10 ms·

Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

272 points by riboflavin 6y ago

tunesmith 6y ago
I think we can often get sucked into optimizing our life to limit the possibility of negative surprises - predictable reliable employment, reliable transportation, go-to meals, healthy habits that work for us - and then we can often end up in a reality where things are stable but potentially boring or soul-crushing. That's what the essay reminded me of - even if the city were ruthlessly efficient but with a nice park and bodega and deli in walking distance, it could still feel similarly soul-crushing. So I've been trying to think more about how to leave more room in life for "positive surprise" but that's kind of a difficult thing to optimize for. I'm open to ideas anyway!
- dflock 6y ago
  Go new places, explore! Doesn't have to cost money or be a big deal - just your neighbourhood/area/town on foot or bike. Or maybe Micro Adventures: https://alastairhumphreys.com/microadventures-landing/ https://alastairhumphreys.com/microadventures-landing/
Pxtl 6y ago
Kind of surprised that pollution is a problem with no roads and no industry.
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  Densely packed skyscrapers block wind maybe?
grawprog 6y ago
Not to anywhere near the level of this but i've been playing a map on city skylines where i've been trying to make it as dystopian as possible, though at first I was just trying to model my city, the sad thing is, on a superficial level, it still resembles it. Industrial areas lined with low income housing. A whole neighbourhood with schools next to oil refineries, a prison island that receives its drinking water from the sewage run off of the rest of the city, I created roads and bridges everywhere, there's several 'nice' areas along the non polluted areas of water with large mansions, there's a big bustling urban center full of office buildings and highrises not far away from squat, squalid apartments underneath highway overpasses, schools next to landfills, a lack of hospitals and fire departments, many police departments, i've intentionally clearcut as much of the forest surrounding the city as possible, the next step was to create a small gated community out away from the city, for those with money who can't handle the horrid amounts of traffic and infrastructure... I may have also accidently poisoned the whole city briefly when trying to build the prison island and killed 30% of the people there, but things have been looking up, population growth is finally starting to rise again, though the health of the population is questionable.
- XaoDaoCaoCao 6y ago
  That's a slice of the horror of our civilization lololol
  - bluedevil2k 6y ago
    I know it's cool and trendy to trash our current society and treat it like it's the worst time to be alive in human history, but in reality there's never been a better time to be alive in the history of our species. Poverty, infant mortality, childhood mortality, crime...all at all time lows. Literacy, income levels, food quantity, public health...all at all time highs.
    - Kye 6y ago
      Purchased on the credit card of carbon release. We might get lucky and see some technological or social innovation negate or stop the coming disaster, or civilization could snap back to where it was centuries ago.
      - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
        The worst part is not the horror of mass extinctions and runaway greenhouse gasses might eventually resolve itself on geologic timescales, but that the society that rebuilt might find it impossible to get out of the stone age; much less through an industrial revolution: we've pillaged the highest-yield mines, germs have been developed into antibiotic-resistant superbugs, we've extracted the easiest-to-reach stored hydrocarbons, and replaced natural, hardy, diverse crops and the "basic 5" domestication-friendly animals with inbred monocultures.
        troutwine 6y ago
        I do wonder how much our extractive technological culture would play to the benefit of a child society that intended to learn from us. There'd be an awful lot of material at the surface that could be recycled or repurposed, if we're talking a reboot on the order of centuries. Idle thought.
danbolt 6y ago
I think it's important to remember that a "system" in a video game is a work of art just like the game itself. The systems, in a lot of ways, reflect the ideas and thoughts of the authors of that game. Magnasati's highlights and flaws help illustrate that thinking, or what tax rates are best for doing well in the game. An example that comes to mind is Factorio, where solar panels are more tricky to operate than generators, but minimize conflict with the ingame fauna. Earlier versions of Rimworld were programmed to have men be either gay or straight, but women to be bisexual. I think both of those gameplay mechanics illustrate (or at least point to) the author(s) idea about the world.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  > I think both of those gameplay mechanics illustrate (or at least point to) the author(s) idea about the world. For good games, I don't think so. The #1 concern of any video game is "is it fun??". Case in point: Factorio oil is infinite and a renewable resource (pumpjacks never run out). This isn't there because of some preconceived notion of infinite oil. This mechanic exists because planting new pumpjacks is far more annoying than planting iron mines / coal mines. In fact, pumpjacks are basically the only endgame mine that cannot be automated with blueprints. As such, its best to have pumpjacks pump infinite oil for the rest of time. Because it'd be too an annoying of a game if oil ran out. ---------- In the case of Factorio solar vs nuclear vs coal: the game developer made them different enough to make the difference fun to think about and fun to play with. But I don't believe it necessarily reflects upon the political opinion of the creator.
