot; it all goes together.
> - it sounds like first part of the book is historical and talks about various games, second focuses strictly on simcity?
Yes. And not just games, but computer history and simulation practices (like system dynamics, cellular automata, artificial life) that influenced SimCity and shaped its reception.
Building SimCity only talks about pre-EA SimCity. So there's SimCity, SimCity 2000, and SimCity for SNES, but not much else—aside from how SimCity 3000 was a train wreck that helped destroy Maxis.
PC Gamer just ran a piece on some of the Nintendo history in there. Includes a fun old pic of Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Jeff Braun.
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/in-1989-a-nintendo-bigwig-...
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/in-1989-a-nintendo-bigwig-...
> SimCity 3000 was a train wreck that helped destroy Maxis.
Wikipedia makes SimCity 3000 sound fairly well received [1] - I thought it was the 2013 online-only SimCity that was the train wreck that destroyed Maxis?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_3000#Reception
Wikipedia makes SimCity 3000 sound fairly well received [1] - I thought it was the 2013 online-only SimCity that was the train wreck that destroyed Maxis?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_3000#Reception
I suppose the idea is that while the SimCity Maxis studio met its true end later after SimCity(2013) [1], Maxis the company was destroyed earlier. They had originally tried and failed to make SimCity 3000 be a full 3D game. It was only designed into its successful form after the acquisition by EA.
LGR did a retrospective on the game and it provides some context for the state pre-EA Maxis was in when they started SimCity 3000.[2]
1. The Sims is again branded as developed by Maxis.
2. https://youtu.be/MngTH_mh_Is?si=ERGNYzGHeDkPXOO2
LGR did a retrospective on the game and it provides some context for the state pre-EA Maxis was in when they started SimCity 3000.[2]
1. The Sims is again branded as developed by Maxis.
2. https://youtu.be/MngTH_mh_Is?si=ERGNYzGHeDkPXOO2
He then went on to do Spore. Here is a pre-release talk from 2005:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6YWVTURU
The final game got nerfed by EA but this talk is great fun and a continuation of sorts.
The final game got nerfed by EA but this talk is great fun and a continuation of sorts.
Apparently the author of "Building SimCity" worked on Spore with Will Wright.
> Spore is a computer simulation game directed by Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims). I designed its suite of powerful yet fun to use 3d tools that players used to make alien creatures, buildings, and vehicles.
> I designed Spore's critically acclaimed creative tool suite, e.g. the Spore Creature Creator, which has been used to make over 189 million creations.
> In 2002, I was handpicked by Will Wright for Spore's nucleic R&D team. Responsibilities also included design and prototyping across the entire project, directing interns, and interfacing with journalists.
From: http://chaim.io
> Spore is a computer simulation game directed by Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims). I designed its suite of powerful yet fun to use 3d tools that players used to make alien creatures, buildings, and vehicles.
> I designed Spore's critically acclaimed creative tool suite, e.g. the Spore Creature Creator, which has been used to make over 189 million creations.
> In 2002, I was handpicked by Will Wright for Spore's nucleic R&D team. Responsibilities also included design and prototyping across the entire project, directing interns, and interfacing with journalists.
From: http://chaim.io
I like the cut of his jib.
Sounds interesting, if perhaps less fun than Masters of Doom.
I look forward to reading it for free some day. And I probably like that ink smell, although I agree that it's important that a book should smell good.
Here is Will Wright's talk "Interfacing to Microworlds" from April 26 1996, which he presented to Terry Winnograd's user interface class at Stanford. I sat in on the talk, asked questions, took notes, and wrote up a summary, had Will review it, then went to work with him on Dollhouse which became The Sims. After we shipped in 2000 I updated my summary of the talk with some thoughts and retrospectives about working with Will on The Sims.
Stanford recently published the video, so again I updated my write-up with more information from the talk, transcript excerpts, screen snapshots, links and citations.
All I had to go on for the 27 years between the talk until the video surfaced and I could finally watch it again were my notes and memory, so I'd forgotten how just prescient and purposeful he was, and I didn't remember that he was already planning on leaning into the storytelling and user created content and self and family representation aspects, and making the people speak with "Charlie Brown Adults" mwop mwop mwop speech, among many other things.
Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
>Video of Will Wright's talk about "Interfacing to Microworlds" presented to Terry Winograd's user interface class at Stanford University, April 26, 1996.
