

Is Sim-City's Homelessness a bug or a feature? - gdubs
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/is-simcity-homelessness-a-bug-or-a-feature

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eplanit
I 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?

