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Is Sim-City's Homelessness a bug or a feature?
- eplanit 12y agoI find the question posed by the title, and reflected by the text, to be puzzling: "That is, can we fix homelessness in SimCity, or because we haven't fixed homelessness as a problem in real life, therefore we are bound to lose?" Bittanti asked. "Is SimCity a reflection of what's happening in reality, and therefore is very realistic, or is it a programming issue?" A reflection? "Sim" is for "simulation", correct? It seems more relevant to write about the accuracy of the simulation algorithms, which seems praise-worthy given how the author and participants are struck by how realistic the simulations' results are, and quite notably by how the participants' response to their "homeless problems" are similar to those we see in real-world municipalities, too. Then, a discussion of using SimCity (or the like) for testing eco/socio models would be interesting. To talk about it as a software "bug" or "feature" in seems really off-the-mark, and misses an opportunity for a fruitful discussion. Perhaps the author is coming more from a perspective of class issues and hence a bias?