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My point is more that SimCity doesn't attempt to model a complex dynamical system at all. It just defines certain aggregate relationships as true. That approach
by mjn 14y ago
My point is more that SimCity doesn't attempt to model a complex dynamical system at all. It just defines certain aggregate relationships as true. That approach can be fun for a game, but also encodes ideological assumptions— not facts, but simplified models.
If you try to build a dynamical system as the model, things get weird very fast. Even in simple ones you can build as toys, there is a lot of system-internal behavior: there are feedback loops, oscillations, attractors. Minor changes can have significant counterintuitive effects, if they dampen or excite various resonances in the system (which we're assuming here is a stand-in for "economics of a city"). That kind of Sim City I'd be very interested in. :)
But would it be a fun game? Quite possibly not: players really tend not to find complex and chaotic simulations very fun, when the knobs affect the outcome in ways that are too indirect. Chris Crawford found that in a few of the games he made: a lot of players found Balance of the Planet, which tried to model all sorts of complex ecological effects, frustrating at best.
- KVFinn 14y ago>If you try to build a dynamical system as the model, things get weird very fast. Even in simple ones you can build as toys, there is a lot of system-internal behavior: there are feedback loops, oscillations, attractors. They kinda sorta tried this in SimCity 5 and it's at least partially responsible for how broken the simulation is at this point. They ended up having to hack in a bunch of things to keep it stable and it is still producing some bizarre results a couple of months after release. >But would it be a fun game? Quite possibly not: players really tend not to find complex and chaotic simulations very fun, when the knobs affect the outcome in ways that are too indirect. It's pretty fun games like Dwarf Fortress. You can essentially trace the downfall of an entire Dwarf Civilization to pet cat dying and setting off a ridiculous chain of events. I think it helps that the expectation coming into that game is, "Losing is fun." so players roll with it.