37 ms·

Building SimCity: How to put the world in a machine

440 points by jarmitage 2y ago

juice_bus 2y ago
The ebook is $4.99 more expensive than the physical copy - wild.
- crtasm 2y ago
  and "6 x 9 in", I thought only PDFs were fixed sizes :) https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537759/minitel/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537759/minitel/ is $39.99 ebook, $40 paperback, but $35 hardcover. bizarre pricing.
  - mtillman 2y ago
    big pdf: https://alexwlchan.net/files/2024/universe.pdf https://alexwlchan.net/files/2024/universe.pdf
- solalf 2y ago
  And the paperback is $50. What happened here?
  - Shadowmist 2y ago
    100 color photo pages
- yyhhsj0521 2y ago
  The Kindle version is $36
benbreen 2y ago
Reading this now and really enjoying it. Here's a brief review from Stewart Brand: https://twitter.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003 https://twitter.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003
- neonate 2y ago
  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1800941614287946003.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1800941614287946003.html
noahlt 2y ago
[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.]
- ziggy_star 2y ago
  He then went on to do Spore. Here is a pre-release talk from 2005: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6YWVTURU 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.
curiousgal 2y ago
What's the point of posting a book listing? A review or an analysis would have been more interesting.
- atan2 2y ago
  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.
atan2 2y ago
I tried to look it up but I am still not sure if this book discusses SimCity's programming or not.
- chaimgingold 2y ago
  Yes. There's a whole chapter on this with tons of diagrams, not code.
  - atan2 2y ago
    Thank you for the quick reply.
    - DonHopkins 2y ago
      Code is here: https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/tree/main/MicropolisEngine/src https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/tree/main/Microp...
thenthenthen 2y ago
This should have been a game
szvsw 2y ago
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-nature https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520208001/silicon-second-na...
- chaimgingold 2y ago
  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.
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    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 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 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 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/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1284446 https://app.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehis...
BoredPositron 2y ago
Whenever Maxis comes up I always imagine some government simulations running on refined models but still using the SimCity 2000 interface.
otteromkram 2y ago
Is this an advertisement?
SillyUsername 2y ago
Price seems a bit steep. Needs to lower taxes for me to buy it.
sillysaurusx 2y ago
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?
- yellow_postit 2y ago
  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.
  - sillysaurusx 2y ago
    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.
  - Retric 2y ago
    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.
YesBox 2y ago
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/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
- mysterydip 2y ago
  Game looks great and is on my wishlist!
  - YesBox 2y ago
    Thanks for the WL!
- jakemauer 2y ago
  Woah this is awesome, added it to my wishlist.
  - YesBox 2y ago
    Thank you!
- CSMastermind 2y ago
  Other than the retro art style what are the main ideas you have going in that you want to implement in the game?
  - YesBox 2y ago
    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
chaimgingold 2y ago
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.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  Your lunch is 8 months old?
  - chaimgingold 2y ago
    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.)
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      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...
- ryani 2y ago
  Hi Chaim! I really enjoyed working with you on Spore. What have you been up to in the intervening years besides writing this book?
  - chaimgingold 2y ago
    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 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.
    - 2y ago
Keyframe 2y ago
First world problem, I know, but when did we stop getting an ebook along side a purchase of a paper copy?
- gs17 2y ago
  It shows the ebook by itself as more expensive than the paperback, which is a first for me.
trilinearnz 2y ago
Is this about the original Sim City, Sim City 2000, or does it cover all of them in a general way?
- chaimgingold 2y ago
  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.
kaveh_h 2y ago
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?
- mistermann 2y ago
  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.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  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 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_-x0sxs6dFfeJr28DIxufU/edit?usp=sharing 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" -dang https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660693
faizshah 2y ago
Can anyone recommend any other books like this where it is both a history/ethnography and covers the actual technical details/code?
- chaimgingold 2y ago
  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/ 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-DilemmaThe-Secret-World-of-Videogame 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.
wigster 2y ago
just want to say thanks for spore - my son's favourite for a long time.
- chaimgingold 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing this!
sztanko 2y ago
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

