
When SimCity Got Serious: Story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery - danso
https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/
======
ivan_ah
On the topic of simulations, I've been learning about Modelica, which is a
engineering simulator. Basically, many real world devices can be described
using system dynamics and their behaviour codified as differential equations.
Modelica allows us to build such models, including mixed-domain models
(electrical, mechanics, thermal, chemical, etc.), then the Modelica compiler
produces highly optimized C++ code you can run to perform the simulation. It's
heavily used in the car industry in Europe, but not widely known in academia.

Here are some talks about Modelica: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvEUuc-
sWE&t=153](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvEUuc-sWE&t=153) and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39F___xyI0k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39F___xyI0k)

Here is a complete course if you want to dig in: [https://spoken-
tutorial.org/tutorial-search/?search_foss=Ope...](https://spoken-
tutorial.org/tutorial-
search/?search_foss=OpenModelica&search_language=English)

And if you're wondering "Will it emscripten and run in the browser?", the
answer is yes, of course:
[http://tshort.github.io/mdpad/mdpad.html?Modelica.Electrical...](http://tshort.github.io/mdpad/mdpad.html?Modelica.Electrical.Analog.Examples.ChuaCircuit.md)

Context: I'm researching a new book on ordinary differential equations through
various real-world simulations, so like an ODEs theory book, but actually
applying the concepts to real world systems. Get in touch by email if you're
interested in seeing advanced preview of some of the projects that will be
developed this summer. Contact info in profile.

~~~
ptrott2017
For anyone interested in exploring Modelica - Open Modelica is strongly
recommended:

[https://www.openmodelica.org/](https://www.openmodelica.org/)

Ivan - Since I regularly recommend your maths and physics books (and use and
do research with Modelica)- very very interested in this. Good luck and please
let us know when it can be pre-ordered.

~~~
ivan_ah
> [...] let us know when it can be pre-ordered.

Ah no, I'm very far from the "book draft" phase — I'm more at the "Hello
world" stage ;) I've been scoping out the hands-on projects first (e.g.
simulate electric motor, heater, AC unit, heatpump, etc). I think adding the
ODE theory will be the easy part, so I'm focussing first on the real-world
projects/applications, which might be interesting to release as standalone
blog posts to make the company blog look alive
[https://minireference.com/blog/](https://minireference.com/blog/) ;)

~~~
ptrott2017
well - will check the blog regularly and very much looking forward to reading
hello world stages :-)

------
fouc
>Chevron paid Maxis $75,000 for a prototype of a refinery simulator

> I came up and said, “How about, these concepts, principles, and their
> relation?” and they say, “Oh, John, you screwed up, look at – this is
> wrong.” And I say, “Okay. Help me understand what to do about that.” They
> did, and they taught me. And all I was doing was field work. I was asking
> questions and listening carefully. And I’d say, “What about this?” I’d look
> at a photograph of their oil refinery, and I’d say, “What’s this big pile of
> sulfur doing here?” “Oh, well you weren’t paying attention to the chemistry,
> John.”

Great story!

~~~
danso
That $75K really caught my eye. I know that is ~$140K in today's dollars, but
it still seems like a lowball number given: a) the amount of domain knowledge
and research Maxis developers needed to do, b) that this game was intended to
be a training tool for not just actual plant operators but non-technical
staff, and c) Chervon's market cap and (I assume) massive budget for doing
whatever they want.

Of course Maxis and its biz-sim division were relatively new, and the value of
games and digital simulation much different than today, but I can't imagine
that kind of corporate project today being agreed to for anything less than
$300K (in 2020 dollars)

~~~
bluedino
Project bloat.

You're right, a similar project these days would probably going into the
millions. You'd have all kinds of project managers and 'scrum leaders' and QA
and who knows what else. And people probably billed out at $60/hr back then
rather than $300.

Smaller teams, simpler products, it was a different time.

~~~
GenerocUsername
And somehow, more got done...

~~~
toast0
Smaller teams always get more done. There's no time for meetings because you
have stuff to do. :)

------
arendtio
If you want to play the old SimCity again, 'Micropolis' is what you are
looking for.

The easiest way to play it seems to be this website [1] but some Linux
distributions actually have packages for it.

[1] [http://micropolis.mostka.com/](http://micropolis.mostka.com/)

~~~
ehnto
Cities Skylines would be the best bet at a modern equivalent. They do still
make SimCity games, but they're pretty far removed from the mechanics of the
old game.

~~~
mikmeh
SC4 was the last good SC game (and has mods!). SC3k has the best music though.

------
acd
Many things can be learnt from simulating real world systems. We should make
games to simulate reduction of co2 emissions plus make them fun to play.

Cost of making misstakes in games is low you can play again experiment and
learn new behaviors with lower cost.