  - Uehreka 6y ago
    Huh? Pumpjacks give less oil over time. They never really run out, but eventually you’ll stop running regular trains to an oil depot because your reservoir tanks take hours to fill. Unless you have a small base and dozens of oil fields, you could never run on depleted fields alone, and thus you’re constantly needing to expand and seek out more oil fields (just like the other resource types) mimicking the way that maintaining fossil fuel based industry requires continuous petroleum exploration.
oefrha 6y ago
(2010). I distinctly remember the discussion from two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933265
- jyriand 6y ago
  Same here. Can’t really forget the city once you’ve seen it.
three_seagrass 6y ago
Is this using the SC erasing exploit? There's a bug that lets you delete a building tile but keep the building there in memory, meaning you can build over it but have all the same pops/crime/etc. Lots of megopolis SC maps use this exploit.
- logicprog 6y ago
  He says in the video that he uses no cheats.
29athrowaway 6y ago
There are no transportation issues because there is nowhere to go because everywhere is the same.
ghastmaster 6y ago
The image reminds me of Guangzhou, China. I recently looked at google earth images of Guangzhou. I then looked at images of New York City. It is incredible to me that we in the U.S. think of New York City as a sprawling metropolis when not far from the city center it is mostly single family homes on plots of land. Whereas Guangzhou has many more high rise buildings for miles and miles. Get the ruler in Google Earth and check it out.
- scott31 6y ago
  > The police state has essentially eliminated free will and allowed the city to maximize its size while reducing quality of life to a minimum — and still maintaining total control over the citizens. Sounds like China as well
  - thiagoharry 6y ago
    No, the economic growth in China is in fact vastly improving the quality of life there.
- Cactus2018 6y ago
  Guangzhou, China timelapse https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=37.79184,-122.33478,12.026,latLng&t=1.73&ps=50&bt=19840101&et=20181231&startDwell=0&endDwell=0 https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=37.79184,-122.33...
  - foota 6y ago
    China looks different than the last time I saw it.
- kyuudou 6y ago
  How many of those are actually occupied?
  - ezconnect 6y ago
    On the major cities along the yangzhou river they are mostly occupied, only on the other cities that tries to attract more investment and people they build ghost cities and there are a lot of cities in China competing for progress.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
Alphaville (circa 2000) forever rules as sim-anarchy's crowning achievement. Without moderation it quickly became saturated with the worst crimes people can come up with. The Alphaville Herald was dedicated to it; the blog continued on for years, after the sim was shut down. This Salon article references the mag https://web.archive.org/web/20040217030353/http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/12/12/sims_online_newspaper/index_np.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040217030353/http://www.salon.... Alphaville is one of my favorite pieces of internet history but it wasn't ever really documented. It's hard to find anything about it now.
- burkaman 6y ago
  I've never heard of it before, but the Alphaville Herald and all of its archives are still online: http://alphavilleherald.com/archives http://alphavilleherald.com/archives
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    Nice. Thanks!
kensai 6y ago
It is also a Civic in Beyond Earth. https://civilizationbeyondearth.gamepedia.com/Magnasanti https://civilizationbeyondearth.gamepedia.com/Magnasanti
kipchak 6y ago
Magnasanti seems like a more tangible application of the AI paperclip maximizer. A city built to maximize population reduces the pleasantness of each life.
jacksonpollock 6y ago
as a purist sim city 2000 player, i love this
schnevets 6y ago
To quote the article: Population growth is stagnant. Sims don’t need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block. Wherever they go it’s like going to the same place. ----------------------------------- Maybe OP posted this after working from home in quarantine for one week too many.
thedudeabides5 6y ago
Anyone else here play foundation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqZWxCv-_5I&list=PLIsqJzeZeGYEEho6ysI91Jprx-i6HWj96 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqZWxCv-_5I&list=PLIsqJzeZeG... Interesting game to max out, not sure if anyone has tried though...
odomojuli 6y ago
I'm surprised no one's mentioned that this is more or less a stochastic cellular automata. It's essentially a grid-based parallel computer.
Kipters 6y ago
Magnasanti in Italian sounds like "Saints' Eater". Poetic, isn't it?
finaliteration 6y ago
In a some tangential way this makes me think of Derek Parfit’s “repugnant conclusion”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/
dirtyid 6y ago
Wonder if we'll ever get planet scale Simcity for sweet Ecumenopolis planning.
alickz 6y ago
Reminds of the person who played a single Civ II match for 10 years. IIRC it ended with the Celts, Vikings, and Sioux facing off in thermonuclear war in the year 3991. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_play... https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uyswv/here_it_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uyswv/here_i...
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Curious to why it is called "Magnasanti"; possibly related to Arcosanti [0]? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti

