
The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat Sim City - blackswan
http://www.viceland.com/blogs/uk-games/2010/05/10/the-totalitarian-buddhist-who-beat-sim-city/
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aharrison
I am truly in awe.

It routinely amazes me the lengths to which many people go to in their chosen
domain. Some people choose physics, or medicine. Some people choose Rubiks
cubes, train sets, or Sim City.

I find it hard in my day to day life to decide I will work on something for
three years to truly and utterly dominate it. Especially something such as Sim
City. I would say that I wish this gentleman had worked on curing cancer, or
rubinius, or financial modeling, but I am beginning to think that that level
of passion is non-transferable, and not something that can be taught or
imbued.

Of course, this guy is an architecture major, so maybe we will see that same
level of skill, dedication, and attention to detail come out in the real
world.

~~~
jimbokun
"Of course, this guy is an architecture major, so maybe we will see that same
level of skill, dedication, and attention to detail come out in the real
world."

God help us.

~~~
praptak
I believe that the following quote from the guy himself might indicate that he
does not want it copied in real life: "I wanted to magnify the unbelievably
sick ambitions of egotistical political dictators, ruling elites and downright
insane architects, urban planners and social engineers."

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harshpotatoes
The city reminds me of the Caves of Steel from Isaac Asimov. There are no
roads in Magnasanti, only hyper efficient subways. The population density is
extreme, nearly seven million people piled into such a small area, every
building is like a sky scraper from Manhattan. And did anybody else notice how
every building is a historical landmark? All utilities are shipped in from
neighbors.

This city is precariously hanging on the edge of destruction. I feel something
as simple as a Sim moving to a dinner on the other side of town could upset
the careful balance of food supply, but yet the city is 'perfect'.

And that is exactly what the game creator wanted. :D

~~~
stratospark
Try "The Concentration City" by J.G. Ballard. Fire and brimstone may be a
lesser hell.

~~~
harshpotatoes
That will be next on my list, I don't read enough anymore.

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jimmyjim
Can anyone explain to those who've never played Sim City before what exactly
it is that is so remarkable about the video?

~~~
nostromo
He basically found a way to build a more populous city (presumably) than
anyone else, ever. He also found a pattern that seems to keep the city crime-
free and educated with full employment and no apparent pollution. This would
take quite an investment of time without using any cheats.

Obviously the video is pure melodrama though.

~~~
vollmond
Well, no. He has a perfectly stable, high-population city, but it has none of
those things except crime-free status

"There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of
order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire
stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle - this is the price
that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a
sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims
in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social
chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a
hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been
successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-
controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years.
50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time."

edit: I knew I should have refreshed...

~~~
nano81
I don't know how the game works so this may not even be part of it, but it's
incredible if such a high density population was able to keep growing for
50,000 years without being constantly devastated by disease and epidemics,
despite not having any hospitals.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Flush toilets, mosquito control, not coughing on people and washing your hands
after pooping are much more important for preventing epidemics.

All a hospital will do is cure a small number of people in a small scale
epidemic. But lets face it, if Mangasanti is your goal, you are probably
willing to let 20 people die of preventable diseases at home.

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Groxx
Interesting article, if a little heavy in possible-subtext, and I loved the
video from the very first time I saw it.

Favorite quote by the creator:

 _As for The Sims, I enjoyed that too, although sims usually turn insane and
die horribly under my hands after a few minutes._

Dx xD

~~~
eli_s
my favorite quote: _'If anyone’s wondering, I am not autistic, or a savant,
nor suffer from OCD, or suffer from any other form of clinical mental disease
or illness for that matter.'_

hehe sounds a bit defensive to me ;)

~~~
ThomPete
Or simple observant of how other people might look at this.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Can someone please invent a game where people like this can play obsessively,
and yet the results are useful?

Can we invent a game, say, where (even if the participants don't realise it)
what they produce is a hyper-dense, hyper-efficient CPU? Or RAM? Or parallel
architecture?