~~~
bluGill
Problem is all such games are subject to their assumptions. Thus whatever you
come up with, either it confirms my bias or I can attack it because of some
obscure thing you didn't account for. There are enough obscure things for me
to keep adding that you will never win (except by confirming my bias at which
time someone else will jump in).

~~~
mikepurvis
> Problem is all such games are subject to their assumptions.

Including SimCity and Cities Skylines. See:

"...through a survey of gameplay features and online discussions, I argue that
CBGs present a biased urban imaginary whose underlying rules and assumptions
often run contrary to contemporary best practices in urban planning and
policy. Working within these constraints however, players wield considerable
power to sculpt their own unique urban visions, which come to embody the
ideologies of both player and developer."

In particular around automobile-centricity:

"The illusion that additional capacity solves all transit ills is compounded
by the fact that no CBG to date has accurately portrayed the resultant demand
for parking spaces. In C: S, vehicles may park parallel along streets and in
surface parking lots adjacent to buildings. These surface parking lots are
unrealistically small, however, with 10+ story buildings often having no more
than a half-dozen (and often no) parking spaces. While it isn’t uncommon for
dense urban environments to feature subsurface parking garages, it takes a
substantial leap of faith to assume that every building in the game is
equipped in this way. So what if a CBG dared to adopt a more realistic parking
model? Steve Librande, a lead designer on SimCity 2013, is said to have
remarked, “so much of the screen would be dedicated to asphalt that it’d be
too boring to play”"

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00221341.2015.10...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00221341.2015.1070366)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> While it isn’t uncommon for dense urban environments to feature subsurface
> parking garages, it takes a substantial leap of faith to assume that every
> building in the game is equipped in this way. So what if a CBG dared to
> adopt a more realistic parking model? Steve Librande, a lead designer on
> SimCity 2013, is said to have remarked, “so much of the screen would be
> dedicated to asphalt that it’d be too boring to play”"

I mean, it's also not uncommon to have surface parking garages. You can have
15 times the parking in the same land area that way, and that's what people do
even in very thinly populated cities. Or suburban malls. It's not a choice
between "all of the parking is underground" and "all of the parking is on the
ground".

~~~
mikepurvis
Sure, but the point is that none of these games make you account for parking
or make it part of your urban planning. You don't have to build municipal
parking structures or decide whether to charge for parking, or set policies
around parking minimums in different classes of buildings. You don't have to
deal with the blight of empty parking lots, or the challenges of reclaiming
that land. There's no such thing as a park-n-ride in C:S—if you build a rapid
transit line, you don't get to realize the growth associated with the greater
density that would unlock in the real world because you were never
bottlenecked on CBD parking availability the way the real world is.

Parking is just taken for granted as plentiful and invisible, which is why
SimCity and C:S let you make a city that looks like NYC or Barcelona, but
functions under the hood like San Jose.

This is problematic because non-car tranportation modes have enough trouble
competing in the real world where these costs _are_ paid. How much harder is
it in a fantasy where they aren't?

------
ryandrake
Maybe I'm alone in this, but for reasons I can't figure out, the "city
simulation" flavor of sandbox games always leave me with this odd feeling of
empty, like I spent a whole lot of time but ultimately wasted it and have
nothing really to show for it. I can play Kerbal Space Program or Minecraft
for hours and come out of it feeling like I really created something and
enjoyed it. But after a few hours of SimCity or Cities: Skylines, I get this
odd "wow, nothing is really accomplished here" feeling. I can't really explain
it. I've tried taking breaks from the games and coming back to them, and it's
always the same feeling: Well, it's 3AM and all I have is some same-looking
buildings on nameless residential, commercial, industrial zones, unfinished
streets ending in the middle of a field somewhere and a half-working
railroad...

~~~
generj
I experience this as well. I find the game very enjoyable for a few hours.
Unfortunately the “just one more turn” effect causes me to play SimCoty,
Tropico, etc in long sessions. Towards the end of the session it just feels
like I’m working on something my boss ordered me to do. I sense that I’ve
spent the last six hours working, but for no money and no reward.

I bet if I played these games for an hour at a time this sensation would not
occur.

------
jinpan
Semi-related: I'm working on agent-based simulations for coronavirus,
exploring our individual actions affect outcomes.

In the first simulation, I take a look at single/dual shopper households and
explore how choice affects viral spread on a societal level, and then on am
individual household level.

You can check them out at
[https://coronavirus.simrnd.com/shopping_solo/](https://coronavirus.simrnd.com/shopping_solo/)