>He demonstrates and gives postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000, then previews an extremely early pre-release prototype version of Dollhouse (which eventually became The Sims), describing how the AI models personalities and behavior, and is distributed throughout extensible plug-in programmable objects in the environment, and he thoughtfully answers many interesting questions from the audience.
>This is the lecture described in "Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)": A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis.
Use and reproduction: The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives ([email protected]).
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update)
https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis. Now including a video and snapshots of the original talk!
Will Wright and Brian Eno discussing generative systems at a Long Now Foundation talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqzVSvqXJYg
SimCity takes a lot of short cuts to fool you. It's what Will Wright calls the "Simulator Effect":
Will Wright defined the “Simulator Effect” as how players imagine the simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination.
"Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used.
The trick of optimizing games is to off-load as much as the simulation from the computer into the user's brain, which is MUCH more powerful and creative. Implication is more efficient (and richer) than simulation.
Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like “which ontological urban paradigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?” He replied, “I just kind of optimized for game play.”
During development, when we first added Astrological signs to the characters, there was a discussion about whether we should invent our own original "Sim Zodiac" signs, or use the traditional ones, which have a lot of baggage and history (which some of the designers thought might be a problem). Will Wright argued that we actually wanted to leverage the baggage and history of the traditional Astrological signs of the Zodiac, so we should just use those and not invent our own.
The way it works is that Will came up with twelve archetypal vectors of personality traits corresponding to each of the twelve Astrological signs, so when you set their personality traits, it looks up the sign with the nearest euclidian distance to the character's personality, and displays that as their sign. But there was absolutely no actual effect on their behavior.
That decision paid off almost instantly and measurably in testing, after we implemented the user interface for showing the Astrological sign in the character creation screen, without writing any code to make their sign affect their behavior: The testers immediately started reporting bugs that their character's sign had too much of an effect on their personality, and claimed that the non-existent effect of astrological signs on behavior needed to be tuned down. But that effect was totally coming from their imagination! They should call them Astrillogical Signs!
The create-a-sim user interface hid the corresponding astrological sign for the initial all-zero personality you first see before you've spent any points, because that would be insulting to 1/12th of the players (implying [your sign] has zero personality)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffzt12tEGpY
Stanford recently published the video, so again I updated my write-up with more information from the talk, transcript excerpts, screen snapshots, links and citations.
All I had to go on for the 27 years between the talk until the video surfaced and I could finally watch it again were my notes and memory, so I'd forgotten how just prescient and purposeful he was, and I didn't remember that he was already planning on leaning into the storytelling and user created content and self and family representation aspects, and making the people speak with "Charlie Brown Adults" mwop mwop mwop speech, among many other things.
Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
>Video of Will Wright's talk about "Interfacing to Microworlds" presented to Terry Winograd's user interface class at Stanford University, April 26, 1996.
>He demonstrates and gives postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000, then previews an extremely early pre-release prototype version of Dollhouse (which eventually became The Sims), describing how the AI models personalities and behavior, and is distributed throughout extensible plug-in programmable objects in the environment, and he thoughtfully answers many interesting questions from the audience.
>This is the lecture described in "Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)": A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis.
Use and reproduction: The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives ([email protected]).
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) (2023 Video Update)
https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis. Now including a video and snapshots of the original talk!
Will Wright and Brian Eno discussing generative systems at a Long Now Foundation talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqzVSvqXJYg
SimCity takes a lot of short cuts to fool you. It's what Will Wright calls the "Simulator Effect":
Will Wright defined the “Simulator Effect” as how players imagine the simulation is vastly more detailed, deep, rich, and complex than it actually is: a magical misunderstanding that you shouldn’t talk them out of. He designs games to run on two computers at once: the electronic one on the player’s desk, running his shallow tame simulation, and the biological one in the player’s head, running their deep wild imagination.
"Reverse Over-Engineering" is a desirable outcome of the Simulator Effect: what game players (and game developers trying to clone the game) do when they use their imagination to extrapolate how a game works, and totally overestimate how much work and modeling the simulator is actually doing, because they filled in the gaps with their imagination and preconceptions and assumptions, instead of realizing how many simplifications and shortcuts and illusions it actually used.
The trick of optimizing games is to off-load as much as the simulation from the computer into the user's brain, which is MUCH more powerful and creative. Implication is more efficient (and richer) than simulation.
Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like “which ontological urban paradigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?” He replied, “I just kind of optimized for game play.”
