
Magnasanti: Large and Terrifying SimCity (2010) - ingve
https://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/10/14/magnasanti-the-largest-and-most-terrifying-simcity/
======
pm90
Heh. It reminded me of Kowloon Walled City [0]

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City)

~~~
degenerate
There is a fantastic inside-view of Kowloon Walled City from this 20 minute
BBC documentary (1980):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooQjAYJQ-
xM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooQjAYJQ-xM)

~~~
radicaldreamer
If you're ever in Hong Kong, I highly recommend taking a few hours to explore
Chungking Mansions, the spiritual successor to the Kowloon Walled City... not
your typical tourist attraction, but one you'll remember far longer than most.

~~~
contingencies
I was right outside this afternoon. Someone offered me a tailor, then cocaine.

~~~
mlrtime
I can vouch for a really great tailor right off nathan road if anyone needs a
recommendation, friends of the family for over 10 years.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
But what about the cocaine?

------
xhrpost
Pushing games to their limits, reminded me of the 210 day roller coaster for
Roller Coaster Tycoon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aje-
DrGpvKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aje-DrGpvKs)

~~~
levesque
Honestly that looks like the most boring roller coaster ever invented by man.
I prefer the Sim City one, with its strong dystopian vibes ;)

~~~
downer68
Mr. Bones Wild Ride is a funnier version of the same roller coaster concept.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix-
aVhIgBO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix-aVhIgBO4) (the ride never ends)

------
timdiggerm
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780415)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1352864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1352864)

------
csomar
Mine was only 2.6million in population but definitively nicer:
[https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/90226/my-city-
is-...](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/90226/my-city-is-in-a-
chronic-recession)

It got into a chronic recession. The city became a ghost town at some point
despite having a massive population.

It is a shame that I didn't have a backup for that particular city (no dropbox
back then)

------
everdev
What's almost more amazing is that the developer spent 1.5 years planning and
3 years developing.

I find it absurd but also inspiring that someone can devote that much time and
energy to a hobby or unfunded personal research project.

~~~
lalos
How many hours in 4.5 years does an average Netflix users spend? Seems absurd
to spend that time consuming than creating your own content.

~~~
chii
it's much easier to consume content, and it produces endorphines just the
same.

Creating content (or any creative endeavour) is hard, and most people don't
like hard work.

------
kaennar
Has there ever been a study of the gamification of city building? Or rather
the results thereof?

E.g. give a simulator the current population and layout of NYC with the
current influx of people with a budget and see what the results are? It would
be fascinating to see people try and "beat" the high scores on different
cities (i.e. Austin would be an easy level, Boston harder, and NYC the hardest
level, etc.). Then we could collate what worked and what didn't without dumb
projects like the Mopac Expressway.

Either way I'd play that game.

~~~
bertr4nd
> dumb projects like Mopac

OT, but, er, what's wrong with Mopac? I didn't really have any problems with
it while I lived in Austin, but it's been quite a while now.

~~~
CamTin
They've spent the past several years on a massively expensive project to add
ONE lane of traffic in each direction, rather than a high-volume mass transit
artery like it needs.

~~~
kaennar
And it doesn't even work! I took the toll a few months ago because I needed to
head North for a meeting, but the thing was moving slower than actual traffic
from all the people merging/leaving it.

The construction lobby strikes again I guess...

------
Robotbeat
This is why we need to research arcologies. The end goal isn’t supposed to be
stagnation at mid-20th-Century development, but space exploration.

I guess I’ll think about this every time someone says, “But why don’t we just
focus on solving the problems on Earth, first?”

This guy did “solve” those problems.

~~~
throwawayhz8
So we need space exploration because someone made a depressing SimCity city?

------
staplers

      Sims don’t need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block. Wherever they go it’s like going to the same place.
    

Sounds like modern urban development with minimalist cafes and hanging-air-
plant boutiques.

~~~
xtreme
Sounds like the dream city of strongtowns.org.

------
otakucode
Many do not see the artistic expression in games. That includes many game
creators. They create fictional worlds that have to be inherently woven from
their own beliefs about how the world works, and they don't even think they're
making any kind of a statement. I've always actually thought of SimCity
specifically when considering this. You hire more police, and crime is
reduced. The creators clearly had absolutely no concern with oppression. They
had no historical sense or failed to recognize that there's actually a reason
that there has never been, and will never be, a happy, productive police
state.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
The old Sierra games (Caesar III and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, at
least, but I think others also) worked in a more realistic manner. If you had
some "police" crime went down, but if you had too many, dissatisfaction among
the population went up and eventually you might end up with a rebellion in
your hands, which could wreak serious damage to the city with people running
around with torches and setting fire to everything.

------
fancyfish
Thanks for sharing. I would love if SC3K or 2K had some sort of API to allow
bots to control the game. Would love to see some AI-generated hellish
landscapes (to see what I have to look forward to?).