440 points by jarmitage 2y ago

juice_bus 2y ago

The ebook is $4.99 more expensive than the physical copy - wild.

crtasm 2y ago
and "6 x 9 in", I thought only PDFs were fixed sizes :) https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537759/minitel/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537759/minitel/ is $39.99 ebook, $40 paperback, but $35 hardcover. bizarre pricing.
- mtillman 2y ago
  big pdf: https://alexwlchan.net/files/2024/universe.pdf https://alexwlchan.net/files/2024/universe.pdf
solalf 2y ago
And the paperback is $50. What happened here?
- Shadowmist 2y ago
  100 color photo pages
yyhhsj0521 2y ago
The Kindle version is $36

benbreen 2y ago

Reading this now and really enjoying it. Here's a brief review from Stewart Brand: https://twitter.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003 https://twitter.com/stewartbrand/status/1800941614287946003

neonate 2y ago
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1800941614287946003.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1800941614287946003.html

noahlt 2y ago

[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.]

ziggy_star 2y ago
He then went on to do Spore. Here is a pre-release talk from 2005: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6YWVTURU 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.

curiousgal 2y ago

What's the point of posting a book listing? A review or an analysis would have been more interesting.

atan2 2y ago
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.

atan2 2y ago

I tried to look it up but I am still not sure if this book discusses SimCity's programming or not.

chaimgingold 2y ago
Yes. There's a whole chapter on this with tons of diagrams, not code.
- atan2 2y ago
  Thank you for the quick reply.
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    Code is here: https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/tree/main/MicropolisEngine/src https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/tree/main/Microp...

thenthenthen 2y ago

This should have been a game

szvsw 2y ago

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-nature https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520208001/silicon-second-na...

chaimgingold 2y ago
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.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  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 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 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 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/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1284446 https://app.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehis...

BoredPositron 2y ago

Whenever Maxis comes up I always imagine some government simulations running on refined models but still using the SimCity 2000 interface.

otteromkram 2y ago

Is this an advertisement?

SillyUsername 2y ago

Price seems a bit steep. Needs to lower taxes for me to buy it.

sillysaurusx 2y ago

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?

yellow_postit 2y ago
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.
- sillysaurusx 2y ago
  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.
- Retric 2y ago
  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.

YesBox 2y ago

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/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/

mysterydip 2y ago
Game looks great and is on my wishlist!
- YesBox 2y ago
  Thanks for the WL!
jakemauer 2y ago
Woah this is awesome, added it to my wishlist.
- YesBox 2y ago
  Thank you!
CSMastermind 2y ago
Other than the retro art style what are the main ideas you have going in that you want to implement in the game?
- YesBox 2y ago
  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

chaimgingold 2y ago

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.

LoganDark 2y ago
Your lunch is 8 months old?
- chaimgingold 2y ago
  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.)
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    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...
ryani 2y ago
Hi Chaim! I really enjoyed working with you on Spore. What have you been up to in the intervening years besides writing this book?
- chaimgingold 2y ago
  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 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.
  - 2y ago

Keyframe 2y ago

First world problem, I know, but when did we stop getting an ebook along side a purchase of a paper copy?

gs17 2y ago
It shows the ebook by itself as more expensive than the paperback, which is a first for me.

trilinearnz 2y ago

Is this about the original Sim City, Sim City 2000, or does it cover all of them in a general way?

chaimgingold 2y ago
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.

kaveh_h 2y ago

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?

mistermann 2y ago
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.
DonHopkins 2y ago
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 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_-x0sxs6dFfeJr28DIxufU/edit?usp=sharing 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" -dang https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660693

faizshah 2y ago

Can anyone recommend any other books like this where it is both a history/ethnography and covers the actual technical details/code?

chaimgingold 2y ago
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/ 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-DilemmaThe-Secret-World-of-Videogame 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.

wigster 2y ago

just want to say thanks for spore - my son's favourite for a long time.

chaimgingold 2y ago
Thanks for sharing this!

sztanko 2y ago

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