During development, when we first added Astrological signs to the characters, there was a discussion about whether we should invent our own original "Sim Zodiac" signs, or use the traditional ones, which have a lot of baggage and history (which some of the designers thought might be a problem). Will Wright argued that we actually wanted to leverage the baggage and history of the traditional Astrological signs of the Zodiac, so we should just use those and not invent our own.
The way it works is that Will came up with twelve archetypal vectors of personality traits corresponding to each of the twelve Astrological signs, so when you set their personality traits, it looks up the sign with the nearest euclidian distance to the character's personality, and displays that as their sign. But there was absolutely no actual effect on their behavior.
That decision paid off almost instantly and measurably in testing, after we implemented the user interface for showing the Astrological sign in the character creation screen, without writing any code to make their sign affect their behavior: The testers immediately started reporting bugs that their character's sign had too much of an effect on their personality, and claimed that the non-existent effect of astrological signs on behavior needed to be tuned down. But that effect was totally coming from their imagination! They should call them Astrillogical Signs!
The create-a-sim user interface hid the corresponding astrological sign for the initial all-zero personality you first see before you've spent any points, because that would be insulting to 1/12th of the players (implying [your sign] has zero personality)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffzt12tEGpY
From: "Gavin Clayton" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.family-names.sims,alt.games.the-sims
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2000 2:59 PM
Subject: No other game has done this...
> Hi... no need to reply to this cos it's just a whimsical thought :-)
>
> When I first got the game I tried to make my own family, trying to get
> their personalities accurate too. When making myself, my dad and my
> sister, I attributed points to all the personality categories, and I
> found I had points left over. But when I made my mum I ran out of
> available points and was wishing for more -- I wanted to give her more
> points than are available. It made me realise for the first time in
> years how much I love my mum :-)
>
> Now what other game has ever done *that*? :-)
>
> Gavin Clayton> Implication is more efficient (and richer) than simulation.
I guess that why lacking a water supply in SimCity 2000 didn't inhibit the city's growth at all, and the negative effect on your mayoral approval rating could be removed by building a single pump anywhere, with no pipes.
I guess that why lacking a water supply in SimCity 2000 didn't inhibit the city's growth at all, and the negative effect on your mayoral approval rating could be removed by building a single pump anywhere, with no pipes.
People interesting in this might be interested in Silicon Second Nature by Stefan Helmreich, a pretty brilliant MIT anthropologist/historian of science. It’s all about the Santa Fe Institute and the science of emergence, from both a technical and social level. One of the best books I’ve ever read I think!
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520208001/silicon-second-na...
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520208001/silicon-second-na...
Stefan Helmreich's book is indeed brilliant! I used it extensively when writing Building SimCity. Stefan was quite helpful in researching my book, sharing and checking some old SFI documentation so I could determine things like who visited SFI when for what event (and with whom).
The attendee list for some of the early Artificial Life conferences was quite cool. Peter Molyneux shows up as well as one of Maxis's venture capitalists.
The attendee list for some of the early Artificial Life conferences was quite cool. Peter Molyneux shows up as well as one of Maxis's venture capitalists.
I was delighted how you covered Doreen Nelson's life work, Design Based Learning, like you did in your thesis. I have a copy of the "School Edition" Lab Pack of SimCity Classic that she and Michael Bremer wrote, which I'll dig up and scan, so I can put it on archive.org and include ìt with the open source Micropolis project.
LGR - SimCity Educational Version Unboxing & Overview: An overview of the "School Edition" Lab Pack of SimCity Classic by Maxis. Unboxing, first impressions of the package and testing of the radically rad software ensues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXRNtuAGTg
I was also thrilled you wrote about John von Neumann's 29 state self replicating cellular automata machine! Super interesting and important stuff.
I wrote more about that stuff in the discussion of SimCity for WebAssembly:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40698110
Chaim, I'm looking forward to Will Wright interviewing you about Building SimCity, Fri Jul 19, 2024 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT. It will definitely be weird!
https://x.com/cgingold/status/1798790177814663294
>I thought it would be fun to turn the tables and give Will Wright a chance to interview someone else: me (!), about Building SimCity.
>@ROMchip_Journal: Mark your calendars! Next month, ROMchip is hosting @cgingold and Will Wright for a discussion of Gingold's new book BUILDING SIMCITY
>Event will broadcast live on Twitch Friday, July 19 @ 2PM EST. Grab your free tickets for the oneline interview:
here: https://app.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehis...
LGR - SimCity Educational Version Unboxing & Overview: An overview of the "School Edition" Lab Pack of SimCity Classic by Maxis. Unboxing, first impressions of the package and testing of the radically rad software ensues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXRNtuAGTg
I was also thrilled you wrote about John von Neumann's 29 state self replicating cellular automata machine! Super interesting and important stuff.
