
IBM's CityOne Is Like Sim City, Except the Solutions Are Real - pchristensen
http://www.fastcompany.com/1636325/ibms-cityone-is-like-sim-city-except-the-solutions-are-real
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boredguy8
Do they also have corrupt politicians? Regulatory limits? Entrenched social
interests? Complex interpersonal relations? Arcane budgetary practices?
Campaign demands? Lawyers?

Limits on municipal efficiency are far more often social then technological.
For a trivial illustration, watch "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" on Hulu. It
shows, on a sub-sub-domain, the role that regulations, entrenched powers, lazy
participants, and disinterested constituents play in preventing sweeping and
self-evidently good change. At one point he's trying to shift an elementary
school to healthy food, but this means a lot of non-finger-foods, so he wants
the kids to use a knife and fork. An appalled lunch lady scoffs, "Do you let
kids use a knife in England?" A bewildered Oliver responds "YES!" and she
demands documented proof. And this is in the US, where overt corruption is
arguably less rampant than elsewhere.

Without resolving some of the problems above, technology won't fix much of
anything at all.

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natrius
IBM sells solutions to these problems, so the game is effectively an ad for
them, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Here's a neat explanation I came
across a while back about what they did with congestion pricing in Stockholm:
<http://www.ibm.com/podcasts/howitworks/040207/index.shtml>

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teilo
People play games as an escape, to clear the mind, to let off steam, or for
the adrenalin rush. People do not play games to immerse themselves in the
angst-inducing problems of the day. A "serious" game with real-life scenarios
and solutions is not a game at all. It is a simulation, or computer based
education.

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pmichaud
I think the line you're drawing is blurry, and I think you're
overgeneralizing. There are as many reasons to play as there are people, and
as many types of play as there are games.

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hkuo
Agreed. A kid can play with a roly-poly he found on the ground and that's a
game.

Anyway, not sure why this discussion needs to be whether we consider this a
"serious" game or not. I think it's a fantastic idea, and its execution will
determine how fun it is to play.

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dkasper
_Cities already consume 75% of the world's energy and cause 80% of its carbon
emissions._

Cities get a bad rap. About 75% of the world's people live in urban areas (at
least in 1st world countries) so of course they consume 75% of the world's
energy.

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pchristensen
Cities have about 50% of population worldwide, but they do have much more of
the wealth. Wealth and energy and pollution are highly correlated.