~~~
jschwartzi
You're making me want to make a simulation to explore how different behaviors
among the populace of a geographic area can influence the spread of infection.
It'd be cool to be able to set policies in a region as a behavioral control,
and to simulate processes like hearsay and news reading as a mechanism for the
spread of accurate and inaccurate information. You could have mechanics like
testing materials, ppe availability, laboratory capacity, patient turnaround,
symptom severity, et. al. control the effectiveness of different policies and
other processes.

~~~
jinpan
Yeah that would be incredibly useful for testing policy in a simulated
environment before releasing into the wild :)

One of the hardest challenges is "How do we choose realistic parameters for
how the virus spreads? Infection duration? Mortality?"

But if we can incorporate the latest research and Monte Carlo simulate with
ranges for the above parameters and find policies that are robust against
those parameters, I think it would be an enormously powerful policy tool.
Additionally, I think it could bring transparency into the decision process,
something the public lacks.

If you want to contribute to the effort I started, the simulation code is open
source at [https://github.com/jinpan/covid-
simulations](https://github.com/jinpan/covid-simulations). The engine is in
Rust, which is then compiled to wasm.

------
dbish
I'd love to see more work on real-world city simulations that allow normal
people to play around with them as well. Most realistic simulations right now
are only accessible to experts (and even those don't tend to be at a scale to
try to simulate an entire city or more). Anyone aware of others?

~~~
drkstr
I have gotten many years of enjoyment out of SC4 and the NAM Traffic Simulator
[1]

There is (or was, I suppose) a vibrant and diverse community of SC4 modders.
Really cool stuff to be found there.

[1] [https://sc4devotion.com/namdoc/feature-guides/traffic-
sim/tr...](https://sc4devotion.com/namdoc/feature-guides/traffic-sim/traffic-
sim.html)

~~~
drkstr
Sorry to double post, but I'm amazed that I seem to be the only one here who
knows of this gem.

I mean, just look into the level of detail he puts into his writeup on the
pathfinding algos [1]. SC4 is a whole region simulator with multi-city
economics in play. Runs in Linux on Wine. Best damned $20 I ever spent.

[1]
[https://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=10261.0](https://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=10261.0)

------
aasasd
I keep wondering if there's a business simulation game, or a gamey simulation,
that requires me to deal with the actual business side of things, instead of
placing roads and snack stands. Like, to negotiate supply and demand (for
b2b), build out relations in support of products, pay attention to marketing
costs and otherwise flex the MBA and economic-theory muscles.

Because, dunno about SimCity, but Theme Hospital, RCT and TTD prepared me for
running a business about as much as Q3 prepared me for commanding a SWAT team.
And modern ‘business simulators’ that I see around look like shovelware
variations on those three.

~~~
salawat
That seems like one of those things that by their nature are extremely
unlikely to come about, seeing as to have a decent "win" condition you'd have
to be able to understand what makes a winning business in real life.

Either no one wants to out their trade secret sauce; or there really isn't
anyone that knows how.

Now I bet you could maybe stealth it by pitching a business "failure"
simulator. Even then Though you may run into the same issues.

I'd also play the hell out of it. No MBA, but I absolutely love unintuitive
optimization problems, and playing with hypotheticals.

I just have the feeling that if we knew enough to convincingly gamify it, it
may not necessarily be a game worth playing when you could be doing the real
thing instead.

I'm laughing at the mental image of contests wherein people bring their pet
company in for evaluation for entry into a business program or something.

~~~
Nasrudith
Well conditions also aren't homogeneous, uniform, or exhaustively known which
makes tbings better and worse.

For a real life vs simulation example: there isn't much practical use in
knowing how to be successful in building the first rail lines for instance -
they have been there for centuries now the conditions aren't the same at all.

------
illuminated
SimCity is what got me interested in the IT decades ago and it's one of the
two games I have ever bought (the second being Civilization) and played (not
counting Tetris :) ). It will always have a special value for me.

~~~
asdff
I wish they ported SC4 to 64 bit. Unplayable on MacOS since Catalina.

~~~
gbear605
They did! It came out back in February

~~~
asdff
Only the mac app store version, not for steam :(

------
onemoresoop
Great read. I absolutely loved this story. I was a teenager when I first
played Sim City and remember fondly how amazed I was back then at the
possibilities for the future then. It certainly felt like adding a
continuation that this story added to. We need to nurture more people like
John Hiles and make sure they don't get devoured by narcissistic psychopaths
in business suits. Again, thanks for posting this, I enjoyed very much
listening to this story.