I wrote more about that stuff in the discussion of SimCity for WebAssembly:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40698110
Chaim, I'm looking forward to Will Wright interviewing you about Building SimCity, Fri Jul 19, 2024 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT. It will definitely be weird!
https://x.com/cgingold/status/1798790177814663294
>I thought it would be fun to turn the tables and give Will Wright a chance to interview someone else: me (!), about Building SimCity.
>@ROMchip_Journal: Mark your calendars! Next month, ROMchip is hosting @cgingold and Will Wright for a discussion of Gingold's new book BUILDING SIMCITY
>Event will broadcast live on Twitch Friday, July 19 @ 2PM EST. Grab your free tickets for the oneline interview:
here: https://app.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehis...
Thanks, Don! Please scan that!
She recently found a shrink wrapped copy of a teacher guide she coauthored with Michael Bremer and opened it (!) because we disagreed about what was in there, LOL. It's destined now for her UCLA archive. Apparently she also wrote guides for many other Maxis titles but not all saw the light of day. Or maybe they did but need to be recovered.
She recently found a shrink wrapped copy of a teacher guide she coauthored with Michael Bremer and opened it (!) because we disagreed about what was in there, LOL. It's destined now for her UCLA archive. Apparently she also wrote guides for many other Maxis titles but not all saw the light of day. Or maybe they did but need to be recovered.
Hey thanks for the response. I’m looking forward to picking up the book now. Silicon Second Nature left a big enough impression on me that I did a performance art piece inspired by it in undergrad (back when I thought I might be an artist, LOL)… unfortunately I don’t have access any longer to video documentation but there are some pics and description on my (currently offline) website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210802234726/https://samwolk.i...
There’s also a short 16mm experimental film I made around the same time:
https://vimeo.com/198901474
Just sharing since it’s pretty rare for me to meet someone who might actually be interested in these, ha!
https://web.archive.org/web/20210802234726/https://samwolk.i...
There’s also a short 16mm experimental film I made around the same time:
https://vimeo.com/198901474
Just sharing since it’s pretty rare for me to meet someone who might actually be interested in these, ha!
Your film has some beautiful stuff in it!
In my childhood, me and my brother had access to computers (and simcity) only once a month. Because we still wanted to play, we actually made paper version of it, drawing maps ourselves and doing all the financial calculations on a separate sheet. I wanted to write my own simcity.
Later on, I spent considerable amount of time designing the code, again on paper as I still didn't have access to computers.
I think that had the most significant impact on my skills, and, eventually, my career.
Thanks for that
Reading this now and really enjoying it. Here's a brief review from Stewart Brand: https://twitter.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003
Do you think people can learn something from simulation games that’s inherently hard to learn from mere language or mathematics?
Is it possible to create good simulation games of substantial global events and the subsequent possible outcomes. Some examples would be a pandemic like Covid and how it shaped societies differently based on preconditions and policies OR a discovery of nuclear fission that sparked building nuclear weapon (I.e the manhattan project) and fueled the cold war OR the realization and threat of man made global warming and the global reaction and policy making and many possible outcomes.
And if not why are they not feasible for games. Is there something that makes these types of events and their outcome hard to simulate?
Is it possible to create good simulation games of substantial global events and the subsequent possible outcomes. Some examples would be a pandemic like Covid and how it shaped societies differently based on preconditions and policies OR a discovery of nuclear fission that sparked building nuclear weapon (I.e the manhattan project) and fueled the cold war OR the realization and threat of man made global warming and the global reaction and policy making and many possible outcomes.
And if not why are they not feasible for games. Is there something that makes these types of events and their outcome hard to simulate?
I think yes, and so did Vannevar Bush (OK, not the game part). The first two chapters of Building SimCity are dedicated to non-computer simulations for this reason. Vannevar Bush and his analog instruments, like the differential analyzer, are the subject of chapter 2. Bush (and others) argued that good tangible models were excellent complements to, and sometimes superior to, abstract symbolic representations. For this reason he and his colleagues grieved the transition to digital computing.
For example, he writes in Pieces of the Action (p. 262) of "an example of how easy it is to teach fundamental calculus," about a mechanic with a high school education who learned calculus by working on the differential analyzer. "It was very interesting to discuss this subject with him because he had learned the calculus in mechanical terms ‐ a strange approach, and yet he understood it. That is, he did not understand it in any formal sense, but he understood the fundamentals; he had it under his skin."