272 points by riboflavin 6y ago

I think we can often get sucked into optimizing our life to limit the possibility of negative surprises - predictable reliable employment, reliable transportation, go-to meals, healthy habits that work for us - and then we can often end up in a reality where things are stable but potentially boring or soul-crushing. That's what the essay reminded me of - even if the city were ruthlessly efficient but with a nice park and bodega and deli in walking distance, it could still feel similarly soul-crushing. So I've been trying to think more about how to leave more room in life for "positive surprise" but that's kind of a difficult thing to optimize for. I'm open to ideas anyway!

dflock 6y ago
Go new places, explore! Doesn't have to cost money or be a big deal - just your neighbourhood/area/town on foot or bike. Or maybe Micro Adventures: https://alastairhumphreys.com/microadventures-landing/ https://alastairhumphreys.com/microadventures-landing/

Pxtl 6y ago

Kind of surprised that pollution is a problem with no roads and no industry.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago
Densely packed skyscrapers block wind maybe?

grawprog 6y ago

Not to anywhere near the level of this but i've been playing a map on city skylines where i've been trying to make it as dystopian as possible, though at first I was just trying to model my city, the sad thing is, on a superficial level, it still resembles it. Industrial areas lined with low income housing. A whole neighbourhood with schools next to oil refineries, a prison island that receives its drinking water from the sewage run off of the rest of the city, I created roads and bridges everywhere, there's several 'nice' areas along the non polluted areas of water with large mansions, there's a big bustling urban center full of office buildings and highrises not far away from squat, squalid apartments underneath highway overpasses, schools next to landfills, a lack of hospitals and fire departments, many police departments, i've intentionally clearcut as much of the forest surrounding the city as possible, the next step was to create a small gated community out away from the city, for those with money who can't handle the horrid amounts of traffic and infrastructure... I may have also accidently poisoned the whole city briefly when trying to build the prison island and killed 30% of the people there, but things have been looking up, population growth is finally starting to rise again, though the health of the population is questionable.

XaoDaoCaoCao 6y ago
That's a slice of the horror of our civilization lololol
- bluedevil2k 6y ago
  I know it's cool and trendy to trash our current society and treat it like it's the worst time to be alive in human history, but in reality there's never been a better time to be alive in the history of our species. Poverty, infant mortality, childhood mortality, crime...all at all time lows. Literacy, income levels, food quantity, public health...all at all time highs.
  - Kye 6y ago
    Purchased on the credit card of carbon release. We might get lucky and see some technological or social innovation negate or stop the coming disaster, or civilization could snap back to where it was centuries ago.
    - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
      The worst part is not the horror of mass extinctions and runaway greenhouse gasses might eventually resolve itself on geologic timescales, but that the society that rebuilt might find it impossible to get out of the stone age; much less through an industrial revolution: we've pillaged the highest-yield mines, germs have been developed into antibiotic-resistant superbugs, we've extracted the easiest-to-reach stored hydrocarbons, and replaced natural, hardy, diverse crops and the "basic 5" domestication-friendly animals with inbred monocultures.
      - troutwine 6y ago
        I do wonder how much our extractive technological culture would play to the benefit of a child society that intended to learn from us. There'd be an awful lot of material at the surface that could be recycled or repurposed, if we're talking a reboot on the order of centuries. Idle thought.

danbolt 6y ago

I think it's important to remember that a "system" in a video game is a work of art just like the game itself. The systems, in a lot of ways, reflect the ideas and thoughts of the authors of that game. Magnasati's highlights and flaws help illustrate that thinking, or what tax rates are best for doing well in the game. An example that comes to mind is Factorio, where solar panels are more tricky to operate than generators, but minimize conflict with the ingame fauna. Earlier versions of Rimworld were programmed to have men be either gay or straight, but women to be bisexual. I think both of those gameplay mechanics illustrate (or at least point to) the author(s) idea about the world.

dragontamer 6y ago
> I think both of those gameplay mechanics illustrate (or at least point to) the author(s) idea about the world. For good games, I don't think so. The #1 concern of any video game is "is it fun??". Case in point: Factorio oil is infinite and a renewable resource (pumpjacks never run out). This isn't there because of some preconceived notion of infinite oil. This mechanic exists because planting new pumpjacks is far more annoying than planting iron mines / coal mines. In fact, pumpjacks are basically the only endgame mine that cannot be automated with blueprints. As such, its best to have pumpjacks pump infinite oil for the rest of time. Because it'd be too an annoying of a game if oil ran out. ---------- In the case of Factorio solar vs nuclear vs coal: the game developer made them different enough to make the difference fun to think about and fun to play with. But I don't believe it necessarily reflects upon the political opinion of the creator.
- Uehreka 6y ago
  Huh? Pumpjacks give less oil over time. They never really run out, but eventually you’ll stop running regular trains to an oil depot because your reservoir tanks take hours to fill. Unless you have a small base and dozens of oil fields, you could never run on depleted fields alone, and thus you’re constantly needing to expand and seek out more oil fields (just like the other resource types) mimicking the way that maintaining fossil fuel based industry requires continuous petroleum exploration.

