Very interesting article, with lots of food for thought. I find it fascinating that you can think of an interesting simulation with fun gameplay, but without a

Very interesting article, with lots of food for thought. I find it fascinating that you can think of an interesting simulation with fun gameplay, but without a good UI, and that therefore won't work as a game. I also liked the idea that the user's mental model of the game is not necessarily represented by the actual code running the simulation. But if one "closes the gap", Scott McCloud style, then it's good enough! Also, I must say that I really liked SimCity (classic, the only one I really played) but also loved SimAnt, which the article (or Wright, actually) calls "too simple". I dunno, I really liked it. You could even play as the spider and hunt ants! You just had to be careful, because a single ant is prey for the spider, but a bunch of ants become the predators. Finally, for all of its technical achievements, I never really liked The Sims or any of its variants. It seemed impressive but what is the gameplay? Seemed like a variation on tamagotchis, and so I never got the urge to really play it even back when it was all the rage.