~~~
sschueller
Could be added to the open source version
[https://github.com/rage8885/OpenSC2K](https://github.com/rage8885/OpenSC2K)

------
freeflight
That's so cool on multiple levels. As a gamer, with some OCD issues, this is
really impressive just from the "It looks so neat and perfect!" level.

But from an "artsy" point of view, this is so much more, it's actually saying
something. And all that by just playing the game like it's intended (mostly),
no modding at all, just working with what's there and trying to min-max the
given systems.

~~~
rhombocombus
It's really bleak, really awesome art. Whether it wass intentional or not it
really makes one think about how zero-sum and exploitative a lot of our
activities are.

------
mv4
Horrifying indeed. Like Kowloon Walled City (1) on steroids. I've always been
fascinated with extreme structures like that.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City)

------
spopejoy
> I wanted to magnify the unbelievably sick ambitions of egotistical political
> dictators, ruling elites and downright insane architects, urban planners and
> social engineers.

Reminded me of Plan Voisin: [http://www.businessinsider.com/le-corbusiers-
plan-voisin-for...](http://www.businessinsider.com/le-corbusiers-plan-voisin-
for-paris-2013-7)

Facism appealed to Le Corbusier and some other modernists (Mies van der Rohe),
partially because they hoped it would lead to top-down huge projects like the
Plan, or Brasilia ([https://bombmagazine.org/articles/a-day-in-
brasilia/](https://bombmagazine.org/articles/a-day-in-brasilia/))

~~~
baud147258
I would have like that the Plan was put into action, I was yesterday in the
area concerned and not much has changed since Corbusier's time.

------
goatlover
In the first Blade Runner movie with the voice over version, Deckard says that
LA has 106 million people in 2019. The visuals for both movies do show a super
compacted city similar to Magnasanti, with presumably a similar quality of
life.

~~~
oblio
Greater LA covers 86k sqkm and has 18.7 million people, for a density of 200
people per sqkm.

At London’s density (about 1000 people per sqkm), LA would have ~95 million
inhabitants. Close to Deckard’s estimate.

And though I don’t like London much, it doesn’t seem hellish to me.

~~~
woobar
I am not sure you can equate a Greater LA CSA to a city. CSA includes multiple
cities (and some deserts) that are ~200km apart.

Densities in these cities are not so outrageously different. ~5,600/sqkm in
London vs ~3,300/sqkm in LA

------
acdanger
Reminds me of the 10-year long game of Civilization II.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_play...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/)

~~~
vqc
Has there been any updates in the past five years?

~~~
executesorder66
There was a whole subreddit[0] dedicated to it. And multiple people 'solved'
it.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/](https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/)

~~~
freeflight
Gotta love how the easiest solution boiled down to a WarGames WOPR style:
"Don't do anything, let the AI kill you and peace will be declared in about 20
turns." aka "The only winning move is not to play."

------
alvar0
China's big cities today are on their way to becoming just like that. Police
presence and surveillance cameras, workers that don't move much past their
neighborhood, good public transit, pollution, propaganda.

~~~
pm90
A very good observation, actually. The history of China has always been that
of a very strong Central State managing the mainland. With the advances in
technology in the future, the State will surely consider this form of urbanism
"ideal": concentrate the population in dense urban areas, while the rural
hinterland is farmed/mined by automated machines supervised by a few highly
trained engineers.

They could even promote the dense urban clusters as "utopia" at first,
attracting most of the populace. Once they are in, the conditions of the city
would slowly deteriorate; but a population that was born in the city and never
moved beyond a few blocks would just not know that there is anything better.

~~~
megaman22
Hopefully there isn't one of the cyclical collapses that China has also
historically experienced any time soon, where that central authority atrophies
and splinters into warring regions. Rebellion and warlordism always results in
a lot of dead people and massive destruction when the centralized government
falls apart in China.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll)

~~~
pm90
That could most certainly happen again. Usually the way previous empires have
broken up though is by keeping aloof of the rest of the world, resulting in
the State not keeping abreast of developments in the rest of the world.

The current regime seems to be acutely aware of this and has been actively
spreading Chinese influence (and finances) over the rest of the world.

~~~
megaman22
Is that really the usual case, or just the narrative of the Qing dynasty?

There's a lot of mismanagement and climactic shifts in the pre-modern period.
Often those are tied together, with failures of the hydrological
infrastructure. But another common thread is high imbalances in male/female
populations, leading to lots of disaffected young men, and millenarian
religious movements.

------
anderspitman
Is the name a nod to Arcosanti[0]? I grew up about 10 minutes from there.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti)

~~~
telchar
Yes, it's mentioned in the video mentioned in the article.