oefrha 6y ago

(2010). I distinctly remember the discussion from two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933265

jyriand 6y ago
Same here. Can’t really forget the city once you’ve seen it.

three_seagrass 6y ago

Is this using the SC erasing exploit? There's a bug that lets you delete a building tile but keep the building there in memory, meaning you can build over it but have all the same pops/crime/etc. Lots of megopolis SC maps use this exploit.

logicprog 6y ago
He says in the video that he uses no cheats.

29athrowaway 6y ago

There are no transportation issues because there is nowhere to go because everywhere is the same.

ghastmaster 6y ago

The image reminds me of Guangzhou, China. I recently looked at google earth images of Guangzhou. I then looked at images of New York City. It is incredible to me that we in the U.S. think of New York City as a sprawling metropolis when not far from the city center it is mostly single family homes on plots of land. Whereas Guangzhou has many more high rise buildings for miles and miles. Get the ruler in Google Earth and check it out.

scott31 6y ago
> The police state has essentially eliminated free will and allowed the city to maximize its size while reducing quality of life to a minimum — and still maintaining total control over the citizens. Sounds like China as well
- thiagoharry 6y ago
  No, the economic growth in China is in fact vastly improving the quality of life there.
Cactus2018 6y ago
Guangzhou, China timelapse https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=37.79184,-122.33478,12.026,latLng&t=1.73&ps=50&bt=19840101&et=20181231&startDwell=0&endDwell=0 https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=37.79184,-122.33...
- foota 6y ago
  China looks different than the last time I saw it.
kyuudou 6y ago
How many of those are actually occupied?
- ezconnect 6y ago
  On the major cities along the yangzhou river they are mostly occupied, only on the other cities that tries to attract more investment and people they build ghost cities and there are a lot of cities in China competing for progress.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

Alphaville (circa 2000) forever rules as sim-anarchy's crowning achievement. Without moderation it quickly became saturated with the worst crimes people can come up with. The Alphaville Herald was dedicated to it; the blog continued on for years, after the sim was shut down. This Salon article references the mag https://web.archive.org/web/20040217030353/http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/12/12/sims_online_newspaper/index_np.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040217030353/http://www.salon.... Alphaville is one of my favorite pieces of internet history but it wasn't ever really documented. It's hard to find anything about it now.

burkaman 6y ago
I've never heard of it before, but the Alphaville Herald and all of its archives are still online: http://alphavilleherald.com/archives http://alphavilleherald.com/archives
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  Nice. Thanks!

kensai 6y ago

It is also a Civic in Beyond Earth. https://civilizationbeyondearth.gamepedia.com/Magnasanti https://civilizationbeyondearth.gamepedia.com/Magnasanti

kipchak 6y ago

Magnasanti seems like a more tangible application of the AI paperclip maximizer. A city built to maximize population reduces the pleasantness of each life.

jacksonpollock 6y ago

as a purist sim city 2000 player, i love this

schnevets 6y ago

To quote the article: Population growth is stagnant. Sims don’t need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block. Wherever they go it’s like going to the same place. ----------------------------------- Maybe OP posted this after working from home in quarantine for one week too many.

thedudeabides5 6y ago

Anyone else here play foundation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqZWxCv-_5I&list=PLIsqJzeZeGYEEho6ysI91Jprx-i6HWj96 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqZWxCv-_5I&list=PLIsqJzeZeG... Interesting game to max out, not sure if anyone has tried though...

odomojuli 6y ago

I'm surprised no one's mentioned that this is more or less a stochastic cellular automata. It's essentially a grid-based parallel computer.

Kipters 6y ago

Magnasanti in Italian sounds like "Saints' Eater". Poetic, isn't it?

finaliteration 6y ago

In a some tangential way this makes me think of Derek Parfit’s “repugnant conclusion”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/

dirtyid 6y ago

Wonder if we'll ever get planet scale Simcity for sweet Ecumenopolis planning.

alickz 6y ago

Reminds of the person who played a single Civ II match for 10 years. IIRC it ended with the Celts, Vikings, and Sioux facing off in thermonuclear war in the year 3991. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_play... https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uyswv/here_it_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uyswv/here_i...

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

Curious to why it is called "Magnasanti"; possibly related to Arcosanti [0]? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti