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Game Review: SimCity (1989)

There exists a longstanding fallacy that games must follow a certain linear structure or incorporate the progression of some story. For example, Super Mario Bros centers around Mario’s path towards saving Princess Peach; gamers follow a pre-constructed route to move from one world to the next, each time coming closer to completing the objective of rescuing the princess. In complete contrast to Salen and Zimmerman’s definition of a game, which they define as a “system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome,” SimCity provides gamers with an unprecedented level of freedom that others in the gaming industry adopted after its success (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). SimCity represents a form of emergent narrative, as the gamer designs the story and becomes the sole narrative architect of the game. For example, one player could choose to build their city and allow it to blossom by managing budget levels and resources, while another could choose to inflict disasters upon their city, such as plane crashes and earthquakes. In giving gamers god-like control of the outcome, this game was revolutionary at the time of its initial release in 2013, and it popularized “possibility spaces” in future generations of video games like Civilization and GTA.


Though, at first glance, SimCity appears to be open-ended city building game, Will Wright subtly incorporates many social, political and economic issues for gamers to better understand the intricacies of urban planning. Consider the municipal tax rate. If you decide to increase the tax rate substantially, you will soon see the population of your town drop. In SimCity, players are always faced with a tradeoff that can affect the outcome of their creation. What is the optimal number of power plants to ensure that the city’s residents have power? What is the optimal number of nuclear power plants to ensure that pollution doesn’t drive our citizens away? Ultimately, Will Wright leads gamers to question which elements make a sustainable city, allowing for significant lessons that are transferable to our world today.


Though many believe that SimCity provides a realistic depiction of municipal planning, as supported by the elements discussed above, it has its flaws. If played with the intention of developing a thriving community, the game seems to provide a utopian version of cities. In SimCity, players are rewarded for acting prudently in their creation of a city. For example, gamers can immediately bulldoze a coal plant if they notice that they can afford a cleaner nuclear plant or can eliminate residential properties if they notice that the population is decreasing. This ability to respond immediately to the concerns of the city, and economically allocate resources to ensure that the community benefits, is an antithesis to US cities today. In many cities, urban development is spearheaded by private enterprises, who seek to pursue their interests, often at the expense of the community. This misalignment between the interests of private companies and public interest is not represented within the game, thus providing a utopian, unrealistic approach to constructing a city.


While the debate regarding the realism of SimCity is still tenuous, no one can deny Will Wright’s revolutionary tactics in creating a new style of gaming that would prompt other developers to implement their own versions of open-ended games.


References

Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. The MIT Press, 2010.


SimCity[Video Game]. 1989. United States: Nintendo 64

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