~~~
lionhearted
> Can someone please invent a game where people like this can play
> obsessively, and yet the results are useful?

In terms of making productive output? Maybe not. But there's plenty of games
that'll give you a deeper appreciation of how to think and will help you
develop your character. Civilization IV will teach you a lot about how the
path of technology generally went, historical buildings and achievements, and
is good for thinking about constraints and balancing. Darklands (a DOS game
from 1992, can be downloaded for free and run on te emulator Dosbox) is a very
hard, very enjoyable game that gives a pretty good idea of the superstitions
and beliefs of medieval Germany. It's really, really hard too, you're likely
to killed a lot and have to learn how to play.

I thought Planescape: Torment was incredibly well written, as well written as
most books, and makes you think on some interesting philosophical questions.
Very original sort of game.

I play Conquer Club online a little bit, which is a Risk clone. Lots of math
and strategy. Also you get some knowledge of geography playing on the
different maps.

I try to make my consumption a little productive when possible - reading
books, watching movies, and playing games that teach me things in addition to
being enjoyable. So I'm not sure if you could make a game that caused people
to produce explicitly, but there are a fair few that you'll teach you things
of more or less value.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Yes, there are games that genuinely benefit the player. I'd like to see more
of them, too. They take a lot of work, and it's hard to make them have very
wide appeal, so the benefit to society is genuine, but small.

The idea I'd like to see gain traction is for someone, or several someones, to
write a game that may only get a small audience, but to get a truly hardcore
audience, and to have the results of the game-play to be the benefit.

To quote Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear: How hard can it be?

~~~
Semiapies
You're elected.

Let us know what you come up with.

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maxwin
He is not a "totalitarian Buddhist". The fact the he borrowed the concept of
Buddhist Wheel of life doesn't make him "totalitarian". The topic is
misleading,inconsiderate, ignorant and offensive.

~~~
jp_sc
"No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-
efficient police state keeps them in line"

~~~
pook
I think it is important to realize that he's saying this in the context of a
_game_.

Unless you claim that everyone who has ever revelled in magmaflooding a colony
of dwarves is literally a racist/totalitarian/sadist...

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sliverstorm
I'm confused. Why are macros cheating? A 'hack' that simply saves you time
sitting at the keyboard doesn't seem like a cheat, it seems like a wise life-
choice. Unless there is a time/skill factor to Sim City. Is there?

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mkramlich
not _another_ Steve Jobs thread. sheesh!

~~~
praptak
You just made it one.

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jcw
Reminds me of the interesting ways the SNES Sim City has been exploited:
<http://incise.org/advanced-sim-city-strategies.html>

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dotBen
OT, perhaps, but I didn't like the subliminal messaging/subliminal effects in
the video, which were totally unnecessary.

Did anyone else notice them?

~~~
gridspy
I think that you were supposed to notice them.

~~~
dotBen
do you not think it was a bit weird?

BTW: I'm at a bit of a loss as to why my original comment got downvoted so
much... would someone care to help me out with explaining what was wrong with
what I wrote?

~~~
thatoneguy
Subliminal messaging has largely proven to be a hoax and the downvoting is
probably the result of a heavy aversion to pseudoscience most users on this
site ostensibly possess.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli>

~~~
Retric
I don't think it's quite that clear cut.

I suspect that product placement in moves is both effective and somewhat
subliminal. The real issue is the limits on effect. Flashing messages is not
going to get someone to kill some dictator but:

"Subconscious stimuli by single words is well known to be modestly effective
in changing human behavior or emotions. This is evident by a pictorial
advertisement that portrays four different types of rum.rocks The phrase "U
Buy" was embedded somewhere, backwards in the picture. A study was done to
test the effectiveness of the alcohol ad. Before the study, participants were
able to try to identify any hidden message in the ad, none found any. In the
end, the study showed 80% of the subjects unconsciously perceived the backward
message, meaning they showed a preference for that particular rum.[2]" (From
your link:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli>)