------
deviationblue
An extension of the idea behind the article here, if maximizing share holder
value is the goal:
[https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995](https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995)

------
carapace
"When a city has grown so overlarge and crowded that it is in immediate danger
of collapse...when food and clean water flow into the city at a rate just
sufficient to feed every mouth, and every hand must work constantly to keep it
that way...when all transportation is involved in moving vital supplies, and
none is left over to move people out of the city should the need arise...then
it is that Crazy Eddie leads the movers of garbage out on strike for better
working conditions."

From Niven's "The Mote in God's Eye"

------
49bc
How can this work with no fire stations? Won’t a single fire wipe the entire
city out?

------
wufufufu
This isn't the max population though, is it? It'd be interesting to see neural
nets play this game given different win conditions.

------
Robotbeat
An American version of this would be an endless freeway interchange system. No
parks, and hospitals too expensive to use, no actual housing as it’s so
expensive that everyone just lives in their cars stuck in one giant traffic
jam. Like this one, plenty of police.

------
partycoder
There are no transportation issues because there is nowhere to go because
everywhere is the same.

------
brianbreslin
Tangentially related: Is there a new version of SimCity that isn't mobile
based? The controls were so clunky on mobile, that made it not very fun to
play. This strikes me as the perfect game for a browser based multi-player
ecosystem.

~~~
badloginagain
You might want to check out City: Skylines. Intuitive controls, deep
mechanics, and thriving mod community. Some of the stuff on r/cityskylines is
pretty amazing.

~~~
mikepurvis
My only complaint is that it really does need a proper GPU. Zoom out much and
it starts to chug on my 2014-vintage MBP. Admittedly that's not super modern,
but we're also talking about a game that came out in 2015.

~~~
badloginagain
CS was built on the Unity Engine, which is popular in part because you can get
quite far with poorly optimized code.

------
slezakattack
Reading this made me think a lot about "Brave New World". The beginning of the
book triumphantly describes the conditioning of newborns to optimize economic
contribution. A really good but dark read.

~~~
magduf
The idea of deliberately stunting embryos' development to have enough dummies
to do the boring jobs probably made some sense in 1949, but obviously ignores
the rise of automation, which even back then was on the radar with a lot of
sci-fi depicting robots handling mundane or dangerous tasks. With sufficient
automation, we don't need idiots to do boring jobs, so hopefully this would
never come to pass.

However, the idea of making the state responsible for reproduction and child-
rearing is promising, considering how awful so many parents are, and the fact
that economically comfortable people generally don't have enough kids to
maintain the population.

~~~
monadgonad
>However, the idea of making the state responsible for reproduction and child-
rearing is promising, considering how awful so many parents are, and the fact
that economically comfortable people generally don't have enough kids to
maintain the population.

I've seen some out-there political opinions on HN, but I never thought I'd see
someone calling a totalitarian eugenics program "promising".

And that's not hyperbole. "Making the state responsible for reproduction"
necessarily means them deciding who can and can't reproduce, which is
literally eugenics.

~~~
magduf
Ok then, what's your plan for dealing with a population implosion caused by
people simply not wanting to have kids any more? Every industrialized nation
is seeing this now, and only avoiding population implosion because of
immigration, which is not a long-term solution to the problem (eventually
everyone will reach some kind of wealth parity, and history shows that
sufficiently wealthy modern societies don't produce enough children).

The only alternative plan I can think of is to hope that anti-aging treatments
advance enough so that people live much, much longer lives, thus greatly
reducing the need for replacement people (instead of increasing the birth
rate, decrease the death rate). But this is just sci-fi at this point.

As a hypothetical situation, imagine that, for some strange reason, all
immigration between countries was suddenly stopped magically, so they had to
either come up with some new solution to get people to have more kids, or face
population decline and the economic problems that come with that. What's your
solution to this? Forcing citizens to have more children at gunpoint sounds a
lot worse than having the state create and raise children (which, BTW, does
not necessarily mean that private individuals/couples are prevented from
having their own children; I never advocated preventing people from
reproducing).

~~~
triangleman
On the one hand you have people on this site advocating for UBI to make up for
lost jobs due to automation, and on the other hand you are saying there is
going to be a population implosion and that is bad and something needs to be
done. Can't we just do nothing if both of these scenarios are likely?

~~~
magduf
Non sequitur. Even if both are true, it doesn't follow that the reduction in
population will cover the loss of jobs to automation. If you posit this,
you're basically assuming that the people who remain will all be extremely
skilled and talented people who'll all have jobs and not be in danger of their
jobs being automated. It doesn't work that way. Much of the population, no
matter how large or small, is going to be only suited for simpler jobs like
truck driving where robots will be taking them over before too long. People
not having enough kids isn't going to change that fact.

