
The Real Mayors of 'SimCity' - samclemens
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-real-mayors-of-simcity
======
iyn
It's tangential to the article, but if you like(d) SimCity, you should
definitely check out Cities: Skylines [0][1], it's a really well designed
game.

Another semi-related thing, I'm curious if/when we'll live in a time when
every decision is run on some world simulation before being "implemented".
Does anybody know how often/if Expert Systems[2] are used in
politics/business? How would you approach designing such "simulation", what
would be the hardest problems?

[0] [http://www.citiesskylines.com/](http://www.citiesskylines.com/)

[1] Review:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJb7C2OE9xM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJb7C2OE9xM)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system)

~~~
binarycrusader
Don't get me wrong, Skylines is basically a good game to me, but as someone
that has been playing the "Sim" series of games since the original SimCity, I
think they missed many of the lessons learned by those games and really could
have released a much better game.

Most of my qualms with Skylines are sort of "nitpicking", but they are pretty
glaring:

    
    
      1) the annoying tweet bird with no option to disable (at
      last check) because the devs felt it was central to their
      design
    
      2) terrible UI graphics (I know this is subjective,
      but...) seriously; the UI graphics are not very
      polished compared to SimCity 2000 or SimCity 3 even
      and look like they were made by a programmer
    
      3) funky road placement; the road placement tools have a
      lot of the same "floaty" feeling that SimCity "5" did that
      has lead to much frustration (see the skylines subreddit
      for various complaints about this)
    

Personally, I wish someone would create a modern version of SimCity 2000
instead using a voxel engine. I miss the precision of placement that it had
and the simplicity of various systems.

With that said, they did get a lot of things "right" as far as I can tell,
such as traffic simulation, map size, and general performance (mostly thanks
to Unity really....) and their friendliness to mods, no extra drm, etc.

~~~
iyn
I agree that they have a lot of things to improve, yet I'd argue that Cities:
Skylines is the best city simulation so far (disclaimer: I loved SC3000, I
hated SC4 and 2013). But maybe I'll change my mind, I'm playing Skylines just
to relax once in a while so I haven't had a chance to hate it yet ;).

One thing that's great is the community (and Colossal/Paradox attitude towards
people that mod the game). The game is pretty new and there is already tons of
different mods, it'll be interesting to watch how this evolves over time. So,
you say that you don't like Chirpy - you may be interested in this mod:
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=40579...](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=405791507)
(fun name, isn't it?). AFAIK, there are already multiple communities that
build mods, for example:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding)

~~~
binarycrusader
I was of a mixed mind with SimCity 4; there were certain things about it that
were much better and other things not so much.

I enjoyed the Rush Hour expansion more than the original SC4. One thing that
SC4 did extremely well though was music and general presentation, although
I'll admit to missing much of the original composer's music for SimCity
3000/2000.

SimCity 2000 had a lot of great mechanics but a fairly terrible interface --
somewhat understandable given its original incarnation as a dos game and
certain UI mechanics hadn't come along yet (such as being able to use the
scroll wheel or panning around).

But I'll always fondly remember when I upgraded to a SoundBlaster AWE32 just
so I could get "real midi" music from SimCity 2000 :-)

~~~
iyn
I absolutely love SimCity 3000 soundtrack
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkXOxLpdMds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkXOxLpdMds))!
It's not only great in a game, but can help with programming/studying/focus.

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patmcguire
There were a lot of jokes about Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan because it was
the same as the opening settings of Sim City 4
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%E2%80%939%E2%80%939_Plan#Comp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%E2%80%939%E2%80%939_Plan#Comparisons_to_SimCity_4)

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gohrt
The article seems phony. It claims things that aren't possible in SimCity,
like:

> took money from SimProvidence’s budget and gave it to folks living in low-
> income housing to allow them to upgrade their living situation.

SimCity doesn't have any model of "low-income housing" "giving money to
folks". Money is only spent on police, fire department, and transportation,
all city-wide.

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doctorpangloss
Strategy in SimCity & Cities: Skylines wouldn't survive politics.

The games greatly reward spending all of your money as quickly as possible,
and deficit-spending on services until your city grows into positive income.
In other words, spend as much money as quickly as possible building and
supporting zones, since they make money; then, even though your budget is
negative while you spend on the services to support those zones, you will have
not wasted precious dollars on services you can pay for in deficit.

This is a really tricky part of the game, and extremely nerve wrecking. If you
neglect to spend exactly right, you end up with $0 and no way to fix a mistake
once you hit the play button. On the other hand, your city will grow as
quickly as it can given your budget.

You could say this is a really accurate model of real life. If you have an
efficient way to spend money, should you spend all of it? You could say that
governments rarely have efficient ways to spend money, but they always have a
most-efficient-among-the-options way to spend it.

If there's anything to take away from the simulation, it's that cash surpluses
don't make sense. Not for governments, not for Apple, not for virtual mayors
or StarCraft commanders, not for anyone.

A cash surplus is a symptom of playing the game wrong, not a problem with the
game. And in our politics of austerity, that's really crazy.

~~~
sukilot
If you have good investment opportunities, you should not sit on cash. If good
investment opportunities are coming soon, you should sit on cash. The trouble
is that many forms of wasteful consumption are disguised as investment, in
politics.

~~~
XorNot
I would strongly disagree that they're "disguised".

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mdisraeli
Something similar was done by journalists for the UK 2015 General Election.
They took Democracy 3, an indie game with a very complex neural net
simulation, and attempted to find out how the various main parties' policies
held up:
[http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/116017](http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/116017)

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comrh
Democracy 3 might have been a better choice to mimic politics.