I think this is fascinating stuff, and chapter 2 goes deep into the subject. Chapter 1 is about Doreen Gehry Nelson and city simulations made by school kids--it's all about games, simulation, tangibility, and learning.
For example, he writes in Pieces of the Action (p. 262) of "an example of how easy it is to teach fundamental calculus," about a mechanic with a high school education who learned calculus by working on the differential analyzer. "It was very interesting to discuss this subject with him because he had learned the calculus in mechanical terms ‐ a strange approach, and yet he understood it. That is, he did not understand it in any formal sense, but he understood the fundamentals; he had it under his skin."
I think this is fascinating stuff, and chapter 2 goes deep into the subject. Chapter 1 is about Doreen Gehry Nelson and city simulations made by school kids--it's all about games, simulation, tangibility, and learning.
Procedural Rhetoric: Ian Bogost, Janet Murray (Chaim's advisor and Building SimCity endorser)
For better or worse, games can deliver pre-programmed propaganda and procedural rhetoric for advancing ideologies and changing minds. Some designers push clichéd narratives, stereotypical characters, and institutionalized prejudices that normalize and encourage homophobia, sexism, racism, bigotry, and violence. Others like Will Wright conscientiously use it for good.
Ian Bogost defined the “Procedural Rhetoric” game design philosophy as an unholy blend of Will Wright and Aristotle, that explains how people learn through rules and processes, analyzes the art of persuasion, and focuses on conveying ideology by crafting laws and rules within games.
“I developed my own design philosophy that I called procedural rhetoric, an unholy blend of Will Wright and Aristotle.” -Ian Bogost, Video Games Are Better Without Characters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_rhetoric
Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames.
Procedural rhetoric or simulation rhetoric[1] is a rhetorical concept that explains how people learn through the authorship of rules and processes. The theory argues that games can make strong claims about how the world works—not simply through words or visuals but through the processes they embody and models they construct. The term was first coined by Ian Bogost in his 2007 book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames.[2]
Procedural rhetoric analyzes the art of persuasion by rule based representations and interactions rather than spoken or written word. Procedural rhetoric focuses on how game makers craft laws and rules within a game to convey a particular ideology.
[1] Frasca, Gonzalo (2003). “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology.” In The Video Game Theory Reader. Ed. by Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge. 221–37 ISBN 9780415965798
[2] Bogost, Ian (2008). "The Rhetoric of Video Games." The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. Ed. by Katie Salen. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 117–40. ISBN 9780262693646
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13u-kNaWC2AAd-L0_5OoLc_-x...
The Sims has evolved with society over two decades towards a more inclusive, tolerant world celebrating diversity and creativity. Its procedural rhetoric promotes inclusivity, diversity, personalization, and tolerance, and supports self-expression, creativity, storytelling, and sharing. Players imprint their own identities, families, homes, communities, and stories into the game, and share their own personal emergent narratives using online community tools like The Sims Family Album and The Sims Exchange.
mistermann: The intuition of a conspiracy theorist is not useful nor interesting nor falsifiable, by definition. Please stop posting unsubstantive flamebait comments and parroting harmful anti-vax lies, and don't try to argue with the moderator, dang. Reminder: "If you keep posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments, we're going to have to ban you. We've warned you countless times already, and it's not good that you're still doing it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" -dang https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660693
For better or worse, games can deliver pre-programmed propaganda and procedural rhetoric for advancing ideologies and changing minds. Some designers push clichéd narratives, stereotypical characters, and institutionalized prejudices that normalize and encourage homophobia, sexism, racism, bigotry, and violence. Others like Will Wright conscientiously use it for good.
Ian Bogost defined the “Procedural Rhetoric” game design philosophy as an unholy blend of Will Wright and Aristotle, that explains how people learn through rules and processes, analyzes the art of persuasion, and focuses on conveying ideology by crafting laws and rules within games.
“I developed my own design philosophy that I called procedural rhetoric, an unholy blend of Will Wright and Aristotle.” -Ian Bogost, Video Games Are Better Without Characters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_rhetoric
Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames.
Procedural rhetoric or simulation rhetoric[1] is a rhetorical concept that explains how people learn through the authorship of rules and processes. The theory argues that games can make strong claims about how the world works—not simply through words or visuals but through the processes they embody and models they construct. The term was first coined by Ian Bogost in his 2007 book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames.[2]
Procedural rhetoric analyzes the art of persuasion by rule based representations and interactions rather than spoken or written word. Procedural rhetoric focuses on how game makers craft laws and rules within a game to convey a particular ideology.