------
lordnacho
> Sims don’t need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just
> within walking distance.

Working from home, of course! Surely the Magnasantonians run their public
service infrastructure in the neighbouring areas from their laptop, the few
that are required to maintain it.

With the density of your average block I'd imagine the police force has way
more applicants than they need.

------
intrasight
Most interesting thing I've found on HN in several days. I think that artistic
expression through technology is underappreciated.

------
pradn
There's a socialist critique of SimCity here.
[https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/les-
simerables](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/les-simerables)

The article argues that SimCity encodes a set of neoliberal assumptions into
its game play that make imagining other forms of city-building impossible.

~~~
viburnum
You know how messed up SimCity is when you're trying to make a place like
Copenhagen or Barcelona but it's always pushing you to make San Jose.

~~~
ascagnel_
I think that's a great example of implicit bias -- SimCity/Maxis has
traditionally been located in northern California, and as such its modeled
after cities in that region.

~~~
clairity
a lot of the buildings are in southern california. i walk by the equitable
building all the time. =)

------
dom96
That's interesting. I've been listening to the Koyaanisqatsi song for a while
and absolutely loving it, I never realised that it's a movie as well.
Definitely going to give that a watch.

~~~
dsnuh
It's part of a trilogy, and Philip Glass did the score for all three.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatsi_trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatsi_trilogy)

~~~
onurcel
And this is what inspired Rob Hubbard for the music of Delta game (related
video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn2h6f1EO2k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn2h6f1EO2k)
)

------
edf13
Megacity one...

~~~
digi_owl
Exactly. The omniscient police force fits like a T.

------
mkagenius
Wow 3 years! That's a long time.

------
kroltan
Non-AMP link: [https://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/10/14/magnasanti-
the-l...](https://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/10/14/magnasanti-the-largest-
and-most-terrifying-simcity/)

~~~
dang
Changed from [https://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/10/14/magnasanti-
the-l...](https://rumorsontheinternets.org/2010/10/14/magnasanti-the-largest-
and-most-terrifying-simcity/amp/). Thanks.

------
megaman22
I used to have so much fun with SimCity 2000 and it's money cheat, building
ridiculous cities.

Somewhere I've still got a copy of Sim City 2000: Power, Politics and
Planning[1], which was really interesting. Some of the elaborate cities
featured in there are still available at:
[http://patcoston.com/sc2k/cities.asp](http://patcoston.com/sc2k/cities.asp),
and you can still load them up and play them.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/SimCity-2000-Politics-Planning-
Revise...](https://www.amazon.com/SimCity-2000-Politics-Planning-
Revised/dp/0761500758)

------
dzhiurgis
Population growth is slowing down worldwide, 9th billion wont be born.

Why the scaremongering?

~~~
mikeash
That estimate is no longer current. The latest estimates has the world
population going well past 10 billion, driven by growth in Africa:
[http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-r...](http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-report.html)

~~~
dzhiurgis
Sorry, got it wrong! According to Kurzgesagt video [0], the UN forecasts
ceiling of 12b.

0:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348)

~~~
mikeash
Your number used to be the estimate, it’s just that things have changed. It’s
easy to miss when this sort of thing changes.

------
nearmuse
> Magnasanti’s water and power needs are supplied by neighboring cities,
> eliminating the need for much of the related infrastructure.

I call cheating.

~~~
disconnected
It is not cheating, since no rules were broken.

That said, that power and water isn't free. The city must be paying through
the nose for all that power and water.

It has been a while since I played SimCity 3000, but IIRC those deals become
extortionate after you hit a certain scale.

~~~
nearmuse
Well, mixing functional and OO programming is practical, but for some esoteric
problems where you want to go purely functional you might say it is cheating,
this is what I meant. I guess anyone would think it would be cooler if it was
self-contained.

------
bitwize
Somebody builds a maximally efficient, hellish dystopia of a simulated city
with no roads, no cars, and everyone's needs provided for within one city
block if not a single building. Hackernews gasps in awe, then goes right back
to lamenting the existence of suburbs, calling for bans on personal
automobiles, and wondering why their city doesn't have superdense "walkable
communities".

~~~
achileas
This isn't the only possible (and not even a likely) outcome of walkability,
lack of need of cars, and localization. It's just exploiting the quirks of the
SC engine to max out population with a lot of commentary slapped on to it.

------
jahabrewer
Next up, is Call of Duty teaching your kids that killing people rewards you
with airstrikes and XP?

~~~
sudouser
and energy drinks fill your HP eternally

~~~
brann0
...but cripple your intelligence