------
jdofaz
"Cities: Skylines" is one of the free PlayStation plus games this month. I've
had as much fun playing it as I did with SimCity 2000

------
icedchai
I remember getting SimCity for my Amiga, probably in mid 1989. It was one of
my favorite games from that time. Populous was another one I enjoyed...

~~~
rikroots
Yes. I wasted a massive amount of time on that game - though personally I
never considered that time wasted!

My other favourite time waster on the Amiga was Theme Park -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Park_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Park_\(video_game\))

------
KCUOJJQJ
>You were meant to destroy everything once in a while.

>This was even the main takeaway for some people. [...] SimCity 2000 [...]

Nooo! I didn't like the disasters in SC2000. If your city becomes too bad a
delegation of citizens _gently escorts_ you from your mayor's office[1] (game
over). Also, getting disasters under control takes work and there is no
progress in the city during disasters.

If there is a fire, I had to place firefighters around the fire. Sometimes it
made sense to take the bulldozer and remove structures, which would have been
fuel for the fire. I hope people didn't miss their houses :^). After I had
successfully learned how to always get the different disasters under control,
I disabled them in a menu.

BTW I wish a Windows emulator with SimCity2000 for Windows would be sold.
Right now only the DOS version is sold.

[1]
[https://www.simtropolis.com/objects/attachments/monthly_2016...](https://www.simtropolis.com/objects/attachments/monthly_2016_06/SC2K_GameOver.jpg.9fe759b9d78033d1f7313285297c98ca.jpg)

~~~
karatestomp
The fun was stacking earthquakes and volcanos. Simulated meteor strike! Or
mashing "hurricane" like 10x in a row followed by a few tornados to give you a
superstorm that'd flood most of the map and leave 80% of your city leveled.
Once a city got to a point I didn't really care to build more, recovering from
superdisasters was where the fun was at (for me).

------
meddlepal
This entire article just made me nostalgic and sad for Maxis. Thanks EA.

~~~
hinkley
I really wanted to see Will take another stab at crowdsourced content (other
games do this in a much subtler way), but I haven't heard a peep.

He lead the Spore project shortly after the EA buyout didn't he? I wouldn't be
surprised if that gave him some burnout.

~~~
meddlepal
It's sad, but it seems Will Wright has largely checked out from game design.
He's probably enjoying his money and his family.

------
eastbayjake
I can't find any business simulation companies that do graphics the way
Maxis/MBS did. It seems like most business simulations today are dashboard-
driven: for example, Cesim offers a retail store simulation where you move the
unit price toggle and then the sales volume meter goes down while the profit
meter goes up[1] but there's no "SimStore"-type visual model where you can see
agent-based shoppers bopping around while filling their carts.

Are there any business sims that offer graphical models? (Don't those seem
more fun -- and thus more effective -- for employees to play and learn?)

[1] [https://www.cesim.com/simulations/cesim-retail-store-
managem...](https://www.cesim.com/simulations/cesim-retail-store-management-
simulation-game)

------
gryson
This is an excellent piece of research on game history by Phil Salvador. Well
worth reading.

------
griffinkelly
I loved SimAnt and SimTower as a kid. I spent days playing those games, as
well as SimCity.

~~~
milesvp
SimEarth really taught me the importance of critical mass. You could peter out
if you didn’t marshal your resources to reach the next stage of the game.

Oxygen Not Included is my simulation game of choice atm. It really punishes
you if you don’t realize how quickly you’ll deplete some finite resource.

------
Evidlo
> Jeff Braun was the only manager for a staff of 32 people – even for the
> financial staff, a problem that was swiftly corrected after Maxis got
> audited by the IRS.

Why does the IRS care how one organizes their company?

~~~
Nasrudith
That might imply incompetence on their financial staff's part and his
inability to handle it properly. That or maybe dumb local tax codes like based
on job titles.

------
hinkley
> The game was inspired by research on real-world urban planning concepts

This is not the anecdote I'm familiar with. My understanding was that Will (or
someone else) noticed that people were having a little too much fun farting
around in a content creation tool they had written in-house and they decided
to make it into a game of its own.

~~~
skymt
The concept for SimCity was inspired by how much fun Wright had playing around
with the map design tool for Raid on Bungeling Bay. The _design_ of SimCity
was inspired by Wright's research on urban planning and system dynamics during
its development.

~~~
hinkley
I think I am using a different definition of "inspired" than the author.

Your inspiration for the love song you just wrote is the special someone you
have your eye on. The lyrics are _informed_ by every other case of New
Relationship Energy you have ever had, with bits borrowed from friends, books,
and movies.

Was Will really studying urban planning for giggles, put 2 and 2 together and
got 5? Or was he working on a hunch about a city planning game and what he
found cemented his hunch?

~~~
jacques_chester
IIRC it was partly inspired by Forrester's _Urban Dynamics_.

------
mistrial9
no one mentions "real life USA" modelling, like
[https://urbansim.com/home](https://urbansim.com/home)