[1] Frasca, Gonzalo (2003). “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology.” In The Video Game Theory Reader. Ed. by Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge. 221–37 ISBN 9780415965798
[2] Bogost, Ian (2008). "The Rhetoric of Video Games." The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. Ed. by Katie Salen. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 117–40. ISBN 9780262693646
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13u-kNaWC2AAd-L0_5OoLc_-x...
The Sims has evolved with society over two decades towards a more inclusive, tolerant world celebrating diversity and creativity. Its procedural rhetoric promotes inclusivity, diversity, personalization, and tolerance, and supports self-expression, creativity, storytelling, and sharing. Players imprint their own identities, families, homes, communities, and stories into the game, and share their own personal emergent narratives using online community tools like The Sims Family Album and The Sims Exchange.
mistermann: The intuition of a conspiracy theorist is not useful nor interesting nor falsifiable, by definition. Please stop posting unsubstantive flamebait comments and parroting harmful anti-vax lies, and don't try to argue with the moderator, dang. Reminder: "If you keep posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments, we're going to have to ban you. We've warned you countless times already, and it's not good that you're still doing it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" -dang https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660693
As a conspiracy theorist, my intuition suggests to me that there are people within the government that would frown upon the general public getting too interested in (and skilled in) the complexities and nuances of human coordination. That sort of thing is The Experts job.
Whenever Maxis comes up I always imagine some government simulations running on refined models but still using the SimCity 2000 interface.
Price seems a bit steep. Needs to lower taxes for me to buy it.
Can anyone recommend any other books like this where it is both a history/ethnography and covers the actual technical details/code?
I'd be very interested to hear of other books and articles like this, too.
Edwin Hutchins's Cognition in the Wild is one of my favorite books. It's very technical and ethnographic, but less historical. It doesn't deal with code, but that's because it's about the nitty gritty of navigation on a Navy ship (pre digital computing), and (here's the historical aspect) it compares this to some traditional Polyponesian navigational practices.
The closest thing off the top of my head are titles in MIT Press's Platform Studies series, like Racing the Beam, about the Atari 2600, which is historical and technical. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262539760/racing-the-beam/
Maybe Casey O'Donnell's Developer's Dilemma? https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/4469/Developer-s-Dile...
If you make a Venn diagram with history, ethnography, technical details, and code as different circles, the central intersection may not be huge, but I think there may be a lot more if you remove some of the constraints. But I want to see more work at this intersection, and I hope more people do it.
Edwin Hutchins's Cognition in the Wild is one of my favorite books. It's very technical and ethnographic, but less historical. It doesn't deal with code, but that's because it's about the nitty gritty of navigation on a Navy ship (pre digital computing), and (here's the historical aspect) it compares this to some traditional Polyponesian navigational practices.
The closest thing off the top of my head are titles in MIT Press's Platform Studies series, like Racing the Beam, about the Atari 2600, which is historical and technical. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262539760/racing-the-beam/
Maybe Casey O'Donnell's Developer's Dilemma? https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/4469/Developer-s-Dile...
If you make a Venn diagram with history, ethnography, technical details, and code as different circles, the central intersection may not be huge, but I think there may be a lot more if you remove some of the constraints. But I want to see more work at this intersection, and I hope more people do it.
I tried to look it up but I am still not sure if this book discusses SimCity's programming or not.
Yes. There's a whole chapter on this with tons of diagrams, not code.
Thank you for the quick reply.
Is this about the original Sim City, Sim City 2000, or does it cover all of them in a general way?
Focus is the original SimCity, but many Maxis Sim- games up to EA acquisition are touched upon, especially the long saga of what became The Sims.
What's the point of posting a book listing? A review or an analysis would have been more interesting.
I don't see anything wrong with posting about a book, a course, etc., especially if it's a newly released product. It's good to know what's being done.
just want to say thanks for spore - my son's favourite for a long time.
Thanks for sharing this!
This should have been a game
Is this an advertisement?
The ebook is $4.99 more expensive than the physical copy - wild.
and "6 x 9 in", I thought only PDFs were fixed sizes :)
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537759/minitel/ is $39.99 ebook, $40 paperback, but $35 hardcover. bizarre pricing.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537759/minitel/ is $39.99 ebook, $40 paperback, but $35 hardcover. bizarre pricing.
The Kindle version is $36